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Top 7 best recruitment CRM

Find the recruitment CRM that best suit your need for your recruiting processes in terms of feature, integration and price
Last update
Mar 19, 2024
Top 7 best recruitment CRM
André Farah
Top 7 best recruitment CRM
Content

What is a recruitment CRM?

What is a CRM?

A CRM is usually a software used for sales. It stands for "Customer Relationship Management". It refers to strategies, practices, and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. The goal of CRM is to improve business relationships.

The most popular CRM used by sales and business development departments are:

  • Salesforce
  • Hubspot
  • Pipedrive
  • Zoho / ZohoCRM
  • ...

Based on this, CRM dedicated to the recruitment industry started to be developped to meet recruiters expectations on candidate relationship management processes.

👉 Looking for a Candidate Relationship Management tool? Check our article "Best candidate relationship management tools" to compare pricing, features, and reviews.

What is a recruiting CRM?

A recruiting CRM is a tool focusing on how to handle the candidates relationship. It will help you approach new candidates and manage your current talent pools. Basically, the recruitment CRM will support your sourcing processes and help you with the communication with candidates inside and outside your pipeline.

If you work for a recruitment agency, a CRM can help you manage both clients and candidates relationship.

Who can use a recruitment CRM?

A recruitment CRM can be used by all in-house recruiters who need to:

  • Approach and reach out to candidates and do "outbound recruiting"
  • Manage and animate talent pools (see Talents nurtering or Talent Mapping)
  • Collaborate with other recruiters in your team

Recruitment CRM can be used both by in-house recruiters and recruitment agencies. Using a CRM can be a game changer for in-house recruiters, especially a lot of hiring come from outbound recruiting (candidates sourcing, recruitment agencies). A Candidates Relationship Management software can help recruiters gain productivity and maximise the number of hiring done per month.

Recruitment agencies tend to use a recruitment CRM both for candidates and clients relationship management, as the processes and the approach can be very similar. Indeed, most Candidates Relationship Management software can be used both to hunt candidates and future customers.

What is the difference between ATS and CRM for recruitment?

An ATS or Applicant Tracking System is a tool built to manage all Inbound Recruitment processes. The main features that you will usually find in an ATS are:

  • Job offers management
  • Job posting on the different recruitment platform (Linkedin, Indeed, etc.)
  • Receive and analyze applications from candidates from all sources and platforms
  • Interview process management with all stakeholders (Talent Acquisition Manager, Hiring Manager, ...)

A CRM is the tool focusing on the outbound recruitment and the sourcing process :

  • How you reach out to candidates (messaging, sequences automation)
  • How you manage your talent pools and the relationship with the candidates you interviewed in the past

To deep dive the differences between CRM and ATS check this article: ATS or CRM, what is the best software for recruitment.

Few tools tend to cover both features, on inbound and outbound recruiting. Most of the CRM tools' features are built around the outbound processes.

If you are looking for an ATS, you can check this article : Top 11 best applicant tracking system.

What are the best recruitment CRM for my company?

Here is a synthesis of the best recruitment CRM for recruiters:

  • Leonar
  • Zoho Recrut
  • SmartCRM
  • BullHorn
  • Recruitly

Leonar

Leonar is a tool focusing on outbound recruitment processes. The main features are:

  • Messaging automation through a multi-channel approach (linkedin messages, inmail, email, whatsapp...)
  • Candidates enrichment with more filtering capabilities
  • Candidates enrichment with the contact (email, phone number...)
  • Collaboration with other recruiters in the team
  • Talent pools management and track record of messaging history with candidates
  • Analytics on the performance of your outbound recruiting processes
  • Integrations with your current ATS

Leonar can be used both by in-house recruiters for talent acquisition, and by agencies for head hunting and business development. It will help you:

  • Reduce the time spent sourcing
  • Increase your response rate, reduce the time to hire for each position
  • Better manage your talent pools

For more informations on Leonar's feature, check this link: Leonar's features

Price: See the different plans available and the free trial on this link: Start free trial

BullHorn

Description:

Bullhorn is a leading applicant tracking system (ATS) and customer relationship management (CRM) software designed for the staffing and recruiting industry. It offers comprehensive features to streamline recruitment processes, including applicant tracking, candidate sourcing, resume parsing, job posting management, client and candidate management, interview scheduling, email integration, analytics, and reporting. With its user-friendly interface and customizable workflows, Bullhorn aims to enhance productivity and efficiency for recruiting agencies by providing a centralized platform to manage the entire recruitment lifecycle

Pros:

  • Comprehensive feature set covering applicant tracking, candidate sourcing, client management, and more.
  • User-friendly interface and customizable workflows for tailored recruitment processes.
  • Integration with various job boards, social media platforms, and other recruiting and HR software.
  • Robust reporting and analytics capabilities to track recruitment performance and metrics.
  • Enhances candidate and client engagement through streamlined communication and collaboration tools.

Cons:

  • Pricing may be relatively high compared to some competitors, potentially limiting accessibility for smaller recruiting firms.
  • Customization options may require expertise to fully leverage, leading to a learning curve for some users.
  • Occasional technical issues or bugs reported by users, though customer support is generally responsive in addressing these issues.
  • Some users may find certain features or workflows less intuitive compared to alternative ATS solutions

This software is mainly used by recruitment agencies for sales and business development, not so much by in-house recruiters.

Price: Pricing is on demand

Zoho Recruit

Description:

Zoho Recruit's is positioned on both the ATS and the CRM features.

If you already have an ATS and you are not willing to change, Zoho Recruit is probably not the best option. However, if you are looking for a solution that will cover both outbound and inbound recruiting, it can be an interesting solution.

Pros

  • Covers both ATS and CRM features
  • Pricing cheap and a free version to try the tool

Cons

  • No features on outbound sourcing
  • Limited automation capability
  • No multi channel sequences possible

Price: Around 30€ per user per month

Smart Recruiters / SmartCRM

Description:

SmartCRM is an extension to Smart Recruiters software. It is an all in one tool covering both ATS and CRM features. This tool provide you the following features:

  • Candidates' pipeline management
  • Outreach campaigns through emailing
  • Marketing and cross channels tools (landing page, career page...)

Pros

  • Covers both ATS and CRM features

Cons

  • No features on outbound sourcing
  • Limited automation capability
  • No multi channel sequences possible, only emails (no Linkedin, no messages, ...)

Pricing: To be determined depending on the company and the number of users

Recruitly

Description:

Recruitly is a software also designed for recruitment agencies. It is considers as both a recruitment CRM and ATS.

The main features of recruitly are:

  • Applicant Tracking
  • Job Distribution
  • Marketing & Website

There are few CRM features. The main thing is that you can import profiles to Recruitly and define bulk actions, such as email sending or sms sending.

Recruitly is only used by recruitment agencies.

Pros

  • Covers both ATS and CRM features
  • Pricing affordable

Cons

  • Limited automation capability
  • No multi channel sequences possible
  • Not suitable for in-house recruiters needs

Price: The pricing is between $35 and $100 per month per user.

GEM

Description:

GEM (Generally Effective Management) is a comprehensive recruiting software solution designed to streamline the candidate sourcing and communication process for recruiters. With a user-friendly interface and robust features, GEM aims to enhance recruitment campaign efficiency by updating Applicant Tracking System (ATS) data, providing analytics, managing outreach across various channels, and facilitating initial contact through email. While GEM integrates seamlessly with popular platforms like LinkedIn, Gmail, and Outlook, it does have limitations such as the lack of automation for LinkedIn messages and in-mails, absence of a centralized inbox, difficulty in bulk candidate import, and potentially prohibitive pricing for smaller companies or individual recruiters.

Pros:

  • Streamlines candidate sourcing and communication
  • Updates ATS data and provides analytics
  • Facilitates outreach across multiple channels
  • User-friendly interface for recruiters
  • Integrates well with LinkedIn, Gmail, and Outlook

Cons:

  • Does not automate LinkedIn messages and in-mails
  • Lack of centralized inbox makes communication management challenging
  • Difficulty in bulk candidate import
  • Potentially prohibitive pricing for smaller companies or individual recruiters

👉 Looking for GEM alternative, find out what are the 5 of the top GEM alternatives

RecruitCRM

Description:

Recruit CRM s a CRM software designed for staffing agencies.

Pros

  • Covers both ATS and CRM features
  • Includes invoicing management processes with clients

Cons

  • Limited automation capability
  • No multi channel sequences possible
  • Not suitable for in-house recruiters needs

Price: The pricing is between 95 and 150 € per user per month

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Leonar CRM helps recruiters hire the best candidates by building an efficient talent acquisition system

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