Importance of a Recruitment CRM:  

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions are a critical business tool, used across most industries and businesses to manage customer interactions, get analytics, and analyse sales data. They help to deliver effective customer management and personalise customer service.  

In Recruitment, CRM – or Candidate Relationship Management- is a software platform that helps recruitment teams manage and organise their candidate database.  

Such CRMs typically provide features like candidate sourcing, applicant tracking, resume parsing, email automation, scheduling interviews, and success analytics. The system allows recruiters to manage all candidate information in one central location, making it easier to search and filter through resumés and applications. 

In addition, recruitment CRMs often integrate with job boards and social media platforms, allowing recruiters to post new jobs and share them with their network. They can also integrate with other HR systems, such as applicant tracking systems (ATS) or human resource information systems (HRIS). When it comes to data analysis and reporting, this powerful tool helps to get you real-time insights, allowing you to make better hiring decisions. 

Before we delve into more details, don’t forget to check our guide on recruitment agency marketing for tips to help your business to stand out in the market.  

What are the benefits of a recruitment CRM? 

Cuts down your business costs:  

Choosing a good recruitment CRM, can drastically help to improve your return on investment and reduce costs. It might be tempting to choose a free CRM, but it’s not always the best solution as they might require expensive additional purchases down the line. Yet, to help your selection process, you can make the most of free trials, to ensure you get the best fit for your needs. 

Tailored marketing campaigns:  

Need more visibility for your latest marketing campaign? Wish to create a personalized journey for your target audience to improve your success rates? A good recruitment CRM will help you increase your reach, build multichannel journeys that drive engagement and learn more about your candidates.  

Saves your time:  

Using a CRM can save you a lot of time, especially with administrative tasks that are usually mundane and time-consuming. A good CRM system can automate administrative tasks, and lead follow-ups, freeing up more time for you and your staff. This can mean fewer human errors, increased productivity and better results for your business. 

Need more solutions to free up your time? At Sonovate, we understand how demanding it can be to chase clients for outstanding invoices. We offer funding opportunities to help you keep your cashflow going, while also taking care of your back-office work, so you can have more time to focus on growing your business.  

Get Started   

Scalable solution:  

A good recruitment CRM is scalable and provides the flexibility to customise your workflows. It allows recruiters to manage the entire recruitment process seamlessly from candidate sourcing to onboarding. When your CRM is scalable, it also provides real-time analytics and reporting, enabling you to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as cost-per-hire, time-to-fill, and candidate sources, so you can make more data-driven decisions. 

Saves you from admin tasks:  

A good recruitment CRM tracks candidate applications and resumés, enabling you to manage applicant pipelines faster. It can also efficiently automate repetitive tasks, such as email and text message communications, scheduling interviews, and generating reports. 

 Quicker Placements:  

Opting for a good recruitment CRM system can help you find the right candidates faster by allowing you to search through applicants based on their skills, experience, and other factors.  

Does your recruitment business need a CRM? 

In simple terms, if you’re looking to increase your billing and grow a highly profitable recruitment business, then the answer is a resounding yes! Meeting or exceeding customer expectations is critical for a business to succeed. In this competitive industry, if you aim for your recruitment business to stand out, it is crucial to integrate a CRM system withing your daily operations. 

Ideally, a recruitment database should be user-friendly, allowing you to access information quickly and easily when communicating with clients and candidates. It should also have numerous time-saving features to make your job easier, and the most crucial aspect is that your staff should use it regularly. A database is only as good as the information you put into it, so it’s critical to keep your data clean from the start and ensure that new staff do the same. 

If you plan to sell your recruitment business in the future, having an up-to-date and relevant database of clients and candidates will make it a more valuable prospect to potential buyers. A good recruitment CRM can go a long way in helping you to build and maintain such data.  

Before going further in the blog, don’t forget to check our latest guide about how to grow your contract recruitment agency.  

Choosing the right Recruitment CRM for your recruitment business  

Often, selecting the wrong recruitment CRM system can have negative impacts. It can slow down processes and make it difficult to manage candidate information. This can result in missed opportunities and decreased productivity. Eventually, this leads to decreased ROI. So, from time to time, it is worth reviewing your current CRM to see if it supports business objectives or if it’s actually a barrier to productivity.  

With hundreds, maybe thousands of programs available, it is worth considering the following when evaluating your options: 

#1 Hosting 

There are two main options here, firstly you can host it locally in your offices, or you can choose a cloud-based system. 

  1. Locally hosted systems can require a lot of investment as they need servers to run on, hard drives for storage, backup and recovery plans and resources to support all of this. Add the cost of licenses and your monthly CRM cost is suddenly one of your biggest outgoings. 
  1. Cloud-based systems remove the need for all the above infrastructure. In most cases all consultants would need is access to a web browser and an internet connection, meaning they can potentially use less powerful computers, reducing costs but still achieving the same results. Furthermore, hosting, security, and backups are all taken care of. In today’s world, cloud hosted services are often the best choice.  

#2 Licensing 

Licensing is an area you should take some time to understand and consider the impact on your business. While you might be able to purchase the software for a reasonable fee or even be offered it for free, licensing is where software companies look to make their money. 

Some systems only allow batches of licenses to be purchased, so where you might only need one, you’re asked to purchase 10. Others might give you an initial license but charge a lot more for future additions. 

Find out early the cost of adding users to avoid any unwelcome surprises in the future. 

#3 Integration 

In the hyper-connected world that we live in, it’s vital your CRM can connect to all the tools you need. An essential feature of a good CRM is its API access. For example, does it sync with your advert posting tool and show a live update of the candidates who have applied for your jobs? Can you quickly and easily add candidates from a CV database? Does it connect with any accounting or timesheet system your business might be running and can you parse CVs quickly and easily? 

#4 Resumé Parsing  

Resumé parsing is another key feature, as it automatically extracts relevant data from resumés and populates the fields in the CRM, saving time and reducing human error.  

Parsing of CVs is a key feature of many recruitment CRMs, but it is worth checking the quality of the data that can be captured before committing. For example, extracting a name from a job title is ok but a name, job title, location and career summary are even better. Some third parties offer CV parsing that can be plugged into a CRM and is worth considering if your business wishes to extract full information from each CV. 

#5 Specialist solutions 

As we mentioned above, almost every business uses a CRM regardless of industry. That means most CRM systems can be too generic for you, even when they offer customisation, it’s therefore best to start your search by looking at recruitment-specific CRMs.  

#6 Ease of use 

Whichever CRM you choose will become one of the most important tools in your business so make sure everybody is happy with the way it works, especially the key users within your business. Get those who will be using the system to try it out and listen to their feedback. 

The best software is pointless if your staff don’t know how to use it, so consider the training and rollout support on offer. If you are migrating away from one CRM to adopt another, think about the impact that might have on your workflows.  

Finding the right CRM for your business: QUICK TIPS 

Before you decide to select a CRM, here are some crucial tips: 

To start off, you need to pinpoint the requirements of your hiring process which would help you to choose the CRM that matches your recruitment needs.  

  • How are your job offers advertised? 
  • What is the selection process? 
  • Which social media channels do you use to search for candidates?  
  • What will your interview periods be? Who will be present? 
  • Do you have candidates take assessments or tests? 
  • Which tasks seem take up most of your team’s time? 
  • What’s the information for which you lose track of data? 

Make a list of essential functionalities 

It’s also important to enlist all the features needed for your hiring needs. Here is a list of recruitment CRM features you might want to consider.  

  • Integration with social media channels  
  • Custom workflows 
  • Lead tracking 
  • Tagging / advanced search 
  • Connectivity with LinkedIn 
  • Video interviewing 
  • CV Management  
  • Candidate tracking  
  • Client portal (to allow them to upload their own jobs and review candidates) 

Always check CRM compatibility with the browser during your trial period 

Before you decide to choose the right recruitment CRM, make sure that it’s compatible with the browser that your business uses. If not, this could result in the loss of valuable information between your recruitment site and the CRM tool. A trial period will help you to assess that.  

Consider the pricing and fix a budget beforehand:  

Needless to say, pricing is important. Generally, there are two pricing models: per-user (per-month or per-year) or a model that allows an unlimited number of users. 

If you have a small business with few individuals involved in the recruitment process, per-user, per-month pricing should work well, helping keep costs under control and allowing you to add or remove users as needed.  

However, if you’re part of a large business or you expect to be adding a lot of new users, an unlimited license may be more suitable. With this pricing model, all executives and recruitment managers can access the tool without the need to increase the budget allocated to the software. 

So, it is always better to fix a budget before choosing the right CRM.  

Firefish CRM Tool: Empowering recruitment agencies to reach their growth goals. 

Our Partner, Firefish Software offers a comprehensive CRM tool that automates your recruitment process. It is an all-in-one recruitment software designed to help recruiters boost their productivity. The CRM offers a wide range of features that can help streamline the entire recruitment process, from attracting potential candidates to onboarding new hires. 

One of the standout features of the Firefish recruitment CRM is its intelligent candidate-matching system. This feature allows recruiters to match candidates with job vacancies based on skills, experience, and other criteria, making it easier to find the perfect fit for each role. Additionally, Firefish CRM offers integrated communication tools such as email and SMS, which allows recruiters to communicate with candidates and clients directly from the system. The system is user-friendly and intuitive, providing reporting and analytics to help decision-making.  

FireFish offer benefits to Sonovate customers! Read more here.  

Here are some other CRMs you may encounter in the market. 

About Sonovate: How can we guide you in your journey of growth? 

Sonovate offers a global fintech platform that can help you save time and resources, and let you focus on growing your business. Choose from a funding and back office platform for an all-in-one solution, or just invoice finance to help you out with your unpaid invoices.  

Get in touch with Sonovate to understand how we can optimise your business cashflow and help it scale globally. 

Blog originally published June 17, 2014 and updated on 16th March 2023