Best Recruiting CRMs - 2023

A recruiting CRM helps streamline the entire recruiting process for both you the recruiter AND your potential candidates (not to mention your colleagues who will be part of the interview and evaluation processes).

At the end of the day, it humanizes the process. With a recruitment marketing platform, candidates aren’t just looking at job listings and submitting a resume — they’re interacting with compelling content that will inspire them to either apply, ask a question in real-time, or move on. All in all, there are many reasons to use a recruitment marketing platform. Here are a few of them:

• Engage people who have already expressed an interest: Like ads served to you based on past internet searches, the cornerstone of digital marketing, a recruiting CRM lets you target candidates that have engaged your company, career site, or job ads in some way. Instead of paying to find new candidates each time, you can prioritize this segment. Since it's an arguably high-intent group, at least in some percentage, you can save time and money. For instance, after Activision implemented Eightfold, 41% of their 2021 hires were rediscovery candidates, meaning, employees hired for a role different to the one they first applied to.
• Convince more career site visitors to apply: You can build a better career site to tell your employer branding story. This ultimately allows candidates to learn more about who your company is — not just what your company does. You can even create separate landing pages/microsites for key roles, giving you the opportunity to provide more than the standard job description and requirements.
• Build talent communities: Nurture passive candidates via talent communities. If you meet someone who would be a great fit for your company but you don’t have the right opportunity for them now, you can log their information until the right job becomes available. These talent communities will live in the built-in CRM, which will also let you keep track of active candidates, recruiter tasks, candidate feedback, and more.
• Make a great first impression on potential candidates: Use built-in HR Chatbots to answer job seeker questions in real-time. Interacting with candidates while they’re researching your company gives you more direct access to “warm leads” you might otherwise miss. It also shows them that you’re interested in them, which could be the reason they submit an application in the first place.

This is really just a taste of what recruitment marketing software can do for your recruiting efforts. Keep reading to learn more about the platforms and features you can expect to get from them.

When you use a CRM for recruiting, you are increasing your overall recruiting and hiring efficiency.

• More candidates: You’re attracting more of the right candidates, faster.
• Faster time to fill roles: You’re filling key roles, faster.
• Higher recruiter productivity: And you’re increasing your company’s productivity, faster.
• Better analytics: You know what works best — and what’s not worth your time (or budget)

But these aren’t necessarily tangible benefits. To help you calculate your return on investment, check out our ROI calculator for recruitment marketing software.  A lot of the value  with a recruitment marketing platform is getting more people into your recruiting funnel through a better career site, and talent communities.  So, this model contemplates increasing the views to applies conversion rate in row 13 - and the financial implications of this increase.

Each platform charges differently. In general, the pricing models are either per seat, per employee or per hire — and for the most part, pricing depends on the size of your company. For example, 100 person companies might pay around $5,000 per year (although this software is really for large companies) while large enterprises might pay up to seven figures. When you reach out to request a demo, don’t forget to ask about how pricing works for a company of your size.

Pricing models depend on who you partner with.  Per seat, per employee, and per hire are all quite common.  The bottom line is that the larger your company, the more you’ll pay.

Pro Tip: This is enterprise software, and so be on the lookout for ways to negotiate: signing a contract early, taking out implementation fees, leverage from multi year contracts (you’ll almost certainly use this software for several years, even if it’s not

As we previously mentioned, recruitment marketing software can help you find more of the right talent at a fraction of the time and cost it takes using traditional methods (like combing LinkedIn or using a recruiting firm, for example).

In today’s job market, you need to take a strategic approach to your recruitment marketing so that job seekers are inspired to apply and, if offered a job, excited to accept. Recruitment marketing software helps you round out this strategy by offering some or all of these features:

• Optimized Career Sites: Build a more interactive career site to tell your employer branding story and attract candidates. To convince people to apply for (and then accept) roles, you need a dynamic site that shows relevant content to each person (for example, tech-related info for engineers, diversity initiatives, company culture-related activities, etc.).
• Talent Communities: Nurture passive candidates so you have a pool of potential job-seekers when the right opportunity opens up at your company. Maybe you find someone who would be a great fit for your company AND they’re interested in working there, but you don’t have the right role for them at the moment. Keeping their information on file and building a relationship with them now will pay off in the long run when the right opp finally comes along.
• HR Chatbots: Communicate with job-seekers in real-time as they are on your career site and considering applying. If they have questions, they can ask them in real-time, ultimately preventing candidate drop-off and increasing their chances of submitting that application.
• CRM Tracking: Keep track of candidates, feedback, recruiter tasks, etc. with Candidate Relationship Management. You’ll be more organized with tracking, reporting, following up, etc. which means your overall productivity will increase.
• Landing Pages & Microsites for Key Roles: Sometimes, a standard job description and job requirements aren’t enough to sell a role. Build individualized pages for key roles that require more information, stats, etc. Again, the goal is to inform candidates so they have fewer questions and are more likely to apply.
• Centralized Content: House all your recruiting content in one place and transmit it seamlessly across email, social media, and more. This will save you time in the long run as you’ll no longer have to post the same content on all of your channels individually — and you’ll have tracking for all these posts in one place so you can more easily see which channel is more effective at bringing in applications.
• Campaigns & Tracking: Create, send and track recruiting campaigns from one place. See who is responding to them and who needs follow-ups, run A/B tests to see what kind of selling points get the most attention and applications, etc.
• Recruitment Events: Ditch the clipboards at your next recruiting event. Instead, go digital and keep better track of who stopped by your table/booth. Most recruitment marketing platforms let you do mobile check-ins, send more streamlined communication before and after, and more.
• Candidate Screening & Evaluations: Find candidates that are the right fit for your company and run necessary background checks. At the same time, keep track of the feedback you and your colleagues have so you can make hiring decisions faster and prevent candidate dropoff.
• Interview Scheduling: With built-in and easy-to-use scheduling, candidates can self-select the times that work best for their phone screens and in-person interviews. This eliminates the tedious back-and-forth of email scheduling that can sometimes cause a candidate to slip through the cracks.
• Video Interviews: If a promising candidate isn’t in your immediate area, you don’t have to fly them in for an interview. Instead, conduct live video interviews from anywhere or have candidates pre-record their interviews to share with your team.
• Analytics & ROI: Not sure if that last email campaign to your candidate database was successful? Are those company stats on your career site the right ones to hook candidates? With built-in analytics and tracking, you can make more informed decisions about what strategies are working best — and which ones aren’t.

Preparing for Success: Common Mistakes HR Professionals Make During the Buying/Implementation Process — Plus, How to Avoid Them

If you’re new to recruitment marketing software, you may encounter a variety of roadblocks that make the buying and/or implementation process more difficult than it needs to be. To set yourself up for success from the start, check to see if your organization needs help in any of these key areas:

• Content (i.e. no content strategy for your career site): Your career site is what you’ll use to tell your employer branding story. What story will you tell and what other information do you want to include? As a start, compile your company’s core values, any employer-related awards (like Inc’s Best Places to Work), company stats, employee testimonials, and benefits.
• Engagement (i.e. no email strategy for talent communities): How do you plan on engaging your various talent communities — and how are you segmenting them? Will you send regular email campaigns? What information will you send in each campaign? These are all questions to think about as part of your recruitment marketing strategy.
• CRM (i.e. lack of CRM training): This is a no-brainer, but you’ll need to know how to use your CRM to its fullest potential. Most platforms offer onboarding/training help, so make sure to take them up on it!
• Cross-Functionality (i.e. not leveraging your marketing team as a strategic advisor): It’s always a good idea to engage your marketing team — especially when it comes to your content and email strategies. After all, your marketing team ultimately creates your company’s story, voice and talking points — and they’ve tried and tested what works to attract customers. To make sure you’re consistent and on-message (not to mention poised for success), use your marketing team as a strategic advisor.
• Marketing Expertise (i.e. no one on recruiting/HR team has marketing DNA): As you’re building out your recruiting team, look for folks that have some marketing background. While your marketing team will be a helpful advisor, it’s even more advantageous to have someone with marketing experience helping with day-to-day recruiting.
• Selective Usage (i.e. you don’t use all the functionality offered): When using a new software platform, many companies only leverage a portion of the features. When you’re not taking advantage of everything, you’re ultimately selling your efforts short. In most cases, the features are designed to be used together so you can more seamlessly and more efficiently find success. So if you’re paying for the full suite, use the full suite!

Before selecting any software program, always request a demo and go into that demo with a game plan. At the end of the day, you want to be in control of it — that way, you’ll have a clear picture of how that particular platform can benefit your hiring efforts. To prepare, come up with a list of questions specific to your recruitment marketing needs and the use-cases you care about.

The following questions are always a good place to start, no matter what the software platform is:

• How will this solution fit into the rest of my tech stack? What integrations do I need?
• How will others in the organization use this solution?
• What are the key features I want to ask about?
• What are the things that would make me nervous about buying this sort of solution?
• How does pricing work?
• What implementation guidelines do they suggest?

When it comes to recruitment marketing software specifically, here are some sample questions to ask:

• How is automation built into the product?
• How does your system talk to the ATS? What are the advantages and disadvantages of hooking it up to it?
• What is your 12-month product roadmap?
• What changes in recruiter efficiency have you seen?
• What changes do you see in the conversion rates across the various parts of the hiring funnel?
• How long does it take to get a new career site up? Who supplies the content for this? What’s the overall design process?
• How would the product work for a job fair or events?
• Who's on the team behind AI and data? Does the company hold any patents?

Additional to this, you can also ask if they can put you in touch with some of their current customers. If they do, you can ask first-hand about the type of results they've seen from the tool, how it has impacted their recruiting efforts, and how have they found the product to evolve over time. Shout out to Todd Raphael, Head of Content at Eightfold, for helping us put together some of these.

As with most software platforms, there is no one-size-fits-all implementation process for the Recruiting Marketing Software solutions we’ve listed here. Implementation depends on a number of factors specific to your business, including the size of your company, the internal resources you have available for implementation, the amount and type of tech already in your stack, and more.

In general, small businesses can get up and running rather quickly, with the biggest hurdle being a new career site (i.e. creating content, getting sign-off from marketing, etc.). On the other hand, large enterprises may not be fully operational for over a year due to integrations with the ATS, organizational training, etc.

When you are diligencing the vendors we’ve listed, ask them on demos for their implementation plans, and then have an in depth conversation around how this will map to your organization’s idiosyncrasies.  Maybe you have design resources in house, or need to get another vendor to handle this.  Maybe your ATS doesn’t have an easy to apply integration with a given system - which isn’t a deal break, it just needs to be talked through.

Regardless of your business’ size, here are a few implementation best practices to help yours run as smoothly as possible:

• Select a project manager: Appoint one person to oversee the implementation process and keep track of key stakeholders, timelines, communication (both internally and with the software provider), etc.  Without one person incentivized and empowered to own this project, it will drag.
• Understand tech requirements: Find out what tech requirements and/or system integrations are necessary for this implementation upfront. To determine this, discuss with your tech and/or IT teams as well as the account rep at your vendor of choice.  Get as SPECIFIC as possible when you ask for what kind of integrations need to happen and how they will happen.
• Stay focused: Create a well-defined scope to keep things on track, on time and on budget.  The functional lead who is running with this project (probably head of TA or CHRO/CPO) should have regular checkins with the project manager here.
• Have regular check-ins: You’ll want to have regular touchpoints with your key stakeholders outside of the point person to make sure everything is running smoothly. Whether these happen daily, weekly or monthly depends on the scope of your implementation, where you are in the process, and the estimated timeline.
• Business Goals: When things get slow, or various stakeholders are holding you up, simply go back to your ROI analysis and why this is important to your company as a way to get senior leaders to move the ball forward with whoever is stalling you.

What is a recruiting CRM?

Recruiting CRM (candidate relationship management) software is a system that allows recruiting teams to track relationships with job candidates and manage the recruiting funnel.

What’s the difference between a recruiting CRM and an ATS?

Recruiting CRMs and ATS’s are similar, but there are key differences. An ATS specifically manages applicants, while a recruiting CRM manages a wider pool of candidates, both active and passive. ATS’s are designed to make the hiring process more efficient. Recruiting CRMs are designed to nurture candidate relationships and boost sourcing efforts.

What are some recruiting CRM features?

Key features of recruiting CRMs include:

• Career site
• Talent communities
• HR chatbots
• CRM tracking
• Landing pages and microsites for key roles
• Centralized content
• Candidate screening
• Events
• Video interviewing
• Interview scheduling
• Analytics

Why use a recruiting CRM?

A recruiting CRM provides multiple benefits to your company, including:

• Stronger career site
• Built out talent pool
• Better first impressions with candidates
• Faster time-to-fill
• More powerful recruiting analytics
  

As we’ve covered, a successful recruiting strategy would be nothing these days without a solid marketing component. But combining recruiting and marketing can be overwhelming. That’s why recruitment marketing software can be such an asset for recruiting teams.

With the right solution, you can take your recruitment marketing to the next level, drive more of the right candidates to your job applications, foster connections to passive candidates who might be a fit for future roles, and hire top talent faster. As a TA leader, your job just got easier. And your company, as a result, just got more productive.

As a next step, we recommend setting up a couple of demos with the vendors that interest you the most — you’ll get a better feel for their solutions and actually see how they’d fit into your overall recruiting and employer branding strategies. Then, when you’re ready to move forward, find someone on your staff with marketing DNA to lead the project and consult your marketing team for best practices. Until then, good luck!