4 Key Recruitment CRM Features Every Recruiter Needs

Searching for the right Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) software is overwhelming. Vendor websites advertise an abundance of features and solutions that often raise more questions than they answer.

With all the superfluous information out there, it's easy to lose sight of what you really need in a recruitment CRM. That's why we put together this list of features recruiters should look for in a CRM that's practical and adds value to their existing workflow.

Applicant Match

Many recruiters know the headache of spending countless hours manually parsing through hundreds (or even thousands) of resumes to identify the applicants whom they believe would be a good fit for their open role. A more efficient method of screening applicants and sorting them into categories based on their fit for the role is needed by recruiters everywhere. CRM features like Applicant Match allow recruiters to spend less time parsing through resumes and more time engaging candidates.

Applicant Match functionality leverages artificial intelligence to swiftly review the qualifications of all your applicants and sort them into categories of Best Fit, Good Fit, Partial Fit, or Not a Fit. AI-generated match insights let you understand what factors contributed to a candidate's placement in a particular category so you can quickly review their qualifications and make adjustments according to your own judgment.

The time that recruiters get back from automating this crucial but time-consuming process is invaluable as it means they can allocate more time doing what they do best: building strong candidate relationships with your organization.

Consolidated Candidate Profiles

When requisition loads are high and tech stacks are bloated, it's easy to lose track of all the activities associated with every candidate across various platforms. This can lead to poor outreach and candidate engagement metrics across your team, which aren't a good look for your organization.

Organizing all of the relevant information associated with each candidate in one central location that clearly tells the story of their talent journey with your company is imperative to keep recruiters on track and effective… not to mention, sane.

Candidate Profiles are where all your data associated with a candidate is stored and neatly presented. A candidate's profile should give you access to their contact information, their qualifications, summaries of their engagement activities, and projects they're already involved in within your organization. A great CRM will even integrate with your ATS to sync projects and messages between the two platforms so all your important work is consolidated in one simple location.

Now, you never have to lose sleep over the fear of missing out on an opportunity due to a failure to jot down an important note or recall which platform your candidate is most likely to respond to.

Talent Pools

Think about how many candidates are in your pipeline at any given time. 1000? 2000? Manually sorting these candidates into useful groupings that make your job easier is tedious and not the best use of your time. Plus, having multiple recruiters devise their own organizational methods across your entire team is a nightmare for collaboration.

The ability to group candidates within your CRM into custom talent pools according to the parameters that are most helpful to you is essential to a productive workflow for recruiters with high requisition loads.

Creating and managing custom talent pools allows recruiters to organize their candidates into the groupings that make the most sense for them. For example, organizing candidates based on the type of role or the date of last contact is a great way to filter them into relevant buckets so they don't take up time or space during a targeted search that doesn't apply to them. It also means you always know where to find relevant candidates when you're beginning an outbound search for a new role.

The organizational benefit of talent pool functionality in a recruitment CRM means that every recruiter on your team has a standardized method of arranging candidates into helpful categories that make their job easier and save hours of manual searching every day.

Full-Funnel Reports

Without meaningful data to measure the effectiveness of specific recruitment efforts, team leaders have a difficult time attributing success to the proper protocols. This turns strategy into a guessing game where recruiters waste time emulating every aspect of a successful team member's workflow without understanding what truly makes them successful or why.

Comprehensive data is essential to properly assess your recruitment strategy as well as the performance of various departments and team members. That's why full-funnel reports are an integral component of every CRM and every recruitment team leader's tech stack.

The detailed insights you gain regarding adequate pipeline, conversion rates, diversity hiring, and more, will help you make data-driven decisions that steer your team toward stellar performance.

Don't get distracted by the bloated features CRMs advertise. The key to finding a recruitment CRM that your team actually wants to use is focusing on the features that add value to their existing workflow.

Recruiters are at their best when they're doing the human work of engaging candidates. The goal is to maximize the amount of time they spend in front of job seekers by minimizing the amount of time they spend performing tedious, manual tasks. Consider a solution that incorporates the features listed here, and you're sure to be on the right path.