15 relevant and overlooked recruitment actions that a CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) makes possible!

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM): software designed for recruiters to centralize and organize talent data from all their acquisition channels, whether active or passive. It can be used to structure a database into pools, with the ability to associate tags and use filters for targeted searches and actions. 

In addition, it includes features for managing personalized, easily reusable/adaptable candidate communication campaigns. This makes it easy to track interactions and build long-term relationships with the relevant profiles.

Sourcing without data entry errors and in compliance with RGPD

A CRM's key advantage is to centralize your talent data, and add information as and when you obtain it from job boards, career sites, job events, social media, cooptation, etc. Although you can integrate this material manually, you should know that it can be added automatically.

This is notably true with the following features: 

• 1 click sourcing is a handy tool that installs a Chrome extension on your computer to automatically add information from a LinkedIn profile to the talent pool(s) of your choice. Thanks to messages automatically sent from your CRM, you can obtain consent to use this data for your recruitment activities. 
• CV parsing is a technology that extracts data directly from a CV and integrates it into the CRM without any manual action from you, drastically minimizing the risk of input errors.

Identify the most relevant profiles with matching

CRM software often has the ability to segment talent using filters and tags. But it's possible to go beyond this to better identify the most relevant profiles, especially if it concerns a specific job offer.

CV matching is a technology that allows you to analyze a job offer and all the talent in yourpoolssimultaneously to get a list of profiles for priority consideration, sorted by compatibility score (otherwise known as scoring).

This initial sorting saves recruiters time, thanks to thisAI-based technology and a complete, regularly updated repository.

Simplify international & multi-site recruitment

When you're recruiting in different countries, regions and/or cities, managing multiple databases can be complicated, especially if you're working with multiple recruitment teams (or even multiple languages).

CRM is a tool that allows you to centralize all your data , is fully multilingual and offers greater collaboration within the same team and/or across several teams. It's also easier to leverage other teams' talent pools. For example, when a profile moves from one city to another ; that's why it's important to have regularly updated talent data, which can be automated with a CRM.

The creation of talent pools by geographic zone, country or language also makes possible the creation of separate communication campaigns, based on the same templates but with many customization possibilities. For example, with :

• city-specific visuals
• campaigns on the company's activities adapted to the region,
• etc.

Retaining unsuccessful candidates

Whether they came in 2nd place or not, former candidates are often forgotten. What a pity, because they can be extremely valuable for future recruitment, and keeping in touch with them can be a considerable advantage over your competitors.

A CRM makes it easy to keep in touch with this type of profile, thanks notably to regular communications prior to potential offers to apply again for a position within your company. All this can be automated.

This makes it possible to build a long-term relationship despite an initial negative response, and to avoid keeping contact details just to offer another position with the risk of seeming to be an opportunist.

Also, the link with these candidates that a CRM makes possible helps win their trust and turn them into potential ambassadors to their personal and professional networks. A considerable asset!

Keep in touch with your alumni/former employees

Are you familiar with what is known as the “boomerang employee”? According to a study by Consult for UKG, 13% of employees in France have already returned to their company. A trend not uncommon in Europe. These profiles are known as “boomerang employees”.

Almost 15% of the population is affected, and this represents considerable opportunities for employers who want to stand out from their competitors with a reduced investment of time and energy.

A CRM can enable you to keep in touch with your former employees in a dedicated pool, quickly and easily. In this way, you can prepare for a potential return if the “break-up” has been well managed. The value of good off-boarding just can't be overstated.

These profiles are really interesting for the future, because they already know the company and its processes, tools, projects, products and services, etc.

Trigger preference among young people, future professionals to be seduced

Proactive recruitment is the future of talent acquisition. Think about your future recruitments when you build your strategy today. And if we're talking about the future, we're also talking about the new generation, those who will be tomorrow's employees.

The relationship with future candidates begins right from their studies, and CRM offers unrivalled possibilities for building strong links with these future candidates, including inviting them to events, offering educational content about the working world, sending inspiring interviews with your employees, and so on.

This includes students you've met at job fairs, or interns and/or work-study students you've already had on board.

Update your pool of “young people ” after you've met them or at the end of their contract, and keep in touch so you're on their minds when they're looking for their first job (or even later, when they're more experienced).

Employer brand preference is going to become increasingly important in attracting these future generations, who are increasingly demanding in terms of trust and transparency.

Capitalize on referred and non-recruited candidates

The quality of referred candidates no longer needs proving (1/5 referred candidates are recruited, compared with 1/1000 via the usual channels). But how do you keep in touch with the 4 who aren't selected?

We can assure you that this is essential, as these profiles are often highly relevant to the company, and already know it through the employees who have referred them.

CRM enables you to integrate these referred profiles, whether recruited or not, directly into one (or more) relevant pool(s).

You'll not only offer a vastly improved candidate experience, but you'll also build loyalty among recruited referred candidates, as well as employees who have referred successfully or unsuccessfully.

Good to know: The CleverConnect platform offers both solutions (CRM and digital referral program) in an integrated solution. All data is 100% connected for optimized follow-up.

Organizing job events, from invitation to follow-up

Job events can be real goldmines in terms of Talent Acquisition. CRM can become a real asset for organizing them, and making event recruitment more profitable before and after the event.

CRM and its associated functionalities enable you to create promotional pages for your job events, and link them to an easy-to-create registration form. You can track registrations seamlessly from your Candidate Relationship Management software.

These forms can be adapted and customized to suit your needs.

You can also manage all your event invitations by e-mail, SMS and/or WhatsApp messages, as well as :

• registration confirmations,
• reminders,
• post-event communications. For example, “Thank you for visiting Forum X. Find out more about the jobs available in your sector").

On-site, you can also offer your visitors the opportunity to apply and/or register for your talent pools via QR codes linked to the forms created on your CRM.

The benefit of all this? Centralize the information collected at events (CVs, interactions, preferences) by automatically integrating profile data into the right pools and ensuring that, thanks to the consent present on the forms, you are 100% compliant with the RGPD.

Anticipate seasonal and recurrent recruitment needs

Knowledge is power! This is particularly true when you know that you'll need to recruit this or that profile, in this or that quantity... And even more if you know the period.

With a CRM, it's possible to design pools, filters and tags dedicated to this kind of regular recruitment, and to automatically follow-up on these profiles at key periods, to save time and increase efficiency.

Withthehistory of communications and exchanges generated with these talents (accessible on your CRM fully automatically), you know who could potentially be interested or not - a good way to strike the right balance in terms of proposal and timing.

You can say good-bye to urgent recruitments that could have been anticipated!

Capitalize 100% on unsolicited applications

Unsolicited applications are one of the oldest components in the recruitment world. Yet it's not uncommon for recruitment teams to miss out on this potential talent pool, which is often underestimated.

These unsolicited applications can come from your career site, landing pages or general referrals.

With a CRM, you can invite a talent group (or several) to join your talent pool and send them a personalized reply telling them that they will be contacted as soon as a suitable position becomes available.

By regularly sharing information on company developments and recruitment, you can capitalize on a pool of motivated talent that you've kept interested.

Improve employee loyalty with a transparent internal mobility strategy

CRM is obviously all about generating external applications... But why ignore your employees? You can integrate a pool of your existing employees into your CRM software, so that you can build campaigns tailored to their specific status.

For example, you can communicate by asking them to complete their profile, to express what they would like in terms of career development, and then share the most interesting open positions with them.

Moreover, some of the job offers you add to your CRM may be for internal use only (initially or permanently). You can play with as many pools as you like, when they can serve your recruitment... and retention strategy!

Collect candidate feedback

One of the actions that few people think of when they talk about CRM is collecting feedback. Yet it's possible (and highly recommended) to send out satisfaction surveys after each stage of the process: application, interview, use case.... The advantage? These surveys will be sent out in automatic mode, as will the data collection and response centralization process.

With all the data in one place, it's much easier to identify differences between pools or stages.

You'll then know what works and what doesn't, and when, so you can adjust your strategy and practices. The aim is to improve the overall experience of your candidates, whether successful or not.

Evaluating the performance of application sources

With a CRM, you'll also get a perfect tool for monitoring your recruitment results.

You'll be able to :

1. identify the most effective acquisition channels (job boards, social networks, events, referrals)
2. Adjust your budgets and efforts to maximize the return on investment of these channels
3. Test new channels and see if they are more interesting than others
4. Obtain larger budgets if the quality of some channels is proven, to industrialize an action for example
5. Understand the key information that interests your targeted audiences, and adapt your messages accordingly

In short: easily analyse all your recruitment processes in automated, easy-to-read dashboards. Continuous improvement will become your daily routine.

Automate candidate data updates compliant with RGPD

CRM allows you to generate new contacts, but also to keep them up to date for actions that are still relevant.

Automated campaigns can be created to :

• ask candidates to update their profile after a specified period of time
• request renewal of their consent

In this way, you can benefit from profiles incorporating reliable, compliant and up-to-date data over the long term, so that you're always ready for urgent recruitment needs.

Go even further with pre-onboarding communications

CRM can also be used for communications ahead of a recruited candidate's arrival:

• “You're arriving in 10 days!”
• “Have you already listened to our CEO's interview about the new product line you'll be selling when you start your contract on our Sales team?”
• "Do you know the area where our offices are located? Here are our 5 restaurant tips!"

There's something for everyone! You can let your creativity run wild.

Perhaps you can even use CRM after your new employees join, for the first moments of their onboarding with welcome messages or with other communications that can help you improve (e.g. survey on their experience as a candidate).