In the most dynamic selling environment, you are only as good as your contact management system, and your product.

 

Being able to access your customer's information, preferences, personal and professional interests and predispositions can be the difference between a dial tone and a meaningful opportunity.

 

Many of us are using our Applicant Tracking Systems as a sort of makeshift contact management system, typical of an aggressive sales organization. This makes sense, because in a corporate recruiting environment our recruiters are just that - aggressive sales people. Many of these ATS were designed to capture, report and track candidates already engaged in the requisition process, but were they truly designed or intended to be a contact management system?

 

More importantly, does using your ATS as a contact management system truly work for those passive candidates not yet on your side of the fence?

 

As the heat for top candidates continues to become increasingly creative and challenging - recruiters are being urged more than ever to go out and find those ideal candidates by hunting them down by any means necessary. The days of waiting for those candidates to come rolling in (if this ever really did happen) is long gone. We are searching, scouring, spidering and mining all over the place, unearthing hundreds of people in various stages of active and passive behaviors.

 

 

 

What happens to those names? In reality, there is a temptation by way of sheer volume to let them sit there, hanging idly in abandoned folders somewhere on your hard drive or in you applicant tracking system.

 

 

The relationship management wizards within our organizations have their own contact management system they use. And I bet you it's more process intensive, manual and tedious then they'd like for it to be. 

 

We assign methodologies designed to make relationship management easier by whittling your contacts down to a workable, manageable number of people - but on a broad level, what system do we have that allows us to bring individual recruiter relationship management to our entire recruiting organization for contact sharing and/or continued leads development? 

 

Is anyone out there using an off the shelf or customized contact management software in conjunction with their ATS? For large scale hiring recruiting organizations - is there value?

 

I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Who is using them. What they are using, or simply - your impression of the pro's and con's.