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CRM: Candidate Relationship Management made easy

Written by Laura Chambers | 17-Jun-2024 07:30:00


Are you finding it challenging to keep track of all the candidates in your recruitment process? Have you ever wondered how you can build and maintain meaningful relationships with potential hires? If so, then it’s time to delve into the world of CRM - Candidate relationship Management - specifically designed for recruitment.

What is CRM in recruitment?

When we talk about CRM in the context of recruitment, we’re referring to Candidate Relationship Management. Just like customer relationship management in sales, CRM in recruitment focuses on managing and nurturing relationships. However, instead of customers, we’re talking about candidates. 

Candidate Relationship Management is all about using tools and strategies to manage communication and interaction with potential hires, to keep them engaged and make sure they have a positive experience throughout the process. It’s an essential aspect of modern recruiting, allowing organisations to build a talent pool and nurture candidates  before a job opening is even mentioned!

Why is Candidate Relationship Management important?

We all know that today’s job market is competitive so finding quality talent is no easy task. Here’s where a CRM steps in to make a significant difference:

  1. Building a talent pipeline: A robust CRM system allows you to build a pool of qualified candidates that you can tap into whenever there is a job opening. This proactive approach can significantly reduce time-to-hire and ensures you always have access to top talent.
  2. Enhancing candidate experience: A positive candidate experience is crucial. A CRM helps you maintain consistent communication with candidates, keeping them informed and engaged throughout the recruitment process. Happy candidates are more likely to accept job offers and speak positively about your organisation to their friends and colleagues too.
  3. Streamlining recruitment processes: With a good CRM system, many repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails or scheduling interviews can and should be automated as much as possible. Making efficency savings like this not only saves time but also keeps you on track for a more organised recruitment process.
  4. Improving employer branding: Regular engagement with candidates using CRM tools helps strengthen your employer brand. Timely updates and personalised communication are really valuable and help position your organisation as a desirable place to work.

How does Jobtrain’s ATS incorporate CRM?

Of course, I want to talk about how we incorporate CRM functionality into our Jobtrain applicant tracking system (ATS). After many years (nearly 25 in fact!) of working in the HR and recruitment and delivering our ATS software to all sorts of organisations, we know the pivotal role of Candidate Relationship Management has in successful recruitment. Our ATS includes sophisticated CRM functionalities that's always growing and evolving and is designed to make your recruitment process seamless and effective.

Talent Pool Management

Our ATS allows you to create and manage a dynamic talent pool so you never lose track of your bronze or silver medallists. Candidates can be placed in different pools to easily categorise them based on their skills, experience and other criteria, so it's easy to find the right candidate when a job opening arises. Al designed to help maintain a database of potential hires that can be nurtured over time.

Personalised candidate engagement

With our CRM tools, communications are always personalised to your candidates. Whether it’s sending customised emails, updating them about their application status or sharing relevant job opportunities, our ATS will help your candidates feel valued and informed. Creating personalised engagement goes a long way in building strong candidate relationships!

Our platform's flexible tools help you engage candidates through two-way email and SMS templates, for seamless, automated and personalised communication. Onboarding is equally critical for an engaging process - that's why we offer comprehensive onboarding tools that enable the creation of contracts, offer letters, and online forms with e-signatures, ensuring complete visibility and reducing time to hire. Not only that, our CRM tools also manage Digital Right to Work and DBS checks within the platform. The pièce de résistance, our Welcome Hub, helps build engaging templates to welcome new hires, including videos, images, key contacts, and pre-employment training links, ensuring a seamless onboarding experience. 

Automated workflows

Recruitment often involves repetitive admin tasks that can be time-consuming and a bit of a bore-fest. That's why we're always looking at more and more ways for our ATS to automate them. Our ATS automates these repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on where your expertise lies - being strategic and building relationships with candidates! From sending out interview invitations to following up with candidates, our CRM automated workflows and emails ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Analytics and reporting

Understanding the effectiveness of your recruitment efforts is crucial. Our ATS (and our team of experts behind it) provide detailed analytics and reporting on a broad range of candidate engagement and recruitment activities. Using a data-driven approach helps you make informed decisions, continuously improve your recruitment strategies and drive engagement with quality candidates.

See what our Talent Intelligence experts get involved in - download our latest insights report:

Event and interview management

Our ATS also supports event management, allowing you to organise and manage recruitment events such as job fairs, webinars, interviews and campus drives. These events are excellent opportunities to engage with potential candidates and showcase your employer brand.

Frequently asked questions about CRM in recruitment

What are the key features of a good CRM system in recruitment?

A good CRM system should offer robust talent pool management, personalised candidate engagement, automated workflows, detailed analytics and event and interview management capabilities.

How does a CRM improve the candidate experience?

A CRM improves the candidate experience by ensuring consistent and personalised communication, it helps keep candidates informed about their application status and provides timely updates.

Can a CRM help in reducing time-to-hire?

Yes, by creating a proactive talent pipeline to source quality candidates quickly and automation of repetitive tasks, a CRM can significantly reduce the time-to-hire. Having immediate access to a pool of qualified and quality candidates makes the recruitment process faster and more efficient.

How does Jobtrain’s ATS differ from other CRM tools?

Jobtrain’s ATS is specifically designed for recruitment, offering tailored CRM functionalities that address the unique needs of HR and recruitment. Our ATS combines powerful CRM tools with a user-friendly interface, ensuring a seamless and efficient recruitment process.

To conclude

In today’s fast-paced job market, having a robust Candidate Relationship Management system is no longer a luxury but a necessity. It helps organisations build and maintain meaningful relationships with potential hires, ensuring a positive candidate experience and a more efficient recruitment process. Jobtrain’s ATS, with its CRM functionalities, is designed to meet these needs, making your recruitment process smooth and effective.