How do you make sure you’re making the most of your new Recruitment CRM?
Let’s set the scene – you’re an agency head on the hunt for a new Recruitment CRM.
What makes a CRM platform good? Is there a formula for creating, or sourcing, a communicative platform, tool or app that strikes the right balance of savvy UX and novel UI, modern design and simple usability?
What bizarre alchemy of tech, design and content makes a digital tool impossible to ignore? And crucially, how do you know if the platform meets your needs, within your budget?
A quick Google and you’ll find a lot of advice about what makes a digital platform, or ecosystem of platforms, simply work better than others. Some examples include:
- Locality, big data and competitive awareness as the winning formula – MIT Sloan.
- Flexibility and independence are key to platform success – McKinsey.
- Interoperability with other platforms and partnerships will win the tech day – Bain.
All good advice, of course. But each point above speaks to hiring success in the face of modern technical challenges – challenges that, if not addressed, can hamper platform adoption, and in our neck of the woods ultimately candidate attraction and hiring feasibility.
So let’s hyperfixate on how challenges to successful Recruitment CRM implementation can manifest, and how eagle-eyed Recruitment business leaders can pre-empt those challenges to create a culture of seamless platform adoption and integration.
What are the primary challenges when it comes to implementing a Recruitment CRM?
We believe that recruitment agency heads should be aware of 5 primary challenges to successful Recruitment CRM adoption.
They are:
- Forget the end-user at your peril.
- Integration without preparation = failure.
- Assess the vendor roadmap and constantly strive to improve platform performance.
- Data is your friend, not your foe.
- Platform customisation and segmentation will elevate performance.
Integration without preparation = failure.
- Many, if not all, CRM vendors will take the lead when it comes to platform integration with your existing stack (more on vendor feature roadmaps and platform evolution below).
- Successful integration takes time and user buy-in, feedback and step-by-step learning, all of which needs to be prepared for, with time set aside to commit to it.
- Effective Recruitment CRM integration is both a technical process as much as it is a human one, so responsibility should always be taken to prioritise pre-existing user understanding, training and development pathways for all stakeholders. This will guarantee seamless platform use, better candidate communication and ultimately better hiring outcomes.
Assess the vendor roadmap and constantly strive to improve platform and user performance.
- Watch the roadmap!
- This is something we could not champion more – a vital requirement for any technical lead on any implementation project is to work closely with the CRM provider, monitor their product roadmap, watch for new features, and take the time to assess the value they can add to your business.
- In short, keep your vendor close. Try to understand the product roadmap to see how your recruitment organisation can benefit in the future.
- This is also essential for CRM auditing purposes, as every vendor partnership should be judged on its merits and effectiveness, and if the roadmap is heading in a direction that may not be right you can spot this ahead of time and either work with your CRM provider on platform development, or consider a new path forward.
Data is your friend, not your foe.
- Your new Recruitment CRM is where recruiting data and hiring strategy collide.
- To get the most out of any digital tool, especially one that is linked to your candidate base and talent pools so intimately, you need to know both how the tool works, and what successful use of that tool looks like.
- Without a totalising, visualised idea of what success means in the context of your new Recruitment CRM, you’re working blindfolded. You need to create clear lines of performance expectation, based around how the platform works, and what it’s able to do.
- Data analysis + strategy = the best utilisation of your new platform.
Platform customisation and segmentation will elevate performance.
- This is one for the project and implementation managers – approaching Recruitment CRM implementation with a one-size-fits-all mindset will simply not work.
- You must have a critical understanding of the breadth of services and tools available from your CRM. What a particular platform offers – those USPs that differentiate it from the competition – are the key to understanding success and are the reason why you chose a provider.
- Success in this regard looks like this – remain as open-minded as possible to learning new ways of working. Use your new Recruitment CRM platform’s segmenting tools to build task management that elevates performance. Reduce the possibility of creating a generalist culture of surface-level platform usage and limited recruitment impact by utilising every asset available.
Forget the end-user at your peril – training, upskilling and the push for continual improvement,
- The simplest way to put this is that users need to understand all of a platform’s functions to really get the best out of it…but they need to do so through the lens of continual learning.
- Upskilling isn’t a plug-and-play asset to give to staff. It requires time and effort to learn, iterate, and perfect platform performance.
Successful Recruitment CRM adoption starts with strategy.
As a final thought, we want to briefly open the door a little more to how recruitment business leaders should position their team to make the most of any new Recruitment CRM platform.
A not insignificant element of any recruitment strategy lies in understanding typical recruitment or HR platform user challenges – the user pain points, the integration issues, and the recruiting dead zones – that make for rough going.
But, when these pain points are mastered, an entire operation is elevated.
Behind every click of every screen, every candidate screening and every automated email sent to cold leads lies a clearly defined user/candidate strategy – a singular plan to engage, enthuse and drive a user/candidate into a meaningful experience with a company.
This connection – this strategy – sits at the soul of UX.
So we especially urge users of Rectec Compare to clearly delineate their strategic needs and reasonings for buying a new Recruitment CRM before diving into our Comparison service, or engaging any vendor in a demo. Learn where those user pain points are, and plan where improvements can be made across the adoption matrix, and you’ll find the whole procurement and impletementation process runs quicker, smoother and often under budget.
The bottom line.
If implemented well, a new Recruitment CRM can revolutionise recruiting.
If implemented badly, without strategy, forethought, expertise and leadership, the wheels fall off.
Within the storied halls of recruiting firms and staff agencies worldwide, the adoption of a new Recruitment CRM platform should be cause for optimism – and, to a large degree, being ahead of the challenges of new platform adoption and understanding key implentation challenges is the absolute key to success.
At Rectec we help organisations to find the best recruitment and talent acquisition technologies to suit your needs.
From Applicant Tracking System and Recruitment CRM comparison, to vendor snapshots, and technology showcases in our unique technology marketplace, we provide fee-free tools to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business!