6 steps that you can take to clean up your recruitment CRM data and ensure that it is accurate, up-to-date, and useful

What does better CRM data mean and how do you get it?

January 9, 2023

By Raymond Pennie

As a recruitment director/owner you will have a new year’s resolution to get better data or have introduce good data hygiene. I was recently asked on a call "What does it really mean and how do you do it?"

So here is the RP version, we all know that a CRM is a database designed to help you organize and track your interactions with candidates, clients, and other stakeholders, as well as manage your workflow.

However, as with any database, your recruitment CRM is only as useful as the data that it contains. If your data is rubbish or incomplete, it can be difficult to make informed decisions, which can ultimately lead to poor outcomes for you, your hiring managers and your candidates.

The 6 steps that you can take to clean up your recruitment CRM data and ensure that it is accurate, up-to-date, and useful are below...

1. Start by identifying the data that you need to clean up. Gather a list of the data problems that your company and staff face - this might include outdated or incorrect contact information, duplicated records, or old out of date CVs.

2. Next, make a plan for how you will address these issues. This might involve deleting or archiving rubbish records, merging duplicates, and filling in missing information.

3. To tidy up unnecessary records, you will need to go through your CRM and identify any candidates or clients who are no longer relevant to your business. You can then delete or archive these records from your CRM to ensure that you are only tracking current and active candidates and clients. Old records that have had no activity for years should also be archived.

4. To merge duplicated records, you will need to identify any candidates, contacts or clients who have multiple records in your CRM. You can then merge these records into a single, comprehensive profile to avoid confusion and ensure that you are tracking all of the relevant information in one place. Start with candidates, then do companies, start easy and then move to ones that you had jobs or placements with. Finally, dedupe your contacts.

5. To fill in missing information, you will need to go through your CRM and identify any profiles that are incomplete. There will be data that you update using logic, like update statuses or update phone numbers with country codes. You can then reach out to the relevant candidates or clients to request the missing information using automations.

6. Once you have cleaned up your data, it's important to maintain it on an ongoing basis. This might involve regularly reviewing and updating your records, as well as establishing processes to ensure that new data is entered accurately and consistently.

By following these steps, you can help to ensure that your recruitment database is clean, accurate, and useful. This will allow you to make more informed decisions, streamline your workflow, and ultimately improve your recruitment outcomes.

What next?
So now you know what you need to do, you’re maybe wondering how you can get started? Some companies in the old days had "databuilders", others outsource to other countries or try to tackle data updates and management manually, but I’d strongly recommend against this – take it on yourselves, care about your data make it owned by everyone.

Another option is partnering with a Bullhorn data expert – like Kyloe.