As an agency recruiter, the main way in which you grow your business is through the making of more placements. When you make more placements more quickly, your billings increase, and more than likely, your profits increase, as well. And the top recruitment agency software packages in the profession are powerful and flexible enough to be used by both small agencies and mid-sized firms.
Small business recruitment software
The very first version of Top Echelon’s recruitment software was specifically for small recruiting agencies, specifically for solo practitioners who owned an agency and also worked a desk. While Top Echelon has grown over the years, it’s still uniquely suited for smaller agencies, focusing on ease of use and versatility.
For agencies of this size, speed is key. As the saying goes, “Time kills all deals.” Top Echelon’s simple interface and emphasis on fewer clicks and keystrokes allows agency owners and recruiters to complete important tasks more quickly for the purpose of sourcing, screening, and presenting qualified passive candidates to the hiring manager. Once again, the best way to grow a recruiting business is by making more placements and making them more quickly.
Mid-sized business recruitment software
During the past several years, Top Echelon Software has continued to grow and not caters to both small recruiting agencies and also mid-sized and larger recruiter firms. Top Echelon has accomplished this by bolstering its feature set in regards to these firms, providing tools that help agency owners successfully manage and maintain not just one or two recruiters, but a whole team of recruiting and staffing professionals.
One of the major areas in which Top Echelon has excelled is customization. The recruitment CRM software gives users the ability to create unlimited custom fields for People, Company, and Job Order records. Most of these custom field types are directly searchable, with the exception of text block fields. Top Echelon users can create custom fields in the following formats: text, date, drop-down, multi-select, numeric, or text block.
However, these are just two of the features that make Top Echelon one of the best applicant tracking systems and recruiting CRM tool on the market.
What are applicant tracking systems (ATS) and how do they work?
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a software package that pretty much does what its name suggests: it allows recruiters to track applicants all the way through the placement process. That, though, is a simplified definition. That’s because a refined ATS is more complex and offers more in the way of automated candidate management tools, helping users save both time and effort. However, just because a system is complex does not mean it is difficult. Some of the most powerful ATS systems in the world are simple and easy to operate.
In fact, the best applicant tracking systems make it easy to move candidates through the three main stages of the process:
Adding candidates (sourcing)
An ATS should offer multiple ways for users to source and add candidates to the system. This can include automatic parsing, email parsing, and bulk data importing. Versatility and flexibility equates to ease of use. The key is to get as many job resumes into the software as quickly as you can.
Searching candidates (finding)
The faster that you can find the right candidates in your database, the better. That’s why the best ATS packages allow you to search with multiple criteria for more targeted results.
Managing candidates (placing)
This is where the real value of an applicant tracking system resides, in its ability to allow recruiters to accurately track and evaluate candidates at every stage of the process. With the most important stage, of course, the one in which the candidate is hired and a placement is made.
The name of the game is speed and accuracy. An ATS must help recruiters identify the right passive candidates and move them as quickly as possible through the placement and hiring process.
Best recruitment software for recruiters and your business
That being said, the best recruitment software for recruiters is a package that excels at being both an ATS and a CRM. Such a software provides a comprehensive solution for recruiters seeking to take full advantage of their interactions with candidates and the relationships that they build with them.
The best recruitment CRM tool to help streamline your hiring process not only offers cutting edge technological tools for sourcing and adding and tracking the right candidates, but it also provides customizations, automations, and workflows to allow you to continue building and maintaining relationships with both candidates and hiring managers on your recruiting desk and within your agency. It truly is the “best of both worlds.”
In other words, the best recruiting CRM tool for your business is one that works “for” your business and not “against” it. That means it offers a wide-range of features and functionality, it’s highly customizable and intuitive for the average user, and operates as a perfect complement to the way in which you run your recruiting desk and your recruiting agency.
4 features you need in recruitment software
It doesn’t matter if you’re a small recruiting agency, a mid-sized agency, or a large recruiting firm with multiple team members. There are certain features that you actually want and need in your recruiting software and online recruitment CRM tool. Four of those features are as follows:
Email Marketing
In this day and age, electronic communication and staying in front of candidates and clients is extremely important. Logging emails in and out of Top Echelon and turning repetitive ones into templates will save important time. Below is more functionality associated with Top Echelon’s email marketing features:
- Mass email to your contacts from search results
- Logging of every email sent
- Ability to utilize email alias’
- Dedicated marketing mail servers
Activity Planner
With Top Echelon’s Activity Planner, you can keep tabs on promising talent. That’s because you can track calls, emails, and events as you guide candidates through the stages of the recruiting process. In addition, the Activity Planner allows you to complete activities in an individual or mass format as you work through your to-do list.
Job Posting
In this candidates’ market, effective recruiting is all about sourcing the best candidates. That includes getting your jobs in front of said candidates. You can do just that with Top Echelon’s job posting feature, which allows you to seamlessly post to multiple job board sites like Indeed, Facebook Jobs, ZipRecruiter and more.
Reporting
Top Echelon offers rich reporting capabilities for recruiters. This includes candidate sourcing reports, activity reports, pipeline reports, and hiring and placement reports. Once you discover where your best candiates are coming from, you can better target those sources and maximize your results.
Top Echelon’s recruiting CRM is designed to help you maximize your communication with applicants and job candidates, so that you can track and manage them easily, both online and during the recruiting process. The result: the streamlining of your day-to-day workflow and the saving of precious time that you can put to good use operating other important parts of your recruiting desk.
How easy is the Top Echelon candidate management tool to use?
One of the best parts of the Top Echelon CRM for recruitment agencies is that it’s extremely easy to use. The heart of Top Echelon’s effectiveness is its intuitive nature and ability to get recruiters up to speed quickly. However, Top Echelon’s Training and Support Team leaves nothing to chance, helping new users of the software at every step and stage of the onboarding process. (It should be noted that training and support are free for Top Echelon users during the life the service.)
But it’s not just about making you happy. It’s also about making your clients happy, as well. The easier that Top Echelon is to use, the easier it will be to present the type of candidates that your clients want to hire. But even beyond that, it’s not just about making you and your clients happy, either. It’s about making the top candidates in the marketplace happy by providing a superior candidate experience.
Ease of use is at the heart of Top Echelon’s value. The recruitment software makes life easier for recruiters, clients, and candidates. That’s the very definition of a win-win-win situation!
How will the Top Echelon candidate management tool help my team manage candidates online and on the go?
Top Echelon tackles the challenges of mobile recruiting with its mobile-friendly interface for users. This means that the software conforms to whatever device you’re using. It could be a personal computer, a smartphone, or a tablet. So you can easily manage your applicants online with the Top Echelon candidate management tool—no matter where you are!
Which recruitment software or ATS system is right for you?
One of the best ways to find out which ATS system is right for you is to research the available systems. This includes signing up for a demo of the software and even a free trial, if one is offered. (Some talent management systems do not offer a free trial of their software packages.)
Needless to say, the best recruiting CRM offer a free trial of its software, a demo, or both. Top Echelon offers both free trial and demo. You can sign up for a FREE 15-day trial of the software by clicking here. Or you can sign up for a live demo of the Top Echelon ATS recruitment system by clicking here.