Businesses have never faced a more volatile labor market, with record-level turnover, and job openings just below 10 million combined with inflation, drastic interest rates, and pockets of layoffs in specific industries. While organizations are navigating a challenging labor market primed for a slowdown, finding quality talent will remain difficult in the new year. It is reported that 61% of HR decision-makers believe it will be challenging to hire new employees for the rest of 2023.
With 60% of recruiters across various industries anticipating making more hires in 2023, recruiters will have the most success by leveraging their candidate relationship management software, designed specifically to engage candidates and build stronger talent pools. Here’s how recruiters can maximize their CRM investment in 2023.
Sourcing
Sourcing is a time-intensive process and one of the most fundamental areas of talent acquisition. And according to Aptitude Research, 75% of companies are not satisfied with their approach to sourcing today.
That’s not surprising when many recruiters’ sourcing processes lack things such as automation, in-house expertise, and proactive engagement strategies that at times are filled with bias. Therefore, by the time a recruiter has a solid list of candidates, there is a good chance at least a few of those people have been hired elsewhere.
Companies need to think differently about their sourcing methods. This is where a CRM software can make a significant difference for recruiters. By maintaining information on candidates in CRM, recruiters can help ensure the flow of applicants is robust enough to fill the company’s open positions. A CRM can also segment talent pools based on specific skills or certifications necessary for the role or whether the candidate needs to be in specific geographic areas. Each or all of these can be criteria for sorting and sourcing talent pools in a CRM to help segment and target specific candidates, drastically reducing search time.
Engaging
Recruiters don’t want to start from scratch every time they have to fill an open position. That’s why it’s important to keep talent networks engaged between opportunities. CRMs can send automatic, targeted messages to quality candidates in the pipeline. Based on candidate preferences tagged in the CRM, recruiters can leverage those profiles to send relevant updates or future job openings that may be of interest. Customized campaigns can keep candidates informed and engaged even when they are not actively looking, with little hands-on effort from recruiters.
Engaging with candidates within your talent pipeline also means meeting candidates where they are. By using the channels that candidates prefer, whether email, text, or social media, recruiters will engage candidates where they will be most responsive. Over the past year, candidate communication preferences have shifted per Employ data. Email has regained some of its popularity as a method of communication, with 41% of candidates preferring them versus 28% in 2022. Phone calls have continued to make gains (32%), while in-person meetings have experienced a large drop compared to last year at 9% versus 26% in 2022. Texts are preferred by just over one in 10 candidates. Like 2022, half of surveyed workers (52%) report that, at some point, a recruiter texted them in order to schedule a job interview, and 65% of survey respondents who were contacted this way preferred it to email and phone calls.
The right CRM software enables recruiters to engage with candidates quickly, ultimately improving their response times and shortening the hiring process.
Diversifying
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is an ongoing journey. It requires people, processes, and technology to work together to mitigate conscious and unconscious bias at every step possible, create opportunities for underrepresented communities, and build strong teams based on talent wherever it is. It’s common knowledge that diversity in the workplace increases a company’s bottom line and is imperative for building a strong employer brand and attracting the best employees to your company. Most importantly, it’s the right thing to do.
As organizations increase their focus on diversity and inclusion, a CRM database is a valuable proprietary source for diverse talent. An already-identified diverse talent pool makes underrepresented candidates more visible to recruiters and helps to meet organization-wide diversity and inclusion goals. It also gives recruiters more capability to segment candidates and run targeted, relevant campaigns based on diversity-focused criteria.
Despite hiring slowdowns and fears of a recession, finding quality talent will remain difficult for the long term. And hiring teams not using CRM software will be placed at a significant disadvantage, as CRM is one of the top areas of TA tech replacement in 2023 alongside sourcing, onboarding, and assessments per Aptitude Research. This will force many organizations to lose high-quality talent to the competition, which remains one of the biggest challenges facing recruiters today. With CRM software, recruiters can eliminate time-intensive sourcing, ensure faster and better-personalized candidate engagement, and streamline DEI hiring initiatives to attract top talent for their organization.
