Finding a candidate with the right skills, qualifications, and experience for a role in your company is rarely as simple as it should be.

The average hiring process (including interviews) for Americans stands at around 23 days, almost double what it was in 2010. Hunting for a job is often extremely stressful for candidates, but sourcing the perfect employee for a vacancy can be an HR manager’s nightmare. This drawn-out timeframe only adds to the challenge.

Fortunately, a CRM system can help your business find the right candidate faster, simpler, and more effectively than ever before.

Keeping Your Candidate Contacts Organized

The difficulty of keeping track of your applicants will vary depending on the number of people vying for a specific vacancy, though an average corporate vacancy attracts 250 resumes.

An opening which brings in hundreds of resumes and emails will leave your in-house recruitment team or HR manager with many different applications to root through, potentially costing them hours upon hours of time that could be spent on other tasks.

Even a role which leads to a few dozen applications can cause some confusion and difficulties later down the line when the time comes to contact them. This may be to tell them their application has been unsuccessful or to invite them to an interview, but either way, making sure you give the right message to the right candidate is critical.

This is especially important when working as a team: everyone dealing with applications and candidates must have the proper contact information, to avoid mistakes. Any changes will be updated and synced automatically.

With a CRM, you can keep your candidate’s’ contact details organized in a neat, user-friendly system.  Some CRM systems like Apptivo offer G-Suite integration, providing a two-way sync with Google: whenever you add a contact to Apptivo, it will be added to your Google contacts (and vice versa).

As a result, you can create a single address book for your entire HR/recruitment team to access (as well as others in the company who may wish to interact with candidates) at any time or place, be it from their mobile device or desktop computer.

This enables you to build a strong list of potential employees for future vacancies too, reducing the time and cost of advertising again. People are twice as likely to accept cold emails following any interaction with your business, so be sure to respond to every unsuccessful candidate you believe may be suitable for another role at a later date.

 

Never Missing or Double-Booking an Interview

Scheduling interviews is an integral aspect of the hiring process. While it is unlikely that everyone applying for a job will be invited to interview, a large number may be, before the most impressive go through to subsequent meetings.

However, it is vital to avoid double-booking or to miss an interview, which is a real possibility at such a hectic time. Not only does this cause immense frustration for the candidates themselves, but it also makes your business appear unprofessional and overwhelmed.

You need a proper, secure system in place to ensure your entire team is aware of interview times, the names of the applicant, and other key details. Simply sticking a post-it note on a wall or desk is no longer enough in the digital age – if you treat your applicants poorly, word will spread.

Integrating a CRM into your everyday operations enables you to schedule interviews and share them with your team, and Apptivo syncs your Google calendar with its own. You can set-up important first, second, or further interviews in your mobile CRM or on your desktop without fear of mistakes.

 

Sharing Your Company’s Documents with Candidates

During the hiring process, you may want to share company documents with the most qualified candidates. This may be an overview of what their expected responsibilities will be should they be successful, a booklet on your company culture, a breakdown of upcoming interviews, or something else.

In the past, businesses would have to mail such documents out to candidates at their own cost. Today, though, a CRM gives you the power to share documents with little hassle or fuss. Again, if you use Google Drive along with a CRM service like Apptivo, you’ll be allowed to easily share documents with anyone you choose, simply by entering their email address, either via Google Drive or Apptivo itself.

Alternatively, you can attach these documents to fully-branded emails and send them in bulk, using custom templates. This makes it much easier to help candidates prepare for interviews with a deeper knowledge of your business, understand more of the role itself, and get a stronger idea of your company’s overall mission and operations.

Your CRM will include key information on these emails, including notifications of successful deliveries or bounces, as well as metrics to help you gauge engagement with recipients.

 

Automated Communications Saves Time

A reliable CRM lets you customize your emails, with user-friendly drag-and-drop template designers and list generation, so you can control exactly which contacts receive which emails.

This is an efficient, time-saving solution when the time comes to inform candidates of their success or lack thereof. Rather than having to construct individual messages of congratulations or condolences, your HR manager or recruitment team can build mass-email campaigns in a quick, simple way.

You can automate your emails too, sending them to specific contacts at any time you specify, minimizing the amount of work required to complete the task. As a result, an individual employee can oversee hundreds of emails, leaving the rest of the team free to focus on other tasks.

 

A CRM has the power to improve your hiring process significantly, streamlining such key stages as responding to applications, arranging contact details securely, and creating bespoke email templates for mass communications. Even the smallest HR or recruitment team will find a quality CRM system makes finding the best candidates in a flood of applications far simpler than ever.