An ATS and CRM for Recruiting Agencies

Collaboration

Crelate’s Recruiting CRM / Opportunity Management Tool

Crelate Talent is excited for our October release where Recruiting Opportunity Management (CRM) will go live. This is our biggest release of the year and will provide recruiting agencies with a unified ATS and CRM. When we build new features we listen to our user community and build tools that will give them more time to build relationships. Our goal has been to build a recruiting solution that will help you collaborate with your team, manage opportunities, and gain insight into your sales workflow–right alongside your talent pipelines. In this article we meet Sales Manager John. Check out his technology frustrations and how Crelate is helping him solve them.

Introducing John: Sales Manager at a Recruiting Firm

Meet John, a Sales Manager at a medium-sized recruiting firm. John is a go-getter and highly motivated to see his agency grow their customer base, increase revenue, and gain the trust of their clients to ensure repeat business. John is part of a relatively small three-person sales team that manages current clients, but is also always in discovery mode for new opportunities. The recruiting firm tackles all kinds of job types including everything from contracted projects that last a few months to full-time positions at large Fortune 500 companies (and everything in-between). More specifically, John must manage any or all of the following: internal or in-house recruiting, contingency recruiting, retained searches, staffing opportunities, consulting gigs, project-based contracts and niche recruiting (for highly specialized opportunities). John’s day is usually consumed by studying his pipeline, conversing with his recruiting team (getting status updates), and interacting with his clients to ensure that progress is being made on the searches/placements. Most importantly, John is highly motivated to ensure that his clients are happy with the services he is providing. He’s also burdened with the responsibility of ensuring the long-term viability of the firm by having a steady stream of new leads and opportunities in the pipeline. His primary goal is to help the firm grow and gain a reputation for being a trustworthy resource for his customers so they can continue to remain viable in an increasingly competitive recruiting marketplace. With so much to manage and keep track of John often opines for a technological solution that would truly help him be more productive and foster more growth for the firm. In moments of frustration he often asks himself questions like:

  • Why can’t I have a recruiting solution that encompasses applicant tracking and my sales pipeline?
  • Is there a better way for me to know, in real-time, the status of ongoing recruiting/placements being worked on by the recruiting team?
  • Is there a way that I could get real-time updates on how our sales team is performing and what upcoming opportunities we have in process by stage?
  • What can’t my sales management platform be customizable and grow with me?
  • Does an all-in-one solution exist for applicant tracking and sales management that is specifically designed for recruiters and sales?

The pain points that John is experiencing are, unfortunately, not new. One of the most common complaints about technology is the fact that often users are forced to work with ‘multiple applications’ in order to do their jobs in a productive manner. For those that work in sourcing and recruiting they might have an applicant tracking system (ATS) to manage their jobs and candidates, while having a separate customer relationship management (CRM) solution to manage opportunities. In this scenario, recruiting professionals are forced to be in at least two systems to get things done. What’s more, the two systems often don’t easily talk to one another and so confusion and inefficiencies can take over. There is a better way.

Crelate’s Solution to the Problem

The pros at Crelate understand these pain points and, therefore, have built a full-featured “Opportunity Management” system that exists within (or side-by-side) our current applicant tracking solution. This sales/opportunity management tool has been built specifically for recruiters and recruiting agencies. This isn’t an ‘out of the box’ CRM that may or may not meet the needs of recruiting professionals. On the contrary, many of John’s pain points are directly addressed and solved since we’ve built this system from the ground up. Customization is one of the hallmarks of an effective CRM solution and Crelate goes all in on this concept. Crelate’s Opportunity Management System adds value to your firm by:

  • Providing the sales team with easy access to ongoing recruiting efforts so there is no ‘guessing’ how those searches/placements are progressing
  • Having the applicant tracking and sales management systems co-exist side-by-side means expectations setting is less stressful and more accurate
  • Knowing in real-time the value of each deal so you can more accurately forecast revenue and profitability of your agency – this helps you focus your efforts on the most productive uses of your time
  • Offering customization of your sales workflow to fit how you work your sales funnel
  • From one screen allows sales team to quickly evaluate the progress on all opportunities that are currently being worked by the recruitment team
  • Includes the same popular features that Crelate users love about our applicant tracking solution – such as the job dashboard, the chrome parser, and more

Again, all of these functionalities allow the sales team to have a keen eye on the sales pipeline while also having access to real-time updates on active recruiting searches/placements.

Imagine a world where…

If we go back to John we can envision how his day might go if he had access to an all-in-one recruiting solution. John’s typical work day, if he had an amazing applicant tracking system coupled with an opportunity management system, might look a whole lot more productive and fulfilling. John might come into the office early in the morning and after grabbing his coffee log into Crelate and check out his current sales pipeline. He might notice several opportunities up and running in various stages of the process, from leads that are just at the beginning of the funnel all the way to opportunities that are completed (fees have been retained). John can come up with the revenue goals for the firm at the beginning of the year and he has an efficient way to accurately assess if the team is on track to meet those goals. John has easy access to a database of contacts, clients, and opportunities that he is constantly cultivating and working. He is building on past relationships and always on the lookout for new ones. He makes a few phone calls with potential clients that have different needs than clients he has formerly worked for. Because his recruiting solution is easily customizable it’s no sweat to create records of the new opportunities with custom workflow stages, new pricing options, and estimates on how long the process will take. Given the fact that data has been collected over the past several deals John is able to predict with more accuracy how long it will take to fulfill his client’s needs. After following up with a couple of client leads John moves on to the applicant tracking side. Further, he identifies several ongoing searches/placements that are currently in process. John can quickly get up-to-speed on how the recruiting team is doing on the opportunities and what is happening according to the schedule and what may be behind schedule. He can see the progress on one screen and quickly know what needs the most attention. John sends a couple of email reminders to members of the recruiting team regarding on-going searches. Also, because of the tracking that has been done on previous projects John is able to judge much more accurately appropriate time-frames for getting searches/placements completed. Further, John is able to prioritize opportunities based on the overall ‘value’ of the project as well as the historical legacy of his relationships with the clients. It’s great to have this information in one place. This allows for prioritization of future opportunities and increasing the accuracy of predicting positive outcomes for the business. Given all the time John saves by having an ATS and CRM side-by-side he can focus more on what truly matters for the business: cultivating a fruitful pipeline of business.

The Takeaway…

Many applicant tracking system providers have tried to combine these two critical pieces of the puzzle (i.e., ATS + CRM) but have been unable to successfully pull it off. We are super-excited to be launching this feature in our October release. We are convinced that having these two processes in one system is going to be a game-changer for recruiting agencies looking to grow their businesses and do what they do best: connect talented people with the right opportunities at the right time. If you are interested in learning more, please contact our customer success team today to set up a demo.

Filed under: Recruiting Tips