As we set our feet firm and ready for the challenges that 2022 will bring forth, the COVID-19 still causes ripples across all industries around the globe. Affected by the pandemic, the recruitment business is still facing many challenges and needs to figure out new ways to overcome the current obstacles.
In the past year, global industries have been dealt with the ‘Great Resignation’ as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that over 4.4 million people in the United States were leaving their jobs in September 2021. A month later, nearly 3% of the US workforce left their positions. When November 2021 reached its end, there were a whopping 10.6 million job openings while 6.9 million people were unemployed in the US.
Globally, millions of workers said goodbye to their jobs and reconfigured their career paths.
Some leveraged the hiring situation amid the pandemic to catch better or higher positions, while others began their self-employed journeys. Just in the United States, the rates of self-employed workers skyrocketed to 500,000.
As a consequence, a shortage in the workforce arises in the middle of the global health crisis. In the third quarter of 2021, talent shortage climbed up to its new high in 15 years, especially in fields that demand experts with specific skill sets like IT or the medical industry.
Due to a surge in demand for talent, many organizations - from small and medium businesses to large enterprises - turned to recruitment agencies to help them fill in empty chairs with quality talents. In the eyes of recruitment agencies, this is a good time to turn a crisis into an opportunity. However, as the world adapts to COVID-19, some companies’ work processes are developed and changed. Recruitment agencies have no choice but to adapt to the change and push themselves forward into a new and uncertain world.
How Covid-19 Has Affected Recruitment Agencies
During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, most companies found themselves to be unprepared for the challenge. Supply chains were disrupted while many organizations wound up at a dead-end alley.
Now, companies around the world have learned to adapt to the unprecedented and find new ways to continue their business to survive. Like other pieces on the board, the recruitment game saw changes in its process as well.
To minimize the chances of exposure to the virus while keeping businesses going in the safest way possible, ‘Work From Home’ is pervasively embraced. To efficiently run a business with work from home, some recruitment agencies decide to head towards digitalization and fully move everything to an online system.
By going fully remote, agencies without the right tools to support the difficulties in keeping the process smooth and uninterrupted. Working apart causes the team to find it hard to interact and communicate with each other. As a result, the performance is likely to be lessened. One of the reasons for the drop in performance is that recruiting managers are unable to see and manage the whole process.
At the same time, being remote is prohibiting recruitment agencies from conducting interviews with candidates and having a meeting with customers in person. This drastically changes the dynamic between agencies and customers as well as with their talent pool. This could be problematic, as maintaining and managing relationships are the top priorities for recruitment agencies.
However, going fully online is not all bad. Transitioning the work process into the digital realm can offer recruitment agencies new possibilities and business opportunities if they are playing their cards right. With the help of efficient digital tools, recruitment agencies will be able to take leverage from the situation.
A recruitment CRM system is among the many digital tools that can simplify the process while making sure each step can be seen and managed without interruption. It is a digital solution that would help boost your business up while optimizing the process and steadily drive your organization past the pandemic. Why is that? And how? Let’s scroll down and find the answers.
Why Recruitment CRM?
Essentially, a recruitment CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is a digital tool designed to enable agencies to establish and efficiently maintain relationships with customers at each stage of the sales funnel.
With a recruitment CRM system on deck, agencies have the power to efficiently manage their communication and collaboration activities internally and externally with candidates, potential leads, and clients.
At the same time, a recruitment CRM system can optimize your business by allowing relationship establishment with leads to be done efficiently while solidly maintaining connections with existing customers.
With a recruitment CRM, professionals and business owners are more likely to see increased performance and fixes to issues such as poor communication between teams and candidates, potential leads, and customers. Other benefits include avoiding inefficient and unorganized hiring management, improved collaboration between hiring teams and hiring managers, greater transparency into the recruitment process.
What Is It For?
As the name suggests, the purpose of a recruitment CRM system is to ease the workload of its users while allowing customer relationship management to be played out as smoothly as possible. It streamlines, organizes, and proficiently manages the processes relating to customer relationship management, allowing the hiring organizations to reflect their strong images upon customers and stakeholders.
So, to simply answer the question, a recruitment CRM is for recruitment agencies that are looking to optimize operations, establish a fully transparent process, and maximize their business.
How a Recruitment CRM Can Boost Your Business During and After the Pandemic
Expand Your Business
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth uncertainty in all areas of the business. To survive and power your organization through the crisis means stepping up above other players with standout qualities.
An efficient recruitment CRM system like Manatal’s can help you expand your recruitment firm on a fairly large scale. The system can boost productivity and assist your staff recruiters in properly establishing and managing relationships with new leads. This will provide recruiters an opportunity to focus their valued time on creating efficient and interesting campaigns.
Moreover, a recruitment CRM system comes with the ability to consolidate all of the interactions with customers from various communication channels such as email, phone calls, social media, and so on and archive them in a centralized platform that can be accessed at all times.
A recruitment CRM streamlines the sales and customers management activities and allows recruiters to focus their best abilities on recruiting tasks. More high-quality candidates mean more efficient hiring. This will attract potential customers and bring business opportunities into your company.
Provides Unmatched Customer Experience
So, what does it take for business leaders to steer a company through the COVID-19 era? It lies in the ability to maintain the trust of existing customers while attracting new business opportunities. With a recruitment CRM at your disposal, you will have the power to convert new leads into loyal customers and nurture stronger relationships.
An efficient recruitment CRM system like Manatal’s is equipped with innovative technologies that are designed to optimize the process involving establishing, managing relationships with leads and customers.
Recruitment agencies will be able to customize all of the stages in the pipeline. With every detail of each step properly organized, the process will be carried through faster and more efficiently from end to end. All of the data and information of the process can be easily accessed and viewed on a single ‘dashboard.’ As the customer relationship management is in progress, users will immediately see updates on the dashboard and quickly push the development forward.
At the same time, the dashboard features can be utilized as a source of information to customers as well. Recruitment agencies can cater to their customer's needs by providing important information such as the number of job positions that are being hired. Moreover, recruitment agencies can review candidates’ profiles via the dashboard as well.
A well-designed recruitment CRM system like Manatal’s can help recruitment agencies keep their connections with customers alive with the mass emailing feature. Agencies will be assured that their good customers continue to stay engaged with the latest news and announcements.
Transparent and Efficient Collaboration
The recruitment industry pre-COVID-19 era was a fairly competitive market. However, once the Coronavirus hit the global industry, the market became even more competitive. Possessing a tool that enables a smooth collaborative process and seamless operation, especially during the times when staff is forced to work apart means plenty of advantages.
A recruitment CRM offers the team full visibility of the sales and account management operations. Your whole team is only a few clicks away from accessing past interactions and efficiently managing each project. No matter where each of the team members is working from, everyone can easily collaborate and update each other’s tasks with no interruptions.
Should managers plan to bring additional team members to a project onboarding them would take almost no time at all. Teams can keep up with the progress and see the whole picture of the project immediately, making sure of no hiatus or disruption to the work.
At the same time, a recruitment CRM system allows recruitment agencies to give their customers access to view the recruitment process and keep up with the project. An agency’s customers will be able to see the candidates list, view those with the required qualities, and inform agencies of the candidates they would like to select for interviews.
On the other end of the spectrum, managing information of new leads and new customers is also an important part of maintaining and growing business past the pandemic era. This information must be stored in a centralized platform and ready to be accessed at all times. A recruitment CRM system organizes the details of every communication between recruiters and customers by email, phone, or even letter in a single platform. The team will be provided with up-to-date status on every lead and potential customer in real-time.
Strong and Lasting Relationships
Relationship building is one of the most important parts of every business across the industries. Maintaining relationships with partners, customers, and stakeholders is the key to the expansion of every organization around the world. Wherever you are, whatever you do, connections and relationships will always be among the key secrets to your success. When it comes to recruiting businesses, establishing and maintaining relationships is the utmost priority.
Close your eyes and take a trip down memory lane to the beginning of your recruitment firm and open your eyes to the current date. How many potential leads have you engaged with? How many of them became your customers? How many of them have you not been connected with? It’s hard to figure out the number, we know. With the help of a recruitment CRM system, you don’t have to.
A properly designed recruitment CRM system allows your recruiters to follow up with potential customers on a centralized database. No leads or potential customers will be forgotten and left alone in a black hole. Your organization can build up strong and sustainable relationships with leads and potential customers. Recruiters will have the ability to manage the list of leads or potential business partners and follow up with all of them without breaking a sweat.
Conclusion
COVID-19 has transformed the way all of us live and how we run our businesses. Crucially, this crisis has given us one important lesson; to be prepared for anything with powerful resources in your hands means the survival of your business.
As the market becomes more competitive on the back of the rapid digitalization of global industries, organizations that adapt fast and optimize operations stand to rise above both competition and adversity to rise above your competitors.
Once the pandemic is behind us, businesses will surely recover and rebuild themselves while figuring out new ways to optimize their operations in the ‘New Normal’ world. Organizations that are equipped with a powerful tool right from the start have the potential to grow faster while maintaining their business longer. With a recruitment CRM system’s many features, it is fair to say that this digital solution is a tool that can help guide you towards success during and after the COVID-19 era.
At Manatal, we aim to provide products that will help you steadily expand your business while efficiently operating. Not only do we offer a recruitment CRM, Manatal combines a recruitment CRM system and a complete Applicant Tracking System. All of your processes can be covered in one centralized platform, from customer relationship management to candidate management. Manatal makes sure that your operation is conducted faster and more conveniently. Connecting with all concerned parties will never be this easy and efficient!
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