Do you think, like me, that your data is one of your most precious assets?  Without a system to manage our clients, we potentially fall foul of not managing them at all, and thus our brand suffers, as well as our turnover and profit.

Do any of you remember life before candidate CV parsing and multi job board posting?  Many recruitment software systems have both as standard, and in some instances, bolt-on job board posting is free!  So we are assuming that these two massively time-saving benefits are a given to any software you are migrating or upgrading to.

Things have really moved forward for recruitment software in recent years.  Many recruitment systems are now browser-based, have smart phone apps - both of which enable on the fly client management, which really cuts down delivery times and speeds up the sales process.  Some have lots of new features to help consultants find and research candidates and clients online by integrating with the web.

But what is critical to business growth?  Are we really in the market for fancy features, or is it a matter of simply making the consultant's jobs easier, and the management's decisions more based upon easily retrievable facts?

Our top 5 tips for what your system MUST do:

• Management reports - is the activity of your staff and business easy to find and interpret, by your staff as well as management?  We believe in  minimum input, maximum information, thus quick educated decisions are made.
• Social media and web integration - can your system tweet, and search web-based systems like LinkedIn etc... in order to mine candidates and research clients?
• Daily planners and tasks - account management is hard without systems to help keep on top of clients and candidates.
• Correspondence - does your system allow you to easily send, company branded correspondence which is easily trackable?
• THE most important element is: does it work for your staff and you and your clients?  Can you login and speedily get out of it what you need?

Our staff and our data are two of our most precious assets so we should give top priority to get them working together.

We have seen many firms suffer from poorly administered systems, which in turn can attract the more, shall we say "creative" staff who want to do it their way", which can result in data being kept in silos not accessible by the company management. 

We recently reviewed this article and blogged about 5 More Things a Recruitment System MUST do... read it here

We have also blogged about ATSs (Applicant Tracking Systems).  Please read about ATS here.

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If you want to get more out of the systems that run your business, or are thinking of upgrading/migrating please get in touch.  We can advise and help you through this potentially disruptive process, whilst you get on with running and growing your business.  We all want increased sales / client spend and an intelligent and speedy recruitmentthis process year, so let's make sure your systems can enable that to happen.