27th May 2022 back to blog

When it comes to a recruitment business competition is fierce to have the highest calibre of candidates for clients and with hundreds of applicants to look after, often the challenge can be having enough hours in the day!

With a bespoke recruitment CRM built tailored to your business needs and how your business operates day-to-day could be exactly what you need. Not only to save time and money but also to give you an advantage over your competitors.

This blog post will explain in depth how a bespoke recruitment CRM can help your business, including specific areas it can help you and your team each day so they can be focused on recruiting, not lengthy and repetitive admin tasks. Ultimately a bespoke CRM can help to increase your revenue year on year, making it a worthwhile investment.

Bespoke vs. Off-the-shelf CRM software

Before we delve into this deeper, perhaps you may have read about or considered going for an off-the-shelf CRM software rather than having a bespoke recruitment CRM. Whilst on the surface it may appear like an easier solution, in fact this is a short term fix.

Firstly if any business can purchase an off-the-shelf CRM software then it gives you no competitive advantage to help you bring in the quality of candidates and clients you want to be working with.

Also whilst Off-the-shelf solutions may initially seem like a cheaper option, as your business grows and you take on more employees you will need to purchase more licences for them to access the CRM software.

With off-the-shelf CRM software being developed with hundreds perhaps thousands of businesses in mind, that will ultimately mean you either end up paying for features you will never actually need in your business as part of the package.

Or alternatively once you start using it in the business realise there are features and functions you need for the processes to work seamlessly. Which will lead to either not being able to have that feature as an optionally addition or you need to pay more for that to be developed. With their customer support being for hundreds of businesses not specifically your business, the lead time to discuss and implement this will likely prove to be difficult.

Whereas a bespoke CRM is purpose built to suit your business and your business only. Below we will look into more detail on what can be included with a bespoke recruitment CRM to benefit your recruitment agency.

Repetitive admin time heavy tasks

As a recruiter receiving candidates information for each new job is a task that can absorb a great deal of time. Also the team might be receiving candidate information from a multitude of sources whether that be Outlook, Gmail, Slack, LinkedIn recruiter, recruitment sites or other social media channels.

The best recruitment agency software to save time for your team is a bespoke recruitment CRM. The recruiting tools built custom to the software will mean no more manual data entry. With no need to copy and paste into multiple places and candidate data can be taken from multiple sources to create talent pools.

Hiring Pipeline

The staffing industry with the pace of the industry can unfortunately result in the candidate experience being negative. With a recent study finding 33% of candidates waiting two months or longer after applying to hear back from an employer. Which could damage candidate relationships and lead them to an alternative recruiter next time they are looking for a job.

With bespoke recruitment CRMs it provides user friendly applicant tracking systems. As a result the team can check at anytime from anywhere on the status for each candidate in the hiring process. It provides one centralised location for qualified candidates, so no more digging through emails or paperwork – which could lead to a missed hiring opportunity.

The applicant tracking system means you can easily see the status of a candidate, automatically arrange interviews and send personalised updates to both the candidate and client at each screening stage. Helping your recruitment team to build trust and rapport with top talent, without it taking up too much of their time.

Team work makes the dream work

Another benefit of a bespoke recruiting CRM is the ability for your team to be able to work collaboratively during the recruitment process to fill positions on your job boards with the right candidates, with each person in the team being on the same page.

Everyone can see the status of any candidate whether that be passive candidates or current candidates or job openings. Through the use of a user friendly dashboard it is easy for the team to quickly see for any candidate where they are in the hiring process.

Also personalised notes can be added for colleagues if needed to give them a specific update within the recruitment software. With being able to quickly see all candidates it gives the team better flexibility and transparency, allowing for better team collaboration, a holistic view and stronger relationship management.

First impressions

With there being many recruitment agencies for a potential candidate or client to approach, it is important for the recruiting team to have given the best first impression so they choose to come to you over your competition.

This is where bespoke recruitment CRM comes in, portal access can be provided both for candidates and clients. Bespoke just for them.

For candidates they can easily upload their CV or educational certifications. Candidates can use the recruitment CRM like a search engine with fast and accurate results to find the right potential jobs for them. If they search ‘Administrator’ only relevant jobs will be shown to candidates, not jobs that have nothing to do with admin!

Similarly clients can be matched with the best talent, with advanced search options including pre-defined skills and location radius to make sure they are receiving top candidates to go through to the next stage. Plus easily adding new job openings to their job board or for them or the team to send feedback about candidates and interview decisions.

Back end functionality

Bespoke recruitment CRM isn’t purely about building and strengthening customer relationships. The seamless integrations and tailored approach of having a bespoke CRM will also help recruiters save time with their sourcing efforts and day-to-day admin tasks, which we are sure you would rather avoid doing! So your time can be spent to find talent and on recruitment activities.

Examples of what can be included to support the back end is the ability to share and complete invoicing, submit timesheets and track expenses. Among many more tasks – saving both time and money. Not forgetting avoiding human error with the ability to include prompts for team members along the process, so no invoice gets forgotten about.

Data driven decisions

As part of the dashboard available to each client to access via their own portal bespoke to them and their job board. They can view detailed charts and custom reports to help them make data driven decisions using provided insights for their next job hire.

For example, using advanced matching which is driven by data to get the right skilled candidate from the talent pool. All of which can be viewed in the same place rather than trying to review candidate profiles across multiple sources, making it simple and quick to find the right candidate and easily refer back to for follow ups and future roles.

Internally senior management can also benefit from the advanced data insights to make sure the KPI’s are being achieved and look at performance management. This could include analysing time it took to hire through to candidate experience, to identify within the business who the top performers are and where changes to processes might be needed to go from strength to strength.

Next Steps

We hope this blog post has been helpful to explain how a bespoke CRM can help your recruitment company to save both time and money, along with improving your candidate relationship management and client relationship management.

We would love to discuss in more detail how a bespoke recruitment CRM could benefit your business. Please get in touch today to speak with one of the team. We are more than happy to help.