Clients often tell me that their candidate or talent relationship marketing (sometimes called CRM) isn’t getting the “expected results.”
Note: In this article, and for the sake of sanity, I’m going to refer to both of these relationship marketing approaches as “CRM.”
As well as unhappy clients, I also hear from CRM tech vendors who say their clients aren’t making the most of their software’s capabilities.
If you want to improve your CRM, there are three core pillars to consider: Your strategy, resources and technology. Each of these has questions that you’ll need answers to.
You can learn more about how to improve your strategy and resources here. Read on to find out how to make the most of your technology.
Technology
These five key considerations should be at the front of your mind when choosing a CRM technology partner best placed to meet your needs and those of your candidates.
1. ATS Integration
Ask your prospective provider:
• How deep is the connection between the CRM platform and your specific ATS? (Each one will be different).
• How long will the integration take? (ATS integration is an important component as you’ll need to know what status individuals are flagged as before you send marketing communications to them. The last thing you want to do is send someone an email encouraging them to consider or apply for a role when they’ve already applied and been hired – or worse, rejected.)
2. Marketing Capability
The look and feel of the marketing can make or break your attraction campaign. Find out:
• How flexible the system is in terms of templates and layouts of emails and landing pages. For example, can you produce newsletters, blog posts and event promotions? And can you do this yourself through CMS? How flexible is that CMS?
• What coding skills do you and your team need, or is it easy to use?
• Can you be creative with the designs?
• Does the vendor have creative capability in-house, or do you need to use a third party to provide the designs and assets? Remember, it’s not unreasonable to ask to see some examples of a vendor’s creativity if they offer to do this.
3. Tracking & Analytics
Ensuring you have robust tracking and analytics is essential if you’re going to prove that the CRM strategy worked and the investment in the platform was worthwhile. This starts with understanding what you want to get out of it.
4. Candidate Experience
Relationships always boil down to feelings. So make sure your candidates are experiencing the feelings you want them to have by providing a seamless and consistently branded experience for the following:
• Job alert/talent pool registration
• Email communications
• Application process/ATS
• Content alerts
Don’t forget to ask to see examples of how this works with third-party sites and integrations to check that the candidate will feel like it’s the same system. And naturally, ensure that everything is mobile responsive.
5. Recruiter Interface
Ask the people who are going to be using the system to test it out – your recruiters and recruitment communications team(s). Not only will you need their buy-in to ensure adoption, but they will all use CRM platforms differently, so it’s important to get their view on which is best for them before you choose. Nobody likes to be handed a system without being consulted first.
Building candidate relationships isn’t easy. You’ll wonder if you’re saying the right things at the right time through the right avenues.
But the good news is that these types of relationships are entirely measurable if you’ve got the right CRM system and metrics in place. The best CRM systems will be flexible, with reports that show you what’s working, what’s not and, most importantly, what your next move should be. After all, some relationships need entirely different approaches than others.
What matters is that you’re out there making an effort with passive candidates. You’re catching their attention and building brand loyalty so that eventually you become their No. 1. And of course, when it comes to relationships, that’s the best spot to be in.
Want to explore some of the hottest recruitment tech trends and benchmark where your tech stack ranks against the masses? Download our webinar presented by Nathan Perrott, Director of Digital Strategy at AIA Worldwide.
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