This document is the property of TalentCircles 2015©. All rights reserved

1  

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) A new framework and a new mindset that older technologies can't address

This white paper summarizes a podcast conversation between Jessica Miller-Merrell, CEO and founder of Workology, the Art and Science of work as well as Blogging4Jobs and Marylene Delbourg-Delphis, CEO and co-founder of TalentCircles that took place in December 2014.

Jessica A 2014 Aberdeen report on talent acquisition found that 60% of best in class recruiting teams are taking a proactive approach to their talent acquisition and hiring efforts vs. 44% surveyed in 2013. Aberdeen’s research is showing a regression of talent acquisition practices. I, personally am beginning to feel a shift in certain industries and companies who are experiencing extreme competition for best in class candidates

One such proactive recruiting strategy I’m seeing is companies adding a CRM or candidate relationship management technology. When we speak of CRM, what are we talking about? How similar or dissimilar are Candidate Relationship Management and Customer Relationship Management?

Marylene Candidate Relationship Management and Customer Relationship Management have the same purpose: a focused communication with people in order to make sure that they maintain their interest in you.

A mediocre candidate experience can discourage job seekers from buying your products and services...

The key difference is that for an HR CRM, you start with far fewer goods to sell. The number of jobs that can be offered is rarely, if ever, comparable to the number of products you sell. So when you have one job to fill, you must touch the hearts and minds of 50 to 100 people, but at the same time you must make sure that the people who did not get the job will not feel disenfranchised, and therefore you must offer an exceptional candidate experience. A 2010 study by Alexander Mann Solutions, found that "more than half (52%) of [candidates] across the world said a negative interview experience would likely impact their buying of products or services from that organization in the future."

So, one of the critical functions of an HR CRM is to ensure that candidates become and remain fans of your company whether or not you have a job for them. In HR CRMs, you have to take the notion of relationship very seriously, even more seriously than for sales and marketing CRMs because your HR CRM is also a sales CRM even though the reverse is not necessarily true.

Jessica Did these two types of CRM appear at the same time?

Marylene No, not really. Relationship building was part of HR way before sales and marketing. Then it almost disappeared from HR and came back after it appeared in sales and marketing...

Digital rolodexes and direct marketing databases appeared in the 1980's. In 1986, ACT! introduced contact management software. The company's name stood for "Activity Control Technology," and later spoke a "CRM." Tom Siebel is usually credited for creating this acronym for Customer Relationship Management around 1996.

Relationship-based recruiting used to be the way to recruit until it disappeared...

HR had a parallel history. Recruiters were always into relationship management and rolodexes. Until the advent of transactional databases, mostly in the early 1990's, recruiting was relationship-based, far more than what sales and marketing ever were. Recruiting was not about resumes. A lot of people learned on the job or were even self-taught.

This document is the property of TalentCircles 2015©. All rights reserved

2  

Relationship-based recruiting used to be what recruiting was about until it disappeared... and until our industry rediscovered it through marketing CRM. Alice Snell may be one of the first professionals to speak of "CRM" in early 2002 when she was suggesting to organizations that they build "A careers website that addresses a segmented candidate stream [that] will capture valuable candidates more efficiently, and bring them into a fully functioning candidate relationship management database, where true personalization and targeting of recruiting communication can begin."

In 2005, Michael Homula offered the expression "Talent Relationship Management" (TRM). However, the notion of CRM was getting established as is clear from various articles by Kevin Wheeler who listed "6 Ways To Make Your CRM Efforts Better" and included Building channels, Doing local promotions, Buying an inexpensive contact manager, Using your own employees, Using your alumni, Keeping track of old candidates.

Jessica If I understand well, today, we are basically reclaiming our own history... Yet, don't you think that our idea of relationship has also evolved in the meantime and that social media have created new expectations?

Marylene Yes, most recruiters realize again that building relationships is at the very heart of recruiting. However, it's hard for them to execute on this because "relationship" in old-style CRMs do not manage "relationships" as we understand them in real life and social media. Most HR CRMs are actually behind sales and marketing CRMs, which now allow for community building and live chat.

Traditional CRMs only manage one-sided relationships. Their primary purpose was to get contact information for candidates and notify them when you have new jobs. Is that enough in the 21st century? Obviously not:

Gen X hiring managers have consistently underestimated how much Millennials prize being part of a good team and working on exciting projects...

• We live in a social era. People want to connect. If you do not connect back, people will unfollow you. Social media and real-life behaviors and expectations are very similar.

• The current job market is more favorable to jobseekers and the demographic change is even more important. Millennials account for the majority of the workforce. As recent research sponsored by Elance-oDesk and Millennial Branding shows, over the last few years gen X hiring managers have consistently underestimated how much they prize being part of a good team and working on exciting projects.

Employers are not in the driver's seat and the technologies that recruiters have used for the last 20 years are out of sync with our times. This means:

• One-sided relationships are over. You must truly engage. In a one-way relationship,

you ask candidates to interact with you and you assume that they will do it. They won't. Or the ones who will are primarily the ones who are desperate for a job and they represent a fraction, barely 20%, of the people you want to be connected with.

• Conversation is a must-have. CRMs Web 3.0 are venues fostering conversations with

both active and passive candidates. You have to make sure that candidates want to hear from you, that they opt into your network.

This document is the property of TalentCircles 2015©. All rights reserved

3  

Jessica How does a candidate relationship management platform facilitate in proactive recruitment strategy?

Marylene Let's first assess the key difference between reactive and proactive recruiting.

• Reactive recruiting is this: you have a job to fill and you post it hoping to get candidates. In other words you show interest in candidates only when you need them. The end result is that in many cases, you "hope-n-pray" as you like to say...

• Proactive recruiting entails that you build talent pools or talent communities before you have job openings or job positions to fill. So being proactive means: o Attracting candidates with the right message where they are: in live environments

or on social networks. o Tracking how your attraction strategy is faring and adapting your message to

attract the population you want to attract. o Engaging your base by making candidates feel valuable, a part of your brand and

driving continuous engagement.

Engaging is not about talking at people. It's about talking to people...

You are not simply addressing an "audience." You address individuals who voluntarily started a connection with you. So it's not enough to tell them what your company is about in general. It's critical to show to them what it is to work in your company. You must offer them interesting and useful information. For example, you can offer targeted documents to download, invite them to webinars or showcase videos of existing employees who recount their day in the life of your company.

Being candidate-centric is all about creating content to which candidates can relate to as individuals. Engaging is not about throwing global marketing slogans and talking at people. It's about talking to people and offering a message that resonates with them.

Jessica What you are saying is that a modern CRM must be an engagement platform...

Marylene Exactly. If you want candidates to be interested in you, you must be interesting to them and proactively nurture their interest in you. So your CRM must be:

• A destination that allows you to transform a follower or a connection into a contact and a link into a relationship — just as in real life.

• A network that allows you to scale your engagement capabilities. We already know, based on our experience with social networks, that engagement can only happen if parties share a common space where they can interact.

Employment branding must be pursued inside your network, be inspiring and immersive at all times ...

Employment branding must be pursued inside your network, be inspiring and immersive at all times — and create a bridge between the public persona of your brand and your internal corporate identity. That's what the social candidate experience is about and is powered by what I like to call the 9 C's of social recruiting. Ultimately, look at your engagement network as a live virtual meeting room with the ongoing networking capabilities that showcases your company ... and showcases the candidates too!

When we hire people, we hire them for their skills but also for their attitude. How can we evaluate attitudes if we do not seriously interact with people? In his book Hire for Attitude, Mark Murphy tracked 20,000 new hires: 46% of them failed within 18 months. But even more surprising than the failure rate, was that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill. A modern CRM is finally the best way to reduce failed hires!

This document is the property of TalentCircles 2015©. All rights reserved

4  

Jessica In the end, fresh data is critically important in the new CRM model of proactive recruiting and hiring.

Marylene Absolutely. Frankly, how appealing is stale data in 2015? When, as a recruiter, you want to

relate to people you want to know the latest about them. It's so easy that not getting fresh data about them simply undermines your credibility. As a result, giving the ability to your candidates to update their profiles is just common sense. If they do not frequent your network as often as you might like, something you can track easily, it's also very easy to ask them to do that through a branded email. In fact, by measuring the activity within your talent network, you can also check how your outreach strategy is actually working and adjust it as needed.

Jessica Companies who are government contractors and are required to complete an affirmative action plan or AAP are somewhat nervous at the idea of trying something new. Can a new generation of CRM help them? By the same token, can it also help enhance diversity recruiting efforts for companies who do not have AAP requirements but feel that their diversity recruiting efforts are at a standstill despite tons of good intentions?

Marylene A modern CRM makes both much easier. As mentioned in the US Department of Labor, "For federal contractors and subcontractors, affirmative action must be taken by covered employers to recruit and advance qualified minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and covered veterans. Affirmative actions include training programs, outreach efforts, and other positive steps." A lot of employers are scared by Affirmative Action Plans simply because they look at it as a legal framework instead of considering its intent: prevent discrimination, stereotypical thinking and biases.

A network-based CRM makes it easy to deliver on AAP and to deliver on a diversity recruiting strategy...

If you only use standard databases, chances are that you will be unable to identify qualified minorities, women, persons with disabilities, or veterans... Because traditional systems process resumes and do not identify people. So your ATS or traditional CRM almost inevitably end up discriminating unwillingly against a lot of people: For example, Veterans' resumes do not read like standard resumes... You also end up discriminating against visually impaired people only because your website is not absolutely 100% ADA compliant. You end up discriminating against anybody that doesn't fit the mould.

A network-based CRM allows you to have a deeper and wider knowledge of the people who are interested in you. You cannot ask people personal details, but you can give them the possibility to self-declare if they want to by creating circles to which they can subscribe. The only way to know people is to enable them to say who they are if they wish to do so!

In the end a modern CRM does not simply facilitate the implementation of an AAP. It makes it easy to pursue a real diversity strategy, a goal that most companies actually have but consistently fail to implement because they do not have the right tools to do this. This is a topic that I discussed in one of our posts (The art and science of diversity recruiting) on the TalentCircles blog. The current talent acquisition process is a transactional playing field designed to process resumes and not to hire people. And diversity hiring is all about people! Building up a consistent diversity initiative requires the ability to create live talent pools that enables you to:

• Decouple candidate attraction and engagement from specific jobs. • Design diversity circles that provide candidates with the ability to declare themselves

as members of a given group (or multiple groups). • Dialogue with your talent community.

This document is the property of TalentCircles 2015©. All rights reserved

5  

Jessica Can you explain to us what the OFCCP considers as an Internet applicant?

Marylene The OFCCP rules are pretty simple and easy to read. An “Internet Applicant” is an individual

who satisfies all four of the following criteria: • The individual submitted an expression of interest in employment through the

Internet or related electronic data technologies; • The contractor considered the individual for employment in a particular position; • The individual's expression of interest indicated that the individual possesses the basic

qualifications for the position; and • The individual, at no point in the contractor's selection process prior to receiving an

offer of employment from the contractor, removed himself or herself from further consideration or otherwise indicated that he/she was no longer interested in the position.

Jessica When are members within your CRM or talent network considered a candidate according to the OFCCP?

Marylene They are applicants if they express interest for a specific job posted in the network. Prior to

this, they are members of the network. They can check the jobs, see how their profile fares against a job requirement, but if they do not apply, they should not be considered as applicants. In fact, when candidates opt into your private talent network, you are no more no less bound than when you are a recruiter on LinkedIn posting jobs and receive applications via LinkedIn. OFCCP is an acronym for Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and it doesn't concern everybody. But again, it's important to remember that laws are intended to protect from abusive practices.

Continue to accept paper resumes and allow for mobile if you do not want to discriminate ...

So if anything you always want to make sure that you give a fair chance to everybody and this is more a matter of corporate ethics. For example, many companies have stopped accepting paper resumes. This could be construed as being discriminatory. It's so simple to scan and parse paper resumes and transform them into digital profiles that the vendors who do not allow you to do this easily are preventing you from being fair.

In the same fashion, some systems are only accessible via desktop computers. This too could be construed as being discriminatory. More people have smart phones today. In 2014, platform independence and full responsive design should just be mainstream because as a company, you want to allow candidates to reach out to you by any means. Companies must keep records for one or two years depending on their size. This rule can also protect you a lot and in a way, the more data you have, the more likely you are protected if you happen to be in the situation to prove that you were acting in good faith. How could a candidate complain that you eventually discriminated against him or her if that candidate never showed any form of interest in your company compared to dozens of others? Serious data analytics will be a huge protection for employers down the road.

This document is the property of TalentCircles 2015©. All rights reserved

6  

Great technology doesn't only make compliance easy: it makes it useful!

In the end, employers have a lot of freedom. What is key is consistency in your business practices and your ability to relate to candidates with an open mind. In certain countries and more specifically in Europe, it's even critical to be able to comply with data privacy requirements requested by candidates — and a modern CRM must accommodate for this too. Great technology can make compliance easy, and spare companies from many nightmares.

By leveraging the power of a talent network as your Candidate Relationship Management platform, you will ensure a smooth candidate experience, continuous candidate engagement, and eliminate the shortcomings associated with a fragmented process. Offering an exemplary candidate experience is not luxury or an act of kindness. It’s a business mandate for any organization that wants to attract the best skills. Additional resources: TalentCircles Blog: How a CRM Can Transform Your Recruitment Strategy: http://blog.talentcircles.com/2014/11/how-crm-can-transform-your-recruitment.html The Nine C's of social recruiting: http://blog.talentcircles.com/2013/09/you-do-social-sourcing-now-start-your.html 4 Ways to Keep Candidate Data Fresh: http://blog.talentcircles.com/2013/03/4-ways-to-keep-candidate-data-fresh.html How to Capture the Power of Passive Recruiting: http://blog.talentcircles.com/2014/07/how-to-capture-power-of-passive.html?utm_content=buffere9ec0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=bufferhttp:// The Art and Science of Diversity Recruiting: http://blog.talentcircles.com/2014/11/the-art-and-science-of-diversity.html White Papers http://www.talentcircles.com/resources.php Others To access the Aberdeen report mentioned page 1: http://v1.aberdeen.com/launch/report/benchmark/9301-RR-talent-acquisition-2014.asp