See who is already coming to #socialrecruiting summit in November!

Blog Network

Recruitment Spin

Communication and Marketing…it's not just products. It's people.

Contact Management = Relationship Management follow this blog post

posted by on Jan. 18, 2006
In the most dynamic selling environment, you are only as good as your contact management system, and your product.
 
Being able to access your customer's information, preferences, personal and professional interests and predispositions can be the difference between a dial tone and a meaningful opportunity.
 
Many of us are using our Applicant Tracking Systems as a sort of makeshift contact management system, typical of an aggressive sales organization. This makes sense, because in a corporate recruiting environment our recruiters are just that - aggressive sales people. Many of these ATS were designed to capture, report and track candidates already engaged in the requisition process, but were they truly designed or intended to be a contact management system?
 
More importantly, does using your ATS as a contact management system truly work for those passive candidates not yet on your side of the fence?
 
As the heat for top candidates continues to become increasingly creative and challenging - recruiters are being urged more than ever to go out and find those ideal candidates by hunting them down by any means necessary. The days of waiting for those candidates to come rolling in (if this ever really did happen) is long gone. We are searching, scouring, spidering and mining all over the place, unearthing hundreds of people in various stages of active and passive behaviors.
 
What are we doing with all of those names we're finding?
 
  1. If we can't immediately link them to a requisition...
  2. If they are not as readily available to discuss an opportunity as we'd like them to be...
  3. If they are not actively interested - but have a decent network they seem willing to share...
 
What happens to those names? In reality, there is a temptation by way of sheer volume to let them sit there, hanging idly in abandoned folders somewhere on your hard drive or in you applicant tracking system.
 
How are we managing those names of individuals we encounter who AREN'T ready to apply? What system are we using to actually reinforce the notion of relationship management to create a pipeline of candidates?
 
The relationship management wizards within our organizations have their own contact management system they use. And I bet you it's more process intensive, manual and tedious then they'd like for it to be. 
 
We assign methodologies designed to make relationship management easier by whittling your contacts down to a workable, manageable number of people - but on a broad level, what system do we have that allows us to bring individual recruiter relationship management to our entire recruiting organization for contact sharing and/or continued leads development? 
 
Is anyone out there using an off the shelf or customized contact management software in conjunction with their ATS? For large scale hiring recruiting organizations - is there value?
 
I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Who is using them. What they are using, or simply - your impression of the pro's and con's.
| 3 comments | flag

3 comments

Log in or register to post a reply.

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    Do you have any recommendations for Recruiting CMS systems?

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    great reply. I also agree with you on the impact of the new OFCCP ruling. I'm concerned about the long-term (heck even short-term) implications of this. A can of worms for sure, that one is. Perhaps I am "glass half empty" myself?

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    All ATS?s are not born equally; some began life as online job posting tools, some began as third-party staffing applications, some began as offshoots of corporate accounting systems, some evolved directly from HRIS, and others were built from scratch with some vision or another in mind by its creators; some focused on assessment, some on workflow, some on resume parsing technology, and of course, some on contact /relationship management.

    Clearly third-party recruiters are in the relationship business and the software that they use is highly suitable for relationship management. Some corporations do engage in active recruiting, but others do not. Some corporate ATS buyers will not consider software that has the ?taint? of agency software, while other corporations own both ATS and recruiting systems.

    I think it's important to talk about these traits in terms of specific features. What are the key features of a contact / relationship management applications?

    I consider the underlying data design to be the most essential descriptor; there must be a solid data relationship between individuals and groups; preferably in separate tables linked by common identifiers. Without this data model, users can never be certain of which people belong to which groups, and those relationships are fundamental to staffing. It a ?pure? ATS there is typically only one organization involved- the corporation.

    It's also nearly essential that two tracking systems are maintained; generalized activities or events applying across end-users and meanings, and specific calendaring functions for particular end-users. Managing the crossover between the general event pool and the individual event pool is key attribute of relationship software.

    And of course, quality e-mail management for bulk campaigns is important, highly personalized correspondence and other communications like IVR or voice is also helpful, as is the ability to create multiple databases or data segments to meet various purposes.

    I believe that the new OFCCP rules (which essentially will be mirrored in new EEO rules) are going to have quite an impact on the way corporations manage talent pools and prospect for talent in terms of recordkeeping and procedures. How that's going to shake out remains unknown, but I appear to be more pessimistic than some others as to the outcomes, at least in the early going.