THE BEST TALENT. ENGAGED & ALWAYS WITHIN REACH.

What is Candidate Relationship Management?

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) is a critical component of the modern talent acquisition technology stack. Companies recognize that they need a solution in order to source and nurture passive talent before the job application process begins.

CRM helps organizations access a larger talent pipeline (i.e., Sourcing) ahead of demand and build communities, aka talent pools, around key criteria like roles and skills. CRM then enables companies to engage talent (i.e., Nurturing) via targeted email campaigns, messages, and performance analytics . At its core, CRM offers businesses capabilities that extend beyond the functionality of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), with a focus on improving candidate experience and engagement.

What is the difference between Candidate Relationship Management (CRM), Applicant Tracking System (ATS), and Talent Acquisition Suite (TAS)?

CRM builds & nurtures relationships with passive talent, with the goal of converting them from potential candidates into applicants. An ATS processes applicants through a traditional recruiting workflow. A TAS encompasses both CRM and ATS, as well as other modules — including centralized job board management, programmatic job advertising, artificial intelligence, internal mobility, new hire onboarding, etc.— that serve to enhance one or more parts of a strategic recruiting function.

CRM is an ecosystem of all active and passive candidates, as well as previous applicants already in the system. CRM scales a recruiter’s sourcing efforts by allowing them to create specific talent communities, nurture passive talent through targeted messaging, and drive candidate engagement during the pre-applicant phase of the hiring process.

How do organizations use CRM?

CRM is about creating great relationships between companies and candidates so that when a recruiter need to fill an open position, they already have a pool of vetted talent ready for conversion.

For example, an organization might build talent communities, segmented by job types, that allows them to capture marketing, sales personnel, and product manager profiles of their competitors. The company can then nurture these communities through marketing campaigns with tailored content for each profile type. After an inciting incident, like a mass lay-off or managerial change at one of their competitors, the company can reach out to engage and convert individuals into applicants.

Another company may choose to build talent communities of students at local universities and colleges. These communities can be nurtured through specific messaging that promotes on-campus events and career fair activities. In a best-case scenario, ongoing engagement with students provides the business with a continuous source of potential candidates every year.

CRM is also particularly useful when hiring for evergreen roles — jobs that constantly need to be filled — like sales managers or software engineers. With a pre-assembled community ready for prospecting, sourcing time is reduced dramatically, and gives companies an edge over competitors when hiring the best talent.

What organizational structure is needed to use CRM optimally?

The organizational structure at every company should be a deciding factor in how to best delegate responsibilities and establish workflows for hiring teams.

Some organizations break down the CRM workload by:

• Dividing CRM and TAS responsibilities between sourcers and recruiters.
• Tasking sourcers with talent community creation and management, while assigning candidate nurturing efforts to recruiters.

However, companies may grant CRM system access to non-HR personnel (marketers, events coordinators, etc.) in order to collaborate on recruitment marketing campaigns and candidate nurture programs.

SmartCRM

SmartCRM is SmartRecruiters’ native candidate relationship management technology. With SmartCRM, businesses can source talent strategically and recruit proactively.

What functionalities does SmartCRM offer?

SmartCRM is unlike any other CRM module available today. It is the industry’s first 100% native CRM + ATS built on one system, creating a unified data workflow that follows a universal candidate profile. SmartCRM instantly improves data quality, enhances the candidate experience, and provides easier candidate record management.

Watch the video for a full overview of SmartCRM’s functionalities.

Does SmartCRM integrate into an existing HCM Suite?

SmartCRM is an enhancement to the SmartRecruit Talent Acquisition Platform. As such, it offers the same deep integration capabilities with most Human Capital Management Suites. Furthermore, it is possible to easily and securely migrate data from a different CRM platform to SmartCRM.

Which employees have access to SmartCRM?

SmartCRM is a highly collaborative and flexible tool that allows Admin users to set access permissions for each member of the hiring team.

Will organizations looking to reflect their brand in candidate- and customer-facing communication be able to fully customize their nurture campaigns?

Yes. We suggest using rich content (e.g. images, video, sound) that organizations can easily upload. All branding configuration and assets are fully shared across all parts of SmartCRM and the SmartRecruit Talent Acquisition Platform. Just like with SmartRecruit, organizations have the ability to manage multiple brands, creating fully branded and immersive candidate experiences that are representative not only of their employer brand, but their consumer brand as well.

How deeply can customers segment their talent communities?

With SmartCRM, organizations can build and manage personalized talent communities based on their specific hiring needs, using deep and dynamic faceted search filters — for example in-demand skill sets, geographies, diversity hires or anticipated demands.

Organizations can then automatically feed relevant prospects into the pre-configured communities through connected searches built around keyword search, boolean strings, tagged attributes, and more.

Where is the data hosted?

SmartRecruiters follows ISO 27001-certified data handling and management practices, and hosts in secure data centers that comply with regulations both locally and globally. Additionally, SmartCRM is fully cloud-based, which means not only can the data be accessed anywhere at anytime, but it will always be current and accurate.

Is SmartCRM GDPR compliant?

Yes — as a one-stop solution for talent acquisition and as a designated data processor, SmartRecruiters is committed to adhering to GDPR. Because SmartCRM is fully integrated with SmartRecruit, there is one, unified data flow. Candidates manage a universal profile (“SmartProfile”) as they move through the candidate lifecycle, which ensures real-time and consistent information at all times.

How does SmartCRM handle CAN-SPAM and other regulations around email sending?

SmartRecruiters supports one-click unsubscribe for prospects and offer detailed campaign analytics for bounces, spams, and unsubscribes. Each campaign also includes a compliance footer with data privacy information, terms and conditions, and other information requirements.

Are analytics available? How do organizations measure the ROI on campaigns?

Yes — SmartCRM allows companies to measure the effectiveness of their outreach efforts with real-time insights and stats, such as tracking data, to assess branding and messaging performance among prospective applicants and measure conversion success from lead to hire.

Is SmartCRM multilingual?

Yes — SmartCRM offers multiple user-facing and candidate-facing languages. Please see the full list of supported languages in our help center.

Will hiring teams need any technical resource assistance to implement SmartCRM?

No — SmartCRM is 100% native and requires ZERO integrations with the SmartRecruit platform. With its easy-to-use workflow similar to that of our TAS, it is designed to be a self-service platform, meaning less hassle for IT departments and fewer system dependencies for hiring teams.