A Quick Guide to Candidate Relationship Management

The talent acquisition world is filled with acronyms

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) and Applicant Tracking System (ATS) are the two acronyms that go hand in hand. With access to a CRM and applicant tracking systems, recruiters have a powerful recruiting technique that enables them to onboard and fill vacant positions. Besides, they can also plan for future employee needs and build and maintain relationships with critical talents.

In a contracting labor market, the normal candidate has evolved from the seeker to the desired. As a recruiter, you must practice ongoing candidate relationship management to attract them. Before, CRM could only do one thing – help larger firms source critical talent ahead of a requisition. It reduced the cost per hire and the time to fill vacancies. But today, with the changing landscape due to the surge in the candidate-driven market followed by the pandemic, a CRM is now a secret tool to improve the recruiter-candidate relationship.

Yet, not up to half of the Fortune 500 companies use a CRM system. Whether it's regarded as too big of an investment or a risk, it's evident that some underestimate the value of CRM software today. But many Fortune 500 companies use ATS to speed up, streamline, and automate their recruitment process.

The role of customer relationship management is to help you connect with future and current candidates via job recommendation portals, recruiting events, and automated email marketing. For example, consider a campus recruitment drive – you've seen some promising talents there. While you can't hire all of them, CRM software can keep them engaged. You can contact these leads before posting a job when it's time.

Knowing your candidates better and becoming aware of their current employment status is vital for effective CRM. Continue reading to learn more about the power of CRM and how it has helped streamline the onboarding process in recent times.

Candidate Relationship Management Examples

Candidates now expect similar sophistication and speed during their job search. To attract and hire critical talents, companies must reconsider the traditional method and consider recruiting KPIs and evolving candidate expectations. Candidate management is the process of building and managing relationships with passive and active job seekers to guide them through the recruiting funnel.

Nowadays, the job market is getting more and more competitive. And getting the hiring process right is easier said than done for some companies. Businesses are finding it difficult to attract critical talent.

If so, what is candidate relationship management regarding talent acquisition? CRM is the structured process of maintaining a positive, healthy relationship with current, past, and future candidates. It is also the process of attracting and engaging candidates and nurturing an authentic relationship with them over time. Companies adopt this structure to have a ready pool of talents for recruiting whenever there's a need. Knowing the customer relationship to candidate examples helps you determine the one that suits your business.

Candidate relationship management examples include:

• General CRM
• Inbound CRM
• Operational CRM
• Fully integrated CRM

Many companies today have CRM at the core of their enterprise system. CRM software is a rich database that captures all the information recruiters need to maximize a strategic recruiting technique. As a business expert, maybe you already know the terms CRM and ERP. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a financial and operations system for improving business processes and efficiency.

Customer relationship management in ERP platforms benefits businesses that need a consolidated approach to manage KPIs and access pricing structures.

Best Candidate Relationship Management Software

As recruitment evolved, the need arose for recruiters to engage with candidates likewise. HR professionals, hiring managers, clients, and candidates are the major actors in the recruitment process. To employ great talents, companies need the best recruiting CRM.

The best CRM software acts as an ATS and CRM software. It provides enhanced CRM features to carry out traditional recruitment functions such as communications, posting and publishing jobs, maintaining notes, and processing applications.

Modern CRM solutions support automated communications with candidates. Most of these recruitment CRMs allow you to keep notes, create email templates, send personalized and bulk emails, manage tasks, etc.

Your CRM software should have features like ATS, sourcing, bulk emailing, and blind hiring. Integrating a recruitment CRM into your tech stack is crucial. Here is the best CRM software in the market for you to choose and enjoy smart hiring:

• Loxo: An all-inclusive, best-in-class recruiting CRM with processes, recruitment tools, and automation.
• Beamery: An enterprise-level CRM software helps track interactions, schedule and manage interviews, and parse resumes.
• Zoho Recruit: This software's CRM is extensively customizable with features to suit your requirement.
• TalentLyft: A great entry-level option CRM software for businesses to post jobs through their job board integrations.
• Avature: A perfect recruiting CRM for companies who need a solution to campus recruiting.

Candidate Recruiter Relationship

CRM isn't just a best practice but an absolute necessity. Building and maintaining relationships with candidates has become a crucial trend as remote, hybrid work rises, and evolving candidate expectations are changing the recruitment landscape.

Candidate recruiter relationship is the success watchword of any company. In the labor market, recruiters are the frontline. Thus, they need sufficient resources to help them build trust, understand candidates, and gain credibility. Recruitment is a human activity, and its success for both parties depends greatly on building relationships. Candidate experience software is integral to this success. A good recruiter relationship to candidates is vital to building a successful recruitment strategy. Hiring success depends largely on attracting top talents through a robust recruitment marketing approach. An essential recruiter-candidate relationship process improves candidate interactions and allows businesses to tap into qualified talent pools for future job openings.

Here are some best practices every recruiter should embrace:

• Communication
• Transparency
• Trust
• Rapport
• Openness
• Balance

Regarding a sourcing CRM, you must build your proprietary database of prospective candidates and source hires from there regularly. Sourcing involves more research on potential candidates, and takes work, time and attention. Candidate experience is becoming a must for recruiters worldwide. A good sourcing CRM tool like Loxo can do all the magic by enhancing the candidate experience. It can also help you build a customer relationship by combining every communication and information in one place.

Candidate Relationship Management Vendors

Recruiting is changing on a top level. Currently, about 36% of the U.S workforce freelances, and reports say that the number will increase to over 50% within the next decade. Discussions on the rise of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing human jobs are at the core of everyone's social consciousness. This is making recruiting to become more complex. Traditional sourcing platforms no longer yield quality candidates like before.

Thus, recruiting is shifting into a proactive function, focusing mostly on candidates. Attracting candidates demands your organization to stand out from others, your hiring methods to be engaging and quicker, and your job to be highly competitive. To achieve all these, you need feature-rich recruiting CRM software.

There are several candidate relationship management vendors out there. Whether your company is hiring at high volume or on-campus, you need a solution to assemble and nurture your candidates in your recruiting funnel.

Recruiters must understand recruiting CRM vs ATS and why both are crucial for a company. Getting the best recruiting CRM out of the available vendors is essential as it can give your company a competitive edge.

Are you ready to try a recruitment CRM free trial? Loxo offers that and much more. We are a worldwide leader in recruiting software and can take your recruitment strategies to the next level. Sign up today and get an AI-powered and data-driven recruiting software designed to manage a complete recruitment life cycle via a single system-of-record software platform.