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What Are Online Recruitment CRM Platforms?
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Talent Development

What Are Online Recruitment CRM Platforms?

Better Manage Your Candidate Engagement with a CRM for Recruiting

A recruitment CRM (candidate relationship management) system is a tool that allows hiring professionals to build and maintain relationships with job candidates while simultaneously managing the entire recruitment process.

The idea behind a recruitment CRM is treating candidates as if they were customers. In fact, the acronym CRM originally stood for “customer relationship management,” and the first CRM systems were focused on driving sales and retaining customers (think Siebel, Oracle, and now, Salesforce).

In recent years, however, Recruiting and HR departments have realized the need for online recruitment software of their own. With the rise of the modern job seeker and increased competition in the job market, leading employers realized that manually managing candidates via, paper, pen, email, and spreadsheets would no longer do. They needed a better way to attract top talent, engage with them, and drive them through the various stages of the hiring process.

The first applicant tracking systems came to the market as static systems of record where candidate information was merely stored as a digital rolodex. However, as new technology has come to the market, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have grown into full-blown CRMs for recruiting. Now fully-equipped with built-in workflows and automations, a modern ATS, or recruitment CRM, allows users to manage every aspect of the candidate relationship, from initial sourcing through to the job offer stage.

How are Recruitment CRMs Different from Applicant Tracking Systems?

The differences between an applicant tracking system (ATS) and a recruitment CRM are largely fabricated through aggressive marketing campaigns over the years. In reality, a recruitment CRM is an an applicant tracking system and vice versa. Recently, as new sourcing tools have come to market, they have began referring to themselves exclusively as recruitment CRMs. Unfortunately, this is misleading because they often lack the recruiting workflows needed to manage candidate relationships beyond initial sourcing and outreach.

Potential Uses for a Recruitment CRM

So how do you know if you need a recruitment CRM? What features should you be looking for? A good starting place is to review the 13 symptoms of ineffective hiring. If you are suffering from any of these, it is definitely time to start considering an ATS as your CRM system for online recruiting.

Realistically though, if you are involved in hiring at your organization in any way (whether it be as an HR professional, a Recruiter, or a Hiring Manager), you should be considering a recruitment CRM system at your company.

What a recruitment CRM can help you accomplish:

  • Build a strong talent network from one centralized, searchable database
  • Source, attract, engage, and manage candidates
  • Facilitate all hiring activities through advanced workflows – automated recruiting emails, job and offer approvals, interview scheduling, background checks and pre-employment screening, digital offer letter delivery, and so on
  • Measure your recruiting performance through comprehensive dashboards, analytics, and reports

…Literally control and manage your entire recruiting process, all from one place.

Problems a recruitment CRM solves:

  • Poor candidate experience
  • Lack of communication (both with candidates and amongst your hiring team)
  • Inefficient, unorganized, manual hiring practices
  • Diminished talent pools
  • Limited collaboration amongst hiring team and hiring managers
  • Lack of transparency into recruiting performance
  • The list goes on…

For a more comprehensive list, review the 13 signs of inefficient recruiting here. If your team is suffering from any of these symptoms, you may be wasting extensive time and money. Calculate how much you can save with a Recruitment CRM.

What Features Should a Recruitment CRM Have?

True recruitment CRMs are loaded with features that help you recruit and hire top talent. Below are the most critical ones that you should be looking for:

  • Customizable, mobile-friendly online careers pages and applications
  • Automatic postings to leading job sites
  • Employee referral programs and social recruiting
  • Centralized database to manage candidates
  • Automated recruiting email templates
  • Interview scheduling
  • Job and offer approvals
  • Recruiting dashboards and workflows that drive hiring decisions
  • Background checks and pre-employment screening
  • Hiring Manager tools
  • Built-In Compliance Functionality (EEOC and OFCCP)
  • Analytics and reporting
  • Digital offer letters

Hire Faster & Smarter with Paycor Recruiting

Finding, interviewing and hiring talented people are the most important challenges growing businesses face. Paycor Recruiting is a software solution designed and built by recruiters for recruiters and HR hiring teams to help you solve your hiring problems and optimize your recruiting process.


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