chapter five

Must-haves in a CRM solution

Hiring teams that have no prior experience with CRM may be overwhelmed by the options available on the market. When weighing different options, here are areas that should be in scope of a quality CRM solution:

1. Sourcing

  • Talent Pools.
    Create and manage talent communities to organize your prospect pipelining.
  • Team Configuration.
    Set up robust sourcing teams that include Sourcers and Participants.
  • Advanced Search & Filters.
    Segment prospects by communities, status, and tagged attributes for better messaging and desired outcomes.
  • Automation.
    Create live connected searches that keep feeding talent to communities automatically based on criteria you set.

2. Nurturing

  • Branding functionality.
    Keep your employer brand in front of the right candidates at the right time through intelligent ad spending, email marketing, and targeted social messaging.
  • Email marketing.
    Create, save, and send email templates or campaigns.
  • Lead capturing.
    Configurable landing pages that capture leads and events so candidates feel connected with your brand and your team.
  • Scheduled messaging.
    Both en masse and individually.
  • Social media marketing.
    The average person spends at least two hours a day on social media. Facebook has 1.47 billion daily active users. These candidates have already marked their interests and have provided years of data that can be used for targeted advertising.

3. Data Compliance & Security

  • Universal candidate profile.
    Ability to meet global data compliance requirements.
  • Consent.
    Captured at candidate level, with options to opt in or opt out info.
  • Accuracy.
    Data must be fresh and non-duplicative.
  • Secure.
    Candidate profiles are managed from a single platform with world-class security measures and certifications.

4. Reporting

  • Analytics.
    Clean dashboards, with conversion tracking & sourcing analytics.
  • Useful data.
    Not just a silo for information, but can quickly organize, sort, and mine data.
  • Global.
    Reporting access across geos for different user types and roles.

5. Accessibility

  • Mobility.
    Cross-platform and cross-device apps is required for true accessibility, where recruiters need to source while in the field and on-the-go.
  • Ease of Use.
    A CRM solution should be intuitive for recruiters, sourcers, and hiring managers to operate.
  • Collaboration.
    While Sourcers and Recruiters and build and configure talent pools, it’s as important for hiring managers to be able to easily navigate and provide feedback in the system.
  • Design.
    Strong UI with comprehensive dashboards and clear navigation.
  • Connectors.
    CRM should be natively to the recruiting tech stack, or support deep integration / open APIs that seamlessly plug into existing solutions and workflows.