Candidate Relationship Management : An expense or investment?

The needs for talented people by corporate will always exist, and the pressure on hiring managers to hire the best talent in smallest possible time will be higher day by day. A general trend to manage this pressure by hiring managers is to advertise more, subscribe more job portals and hold more job fairs. But such activities does not deliver results in proportionate to their expenditure.

One of the well known principles of Customer relationship management is that it is cheaper to maintain an existing relationship than to acquire a new one. It applies equally to Candidate Relationship management. When recruiters need to fill a new position, looking up a contact database that has been screened in the past is bound to get faster results than starting afresh on the requirements. The candidates database must not be maintained as a set of simple resumes. A general perception of recruiters is that a resume becomes obsolete after 3 months. It does, because its value and accuracy diminishes as the candidate changes job, move places, attain higher qualifications, change email ids and phone numbers. However, by well defined candidate relationship process, recruiters can make the resume database into a knowledge base that helps them to respond to the needs of the organization in a timely fashion when the hiring needs arise.

Well utilized candidate relationship management practices with structured candidate information stored in a candidate database, enables a process in which candidates contacted by both past and present sourcing activities, are automatically accessible to communicate with, for a present requirement. The cost of acquiring each candidate gets significantly reduced as the existing corporate candidate database is mined.

A good recruitment automation system supported with candidate relationship management processes, does not only meets the objective of the corporate but also helps in brand building. Online recruitment helps the candidates to access the website 24 hours a day and 7 days a week (24x7). There are no time restrictions, therefore someone who is unable to apply for a job during normal working hours can do so in odd hours also. In addition to being available 24x7, candidates are able to apply efficiently for the best suitable job. Thereby, resulting in less response time and time-to-hire.

A candidate relationship database typically maintains relationship with candidates by means of job agents and automated responses. Candidates are given an option to be notified, when a new job comes matching their skills / aspirations, when they upload their resume. The Job agent notification, sent periodically, encourages the candidate to return to corporate website and stay in touch, giving his latest resume.

Every communication with candidate generates an automated response to candidate by email, so that he has acknowledgement of resume posted by him, status updates when his resume is forwarded and screened by a company, interview schedule etc.

A candidate relationship database system includes functionality that automatically identifies missing or out of date pieces of information, and requests them, through automated email, from candidates. Thus act as a complete recruitment solution for the recruiters.

Candidates are sent holiday greetings, birthday greetings and news related to their domains, to stay in touch.