HubSpot's Guide to Choosing a Recruitment CRM for Your Business

What is Recruitment CRM?

A recruitment CRM is software that companies use to create and manage relationships with job seekers and potential candidates. It helps you save time by eliminating manual data entry and automating many hiring tasks.

Suppose you work as a talent sourcing manager in a company. Without a recruitment CRM, you’d have to manually sort through thousands of applications for any job posting you make, wasting your time and resources. Even worse, it may set you back for weeks in your hiring process.

Here’s how candidate relationship management software will help you. Once your candidates submit applications, it will prepare a database of talent. You’ll be able to view any candidate you want with a few clicks, check their past experiences, and look at their skills to assess their fit for your company. 

Besides that, recruitment CRM software helps you:

• Attract, identify, and isolate excellent applicants for your job openings
• Evaluate your best applicants in real-time and select the best fit for your business
• Build credibility and trust with your potential hires, making them eager to join your team
  
  

Recruiting CRM: Benefits for Businesses

A recruitment CRM benefits a business in several ways.

Massive Talent Pool 

No matter what role you’re trying to fill in your organization, a CRM enables you to monitor a vast pool of potential staff.

As an open position receives applications, you can use your recruitment CRM software to collect valuable information on your potential hires. The CRM then uses that information to create unique profiles for each applicant. 

You can also get your recruitment CRM to parse through the candidate profiles to find which applicant meets your set parameters. For instance, if you want candidates with a certain amount of experience or specific qualifications, your CRM can pull the required candidates from the database in seconds. 

In this way, you choose the most qualified candidates to interview, which increases your chances of a successful hiring process without using LinkedIn or job boards.

Tracking Recruitment ROI 

Testing your hiring process and understanding what works and what doesn’t is important. 

A recruitment CRM enables you to track your hiring process’s success. For instance, it conducts custom analyses on your candidates and recruitment process and develops detailed reports on turnover rate, new hires’ performance, and candidate satisfaction. 

Getting on top of these metrics helps you improve your hiring process. If you're dealing with low candidate satisfaction, you can provide training to your recruiters and managers. And if certain applicant channels provide you with suboptimal candidates, you can opt to invest your budget elsewhere. 

Better Interviewing Process

A recruiting CRM automates your interviewing process by updating qualified candidates on their application statuses. 

You can set triggers in the recruiting CRM to notify or email candidates when they progress past a particular stage. For example, you can send follow-up emails via the recruiting CRM, giving the applicants an overview of what to expect in the following interview stages.

Time- and Cost-Efficiencies

Your CRM automates many manual recruitment processes, letting the recruitment team focus on priority tasks in the company. They can focus on improving the interview process and addressing other staffing needs.

For example, your CRM can merge duplicate profiles, cutting redundancies from the candidate list. That’s one less task for your staffing team.

Besides that, recruitment CRM software reduces your need for a larger recruitment team since your small team can easily go through hundreds of applications at once using the dynamic tools of your recruitment CRM.

Choosing a Recruitment CRM Software

A recruitment CRM helps you handle your recruitment, but you need to select the recruitment CRM that meets your unique business needs and delivers the best results.

Here are the four key features you should look for in a recruitment CRM:

Scalability

Scalability measures a software’s ability to expand or shrink to meet evolving business needs.

Before choosing a CRM for your recruitment processes, ask yourself: can its tech stack scale at a moment’s notice?

Also, if your business grows and expands to different locations across the country:

• Will your recruiters be able to access your CRM wherever they are? 
• Does your CRM support integrations you may need down the line for functionality?
• Does your CRM offer tiered pricing to let you save costs at the start?

Automation 

Automation is another critical feature you should look for in a CRM. Can you set rules on your CRM to perform certain unique functions automatically?

Besides that, your CRM should automate:

• Data capture by logging calls and emails into your system
• Responding to inbound emails and sending application updates to potential employees
• Canned responses for questions prospective employees usually ask
• Marketing by integrating social media platforms
• Scheduling calls and meetings for interviews with qualified applicants

Customer Support

If you run into any challenges using the recruiting CRM, you’ll need help from customer support. Ensure the recruitment CRM comes with experienced customer support that can resolve the issues you face. 

Ideally, your recruitment CRM should offer customer support via multiple channels:

• Chatbots and live chat
• Phone — SMS and call
• Email
• Social media
• Knowledge base — tutorials and resources to help you resolve problems

Personalization

A personalized recruitment CRM lets your team tackle their tasks seamlessly and increase productivity. 

For instance, you can configure your CRM to:

• Enable your recruiting timeline — with meeting schedulers picking interview dates based on availability and automated emails updating the candidates according to the preset dates
• Add more functionalities via integrations for other software — you can integrate an applicant tracking system (ATS) with your CRM
• Showcase your brand — you can add the brand’s assets to your CRM and leave a lasting impression on the candidates

Tools To Look For in a Recruitment CRM 

If you’re in the market for a recruitment CRM, here are must-have features to look out for:

Resume Scanner

A resume scanner screens resumes and helps you select the best-suited candidates for your open position, reducing your recruitment staff's time and effort going through hundreds of applications. 

When choosing a CRM, ensure the CRM either supports this feature natively or has integrations that can help perform this function.

Candidate Management

Candidate management supports interaction between you and your potential employee. This includes candidate onboarding, candidate profiles, and talent management. 

Candidate Reports and Analytics

Reports and analytics are essential to help you optimize the recruiting process. Your recruitment CRM dashboard should have a report section to track:

• Source of applications
• Time to fill a position
• Number of applications per job posting

This information helps you see what’s working and what isn’t in the recruitment process, letting you learn from missed opportunities and increase the chances of success.

Job Opportunity Posting

You can also look for recruitment CRMs that let you develop a job portal where potential applicants can find open positions in your company. 

Besides enhancing the candidate experiences, a job portal makes your application process more straightforward. You can capture as many applicants as possible, eliminating recruitment agencies.

Applicant Interview Management

Your CRM software should’ve tools for meeting and interview scheduling. It should help you schedule appointments, set up calls, and keep your applicants informed during the recruiting process.

Applicant Onboarding Management

Once you’ve selected successful candidates, onboarding guidance helps them adapt quicker to the new working environment.

You can enhance their experience with a knowledge base and tutorials.