Even the best CRM couldn’t help them

When the founder of this recruitment agency approached me, they were running out of steam.

Being very tech-forward, he thought that having the right CRM in place would solve all of his problems. They worked with a semi-proprietary CRM and made changes to make it work for their business.

But instead, his employees were still communicating over email, and copy-pasting information from one Excel sheet to another.

Let me break this down for you:

This agency hires new staff members, and takes care of the communication between candidates and the workplace.

But they got to the point of their growth where they felt stuck. 

In this field, it’s a numbers game AND a speed game: 

The quicker the employees get the candidates cleared, the more of them they are going to recruit before the candidates find another job (and the more bonuses they get for it).

The founder did not feel as if the agency was being as efficient as it could be.

And when I dove into their process, I understood why -

It was VERY complex.

So much so that it took me two full weeks, and talking to MANY people in the company, to understand their process:

👉 A candidate reaches out through a recruitment database or the direct website

👉 A consultant in the company reaches out to the candidate to book a meeting with the candidate

👉 In this meeting, the candidate is supposed to fill out four(!) different forms - that were then manu**y copied into the CRM.

👉 Once that’s done, the consultant has to transfer the candidate’s file to a compliance officer who reviews the data and approves the security clearance

👉 If the candidate is cleared, they’re approved and passed through to the hiring company

👉 But if they don’t have a specific certification or clearance, the hiring company needs to give a waiver to hire that candidate

And even though they had a robust CRM, there was no way to know where each candidate was in their process.

The process required knowing fine details, filtering, sorting, and editing based on various profiles, and the system couldn’t handle most of these needs. So many of the team members were exporting data to external spreadsheets and working on those, then copying and pasting data back to the CRM when they were ready.

I created a way to get them back to using the CRM almost exclusively - and wherever the process allowed, it was just a matter of ticking a box. 

Behind the scenes, ticking that box meant that either a compliance officer got the candidate’s file automatically, or the candidate got an automatic email requesting further information.

Automating these processes meant three things:

👉 Information is no longer lost in the process, because everything in the process is stored in one centralized platform.

👉 The process is much faster now, because employees don’t have to wait for their colleagues to email them files or sort through endless emails.

👉 Candidates are approved faster than ever, which means everyone in the agency has more time and headspace to deal with other (just as complex) day-to-day issues.

If you're growing your business, you don't have to know everything. That’s why you have employees or team members. 

The tools you’re using, as robust or capable as they are, won’t be the solution to your problems if the people in your company don’t understand how to use them or communicate with others through them.

(This is especially true if the tool doesn’t have the capabilities you need to support your team.)

You need to invest in your people just as much as you invest in your tools.

P.S. Want to simplify your processes so that your people use the right tools the way they were intended to? Get in touch here.