As a recruiter, you talk to a lot of different people every day. From leads to candidates to clients, you need a simple way to organize all your recruitment communications. To organize your conversations, consider using a contact management system. What is contact management?
What is contact management?
A contact management application tracks your business contact information. It is a database for the communications you make daily, including names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers. You can use a contact manager to easily organize and find all the information linked to business communications.
In recruiting, you can use a contact management tool to keep track of candidate and client contact information. The application integrates all your contact information for different job orders.
What is a contact management system going to do for my firm?
Contact management software is a great tool for recruiters who need access to contacts without the hassle of managing information by hand. Depending on the features your CM system provides, you could see an increase in productivity.
Contact management systems vary depending on the software provider. The functions within a contact manager help you organize your communications. Most CM systems provide the following features.
Track communication data
The main purpose of contact management is to record and organize your contacts. Details within the software could include calls, tasks, job orders, and opportunities. All verbal and email communications can be documented in a CM system. This makes it easy to see who you’ve talked to and what you’ve talked about.
Along with basic contacts, you can keep notes about your interactions within the software. This allows you to keep a full record of all your recruiting communications. Instead of losing data in stacks of paper or spreadsheets, all your information is in one, streamlined database.
Review past information
As a recruiter, you have long relationships with many of your clients and candidates. Because of the long-term nature of recruiting communications, you need a running history of who you talk to. A contact management system allows you to look at past communications.
If you ever tried to organize information on sticky notes, paper, or desktop files, you know how easy it is to lose. CM software keeps an organized history of past conversations for you to reflect on. You can also view open quotes, job orders, and sales records.
The ability to review conversations helps you nurture client and candidate relationships. It strengthens your marketing efforts, as you can target individuals based on their interests in past conversations.
Automated reminders
With contact management, you can create automated reminders. Even when you mark events on a calendar, it can be easy to lose track of all the tasks you need to complete. It’s a lot easier to remember upcoming communications with the alert feature in a CM system.
Web-based accessibility
Many contact managers are hosted online. You can access your contact information anywhere using a device connected to the internet. This makes storing and finding communication data simpler when you’re on the go.
Can you imagine losing all the contact information for your recruiting firm? With a web-based CM system, this situation is highly unlikely. You don’t need to worry about paper documents getting destroyed. And, your information is safe in case your computer crashes.
CM systems in the cloud also make it easy to share contacts. This is convenient if you’re working with your recruiting network, like when making split placements. Web-based contact managers create a smooth communication process when you need to collaborate.
Difference between contact management software and a CRM
Sometimes, contact management is confused with candidate relationship management (CRM) software. Though they have some similarities, a CM system is different from a CRM.
A contact management system is actually one part of a CRM. Contact management in CRM software offers the same features as a standalone CM system. But, a CRM offers additional features that help you streamline more recruiting tasks.
What is a CRM?
Candidate relationship management tools help you at every point in the candidate experience. They simplify each step of the recruiting process, including contact management.
Common CRM features include:
- Import and track recruiting data
- Record notes about clients and candidates
- Email marketing management
- Contact management
- Automated reminders
Contact management is just one part of your daily recruiting tasks. By using contact management in recruiting CRM software, you keep all your recruiting information together in a single database.
Candidate relationship management applications help you engage with more clients and candidates. To streamline your workflow, consider using a recruiting management system like a CRM. That way, you can track clients and candidates at every stage in your recruiter pipeline.
