What Is Candidate Relationship Management (CRM)?

A great recruitment process is one of the best ways to build a talented team and attract the top candidates for new roles. In highly competitive markets, the best candidates can expect a top-tier experience that reflects the value of their skills.

Both independent and international brands are increasingly favoring candidate relationship management software to formalize the hiring process and deliver the experience that candidates want.

An overview of candidate relationship management

Candidate relationship management focuses on creating a good talent pool. When recruiting qualified and talented candidates is necessary, it is crucial for organizations to develop long-lasting relationships with potential new hires, even if they didn’t quite make the grade the first time around.

In essence, CRM is keeping good and healthy relationships with all candidates past, present and future.

Candidate experience is the primary goal when it comes to a recruiting CRM. It starts with engaging candidates throughout the entire recruitment process and then following up afterward. Having an excellent career site, keeping up communications, and having a streamlined process are all crucial.

To create a positive candidate experience, employers must focus on the entire recruitment process, including the initial attraction, communications with candidates, interviewing, and following up.

In particular, employers should focus on candidates who make it to the interviewing stage, as they might fit an alternative position. By nurturing positive relationships through this entire process, organizations build a strong employer brand.

Not every talented candidate will get the first role they apply for, but that doesn’t mean they can’t work at an organization in the future. When employers keep an

excellent candidate relationship management program, they ensure that all candidates, both new and old, are eager to work for the company.

Having a constant pool of talent ensures excellent employees as well as time and money saved on the recruitment process.

The Benefits of Effective Candidate Relationship Management

Effective candidate relationship management strategies are some of the best ways to engage candidates from the start of the recruitment process. Used correctly, talent acquisition CRMs can improve the efficiency and success of the recruitment process. Here’s how:

Enhancing candidate experience

Effective recruitment technology is designed to make your recruitment process more efficient, but it’s also important to remember the experience of your candidates. How you treat your candidates, particularly in highly competitive or tight-knit industries, will reflect on your brand in a number of ways.

A poor candidate experience can harm your brand image. On the other hand, a great candidate experience can attract excellent talent long term and help new starters to feel like part of the team from the very start.

A competitive advantage

A good CRM will help you to identify events in your industry that may cause a big shift. By reacting to these events quickly, you may gain a competitive advantage over your competitors.

For example, if several employees are dismissed at a competitor, you can contact these staff directly before they are in the general job market.

Automating tasks

Effective candidate management software can help you automate small, repetitive tasks. This not only saves your recruitment team time and money, but it also allocates skills to where they’re needed — engaging with candidates.

Automation in the recruitment process also helps to remove human error and unconscious bias from areas of resume screening and processing diversity data.

Creating a talent pipeline

Even when a role attracts a lot of talent and interest, it can only go to one person. With a CRM system in place, you can store recruitment data and reach out to past applicants when a role arises that would be right for them.

Not only does this provide early access to top talent, but it also helps you to find the perfect fit for new roles in the future.

React to real data

Many CRM systems collect data that tells you a lot about your recruitment process, which you can then analyze and use to implement changes.

For example, if you notice that a lot of applicants are withdrawing applications, you can use your CRM system to identify where. From here, you can collect further data or otherwise identify what might be causing the issue. If it’s before the interview stage, it could be that your hiring team takes longer than average to reach a decision.

This will help you optimize your hiring processes and secure the best candidates.

Candidate Relationship Management Best Practices

Throughout the talent acquisition process, this five-step process outlines best practices for engaging and retaining top talent. 

1. Discover

The first stage involves feeling out top-tier candidates who are likely to engage with your hiring team and want to learn more about the role. Run applications and inquiries through your system, and it will flag certain key phrases that are relevant to the role, as well as previous applicants and passive candidates who might not engage with your team.

2. Attract

You’ll start to be more active in this stage, using social channels and mailing lists to raise awareness of your profile as an employer. It’s also the time to reach out to people in your CRM to let them know about upcoming opportunities.

3. Engage

Once you’ve attracted the right candidates for the role, you should keep them engaged throughout the process. Keep them updated on the progress of their application and any invites to interview or to a task stage.

You should also make sure that this stage, in particular, is accessible across all devices and operating systems.

4. Engage

Now for the most critical stage of the process. Through your CRM, let applicants know about the company culture, the team they’d be working in, and more about the role.

Use the applicant portal to invite promising candidates to interview, and then use the same method to inform the successful candidate of the outcome.
Once this is done, you should always advise every other candidate about the outcome of their application, too.

5. Nurture

After the successful candidate has accepted their new position, it’s time to nurture the candidates who withdrew from the position or who were unsuccessful. Let these applicants know about future opportunities and invite them to sign up for further mailing lists.

This is also a great opportunity to gain qualitative feedback on your hiring process – the interview, your communication, and what you could do to improve in the future.

Be responsive

One of the most common applicant complaints about the recruitment process is a lack of responsiveness. Remember that candidates may have applied for a number of roles in their field, taking time and effort over each one. You should take the time to acknowledge every candidate, even if they’re not the right fit for your business.

This means treating every candidate like an individual. This can go a long way to helping you attract top talent and build your brand’s reputation as a great place to work.

Candidate Relationship Management Software: How It Can Help and the Features You Should Look For

There are a number of recruitment CRM products in the marketplace now, but how do you know which one is right for you? These are some of the key criteria to look out for when choosing your applicant CRM. 

1. Resume reader

A resume reader or parser is a must-have. Your candidate CRM might collect hundreds of resumes at any given time, so it’s important that your system can identify keywords and experiences and select the best candidates.

It should also ideally be sensitive to different phrasing to avoid missing out on potentially great candidates.

2. Analytics

One of the great things about candidate CRMs is that you can learn about your hiring process from data provided by the system. For this reason, your system needs to have a solid data processing and reporting capacity to help you make the right decisions and amends to your recruiting.

3. Email automation

Communication is key to working with the best candidates for your role. In order to keep potential employees engaged and informed on all stages of the hiring process, your recruitment CRM needs to have an automated email function, to thank applicants for their time in submitting an application and letting them know when there’s an update.

4. Applicant portal

To keep all of your applicant data secure and in one place, the best candidate relationship management systems will provide you with an applicant portal.

Applicants can submit all communications and applications through this portal and keep track of their applications in the same place. 

Take Advantage of Candidate Relationship Management Systems in Your Recruitment Process

The Oleeo candidate relationship management solution allows your hiring team to recruit new talent by prioritizing inclusivity, diversity and communication. 

Leverage your recruitment CRM system to nurture applicants, grow your brand reputation and help support your growth in the long term.