In a candidate-driven economy and a rather unpredictable housing market, real estate recruiters need all the help they can get in finding the best candidates. More than this, however, you also need to focus on building relationships with both active job seekers and passive candidates. Doing this can establish a positive reputation, thus increasing your brokerage’s appeal to top real estate agents.
Fortunately, building working relationships with candidates is much easier thanks to candidate relationship management (CRM) software like Brokerkit. This digital tool facilitates the entire recruitment process, from compiling a list of prospects to developing retention programs.
Often, a CRM is composed of a variety of features—including ATS or applicant tracking system, email campaign automation, and social media lookup—to form a seamless ecosystem. Simply put, CRM software can be a real estate recruiter’s companion throughout every candidate’s journey.
Below, we list a few more benefits of a real estate CRM software that can transform the way you recruit agents:
A CRM Lets You Measure Your Recruitment Performance
The key to improving anything is to know that there is something to improve in the first place—and you won’t know this if you aren’t able to measure performance. With a CRM, this isn’t so much of a problem because you’ll have a complete view of your hiring strategies.
More than these, you’ll also have access to a variety of data that will help you determine whether or not you’re reaching your KPIs. These include your total time to hire, time to fill, cost per hire, and more.
Using all of this information, you can then determine which of your campaigns are performing well and which aren’t. For team managers, a CRM can also help you gauge an individual recruiter’s effectiveness. All of these can help you decide where to allocate your resources, helping you find and hire the best real estate professionals in half the time.
A CRM Helps You Better Target Your Audience
As a recruiter, it can be tempting to cast as wide a net as possible in order to haul in more potential candidates. There’s nothing wrong with this, per se, but you might also end up wasting a lot of time and money sifting through tens or even hundreds of applications for one job opening. This is quite inefficient and frankly something that you don’t want to happen.
Luckily, this situation is easily avoided with a CRM. This software helps you segment both your active leads and passive candidate pool, allowing you to filter applications more thoroughly. As a result, you’ll have fewer but higher-quality applicants who can potentially fill a role. Better targeting also makes it easier for you to engage candidates with timely and personalized content.
A CRM Helps You Build a Talent Pool
No matter how many qualified candidates submit their applications, you can only accept one person per job. (It’s only in very, very special circumstances that you can hire two people for a post, and you likely have to create a new role for the other.) However, this doesn’t mean that you should dismiss the other candidate. Keep in touch with them instead, so that you can invite them for future opportunities.
This—building a network with passive candidates and previous applicants—is so much easier with a CRM. Not only can you organize all the contact information of these individuals, but you can also store their credentials. This way, you can refer to the information and verify if the person is indeed suited for the open role. The hiring process will also be faster and smoother, since the candidate has essentially “pre-cleared” some of the steps.
A CRM Builds Meaningful Candidate Engagements
A real estate CRM is crucial for keeping candidates engaged throughout the recruitment process. For one, it makes it easier for you to send updates regarding the next step in their application. You can also reduce the time it takes between receiving an application and responding to it. This is good not only for speeding up your time to hire, and thus boosting productivity, but also for your reputation.
Using a CRM can also help you get in touch with a candidate in the way they prefer, be it email, text message, or social media. This helps you build stronger, more meaningful connections with candidates since you’re communicating with them on platforms where they’re most comfortable.
A CRM Can Help You Save Time and Money
As previously mentioned, a CRM is an ecosystem composed of multiple features. This means you’ll have a centralized repository of all relevant recruitment data, making it easier for you to secure the information and prevent privacy issues. It’s also easier to consolidate numbers and insights, which then makes it easier for you to create accurate reports. Finally, it’s also easier to manage a CRM rather than multiple systems or tools.
All in all, a real estate CRM optimizes your tasks and processes for maximum efficiency, saving you a lot of time, effort, and money.
If your brokerage or recruiting agency isn’t using a real estate CRM yet, perhaps it’s time to do so. The sooner you do, the sooner you can enjoy all of these benefits and more.
