How To Use Your CRM When Considering Job Applicants

How To Use Your CRM When Considering Job Applicants

A lot goes into choosing which candidate is the best pick for a particular position. In the online world, we now have a wealth of additional information available when considering applicants. While this it’s a welcome addition, there’s one spot many haven’t looked when weighing potential employees, and it’s a tool many are already using with their own customers. Here’s how you can use your CRM in the hiring process.

Using A CRM To Consider Job Applicants

CRM systems are used to manage a companies interactions with current and potential customers but they can be a great piece of your hiring process too. In many ways a job opening and potential employee are like a product you’re looking to sell and a potential customer. Treat them as such.

Before we start, keep in mind that none of this new data should be used as the definitive method for judging an applicant, but it can provide interesting information about the people you may consider hiring.

Your CRM already tracks potential customers and their interactions with your website and content, now you can track potential hires too.

Tracking Potential Employees Before The Application

The paths people take before applying to your company vary greatly. They may come to your site directly to find out about open positions or find out about openings through numerous internet job listens and other sources.

While many may come to your site directly from a job posting site and simply apply, others will search around your site a bit first and learn more about your company before putting in an application.

Through your CRM you can track their time on your site before applying (which is many ways is just a lead gen form like you’d track with potential customers). Did they check out your About Us page? Did they view other employment resources before submitting their application? All this information can be found by looking at their website interactions through you CRM.

What they did before submitting their application may indicate their level of interest in your company. While this shouldn’t be used as a single source of determining an applicant’s interest in your company, it can provide additional insight into potential new hires.

After Application Tracking

Once an application has been submitted, you can continue to track them just as you would a potential lead or email subscriber.

Upgrade that application confirmation email. Don’t just thank them for their interest in the open position, provide them with more. Include links to helpful resources for potential employees. Give them suggested reading and more.

Of course, these additional resources aren’t just helpful to the person applying. You’re tracking their engagement with this suggested reading. Do they show interest in learning more about your company or do they ignore it? You may be able to learn who is truly interested in your company and who is just looking for any job they can get.

Taking It A Step Further

By learning what resources a potential employee has consumed from your company, you can learn about their level of interest in your organization, but we can go even further than that.

Through lead scoring we can assign points for certain content potential hires hit. We may award a point for each page they view on your website, but 2 or 5 points for particularly important pages like those included in the “Thank you for your application” email. Pages that you really want every applicant to read can be given additional weighting, almost a bonus for doing the things we’d hope a good applicant would know about us before/after applying.

You still need to interview applicants but it may be informative to know one has spent substantial time learning about your company while the other hasn’t.

In addition to providing insight on an applicant, your CRM may also show missing or thin areas of content for potential employees.

More Informed Interviewing

We know more about job candidates than ever before and your CRM is another great source of information when considering who to hire. The insights it provides may help you better understand the interest an applicant has and inform employee selection. Consider all the data available to you. It’ll help you make the best hiring choices possible.

Author: Ben Brausen

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