Benchmarking Your Organization’s Candidate Relationship Management Maturity
This blog provides a framework that companies can use to assess the effectiveness of their CRM strategy and processes compared to industry leaders.
Candidate relationship management (CRM) has become a critical component of recruiting and talent acquisition strategies in today’s competitive hiring landscape. With unemployment at record lows of 3.5% in the US as of October 2019 (Bureau of Labor Statistics) and the growing skills gap, acquiring top talent requires more than just posting jobs. Organizations need to view potential candidates as customers and focus on cultivating long-term relationships.
However, research shows that only 34% of companies believe their current recruitment strategies are effective at accessing high-quality talent (LinkedIn). This indicates many companies have not evolved their CRM practices at the same pace as the overall talent market. This leads to missed opportunities to source, nurture, and hire passive candidates. Assessing where your CRM processes stand compared to industry leaders is an important exercise. It allows you to identify areas for improvement and make the strategic changes needed to maximize your candidate experience.
In this blog, we will provide a framework to benchmark the maturity of your organization’s CRM. This includes evaluating key areas like recruiting technology, candidate engagement strategies, data and analytics use, and support for core CRM goals. By understanding your strengths and weaknesses, you can establish priorities and pursue best practices that elevate your talent acquisition performance.
Evaluate Your Recruiting Technology
One of the first steps is analyzing how well your applicant tracking system (ATS) and other recruiting tools support strategic CRM. Leading vendors offer robust engagement and outreach capabilities that go beyond simple applications. For example, modern ATS incorporate candidate profile management, customized communications based on profile attributes, social recruiting integrations, and advanced analytics.
However, research shows that only 34% of companies believe their current recruitment strategies are effective at accessing high-quality talent (LinkedIn).
You should benchmark your current solutions against what top vendors provide in areas such as:
- Candidate profile data collection beyond just resumes (83% more data captured)
- Personalized engagement campaigns at each stage (91% more effective)
- Automated communications triggered by profile updates (62% more timely)
- Social recruiting and networking integrations (57% increase in access to passive candidates)
- Robust data and reporting functions (39% more insights generated)
Understanding any gaps in your tech stack will help prioritize investments that strengthen CRM enablement. Studies show integrated tools are key to efficiently building relationships at scale, increasing recruitment productivity by 29% (MRINetwork).
Evaluate Your Candidate Engagement Strategies
Moving beyond technologies, assess how your current recruitment processes and messaging support ongoing engagement and relationship-building. Leading practices include:
- Developing tailored messaging and content for passive candidates (2x more likely to respond)
- Providing value-added career resources beyond just jobs (builds 28% more brand advocates)
- Leveraging social networks and employee referral programs (reduces cost per hire by 15%)
- Orchestrating multi-touch, persona-based engagement campaigns (increases application conversion rates by 22%)
- Partnering with recruiting teams on continuous outreach (decreases time-to-fill by 30 days on average)
Collect metrics on current engagement levels, analyze what resonates most, and identify untapped touchpoints. Benchmark also against publicly shared CRM strategies of top employers. Invest in refining approaches that convert connections into qualified candidates over the long run.
Studies show integrated tools are key to efficiently building relationships at scale, increasing recruitment productivity by 29% (MRINetwork).
Evaluate Your Use of Data and Analytics
Leveraging deep candidate insights is central to impactful CRM. Evaluate how comprehensively your current processes capture and analyze CRM data:
- Depth and breadth of profile attributes collected on all candidates (top firms capture over 50 attributes)
- Tracking engagement across all recruiting marketing touchpoints (75% have cross-channel analytics)
- Rigorous source and stage reporting on CRM program ROI (61% have full-funnel analytics)
- Predictive analytics to identify top candidates for outreach (improves passive candidate response rates by 40%)
- Personalized recommendations based on candidate attributes (drives 3x more inbound applications)
Compare to industry leaders investing heavily in recruitment marketing analytics to optimize CRM investment and strategy. Prioritize enhancing your data insights to develop truly personalized experiences.
Evaluate Support for CRM Goals
Finally, benchmark how aligned your current CRM approach is to overarching talent goals like diversity, time to fill, quality of hire, and employer brand. Top programs:
- Closely tie CRM KPIs like reapplication rates to core recruiting metrics (2x more likely to achieve hiring goals)
- Leverage diversity analytics to proactively source underrepresented talent (38% increase in workforce diversity)
- Personalize outreach based on competency, culture and role models (improves offer acceptance rates by 15%)
- Continuously capture candidate sentiment to strengthen employer value prop (NPS scores 15% higher on average)
- Partner closely with business stakeholders on CRM strategy (reduces recruiter-hiring manager misalignment by 28%)
By understanding current gaps, you can evolve CRM in lockstep with evolving talent objectives for maximizing both the candidate and hire experience.
In conclusion, benchmarking your CRM maturity level allows for a data-driven prioritization of investments, process changes and goal alignment. It provides a roadmap for elevating the candidate experience, maximizing recruiting productivity and performance over the long term. Starting with a candid self-assessment is the first step towards CRM excellence.
