A CRM for recruiting agencies that call candidates and clients.

What does phone work at a recruiting agency look like?

It splits into candidate calls and client calls, and most agency recruiters make both. A recruiter who handles both sides is often called a 360 or full-desk recruiter. Larger agencies split the work between recruiters, who manage candidates, and account managers or business developers, who win and manage clients.

The candidate side is sourcing calls, screening calls, interview prep and debriefs, offer and resignation conversations, and check-ins after the start date. The client side is business development calls to hiring managers, taking job orders, presenting candidates and chasing interview feedback.

Texting is part of both. Plenty of candidates can't take a call at their desk but can answer a text, so a quick text to set a time often gets further than calling cold.

Is TopReach an ATS?

No. TopReach is a CRM with a built-in dialer and two-way texting, not an applicant tracking system. It doesn't post jobs, host a careers page, parse resumes or store documents, and it has no built-in integration with ATSs, job boards or LinkedIn.

That suits agencies whose recruiting is mostly outbound: you find people, call them and move them toward a placement. A small agency running its desk from a spreadsheet and a phone can replace both with one system. If you depend on inbound applications from job ads, keep your ATS for those and use TopReach for the calling, texting and follow-up.

Contacts come in from a spreadsheet import. Export candidates or clients to a CSV from wherever they live now and import it; TopReach finds the phone number in whichever column the file uses.

How do you track candidates and placements without an ATS?

Keep every candidate as a contact, describe them with custom fields and tags, and put only live submittals on the pipeline. If every sourced name goes on the pipeline, the board fills with people you've never spoken to and stops showing where the money is.

Use custom fields for details you sort and match on: current title, target role, location and commute or remote preference, desired salary, notice period or availability date, the role they're submitted to, a link to their resume and the recruiter who owns them. Use tags for groups and status that change often: skill sets and industries, Available now, Interviewing elsewhere, and Off-limits for people you've placed, so nobody recruits them out of a client. Keep the set short enough that recruiters fill it in on every call.

Dynamic lists then fill themselves from rules on those fields and tags. A list of every candidate tagged Accounting and Available now is a ready-made call list the day a new accounting job order comes in.

In TopReach, each deal on the pipeline can be one candidate for one role, with the expected fee as its value. The pipeline shows the value at each stage, so you can see fees at Offer and fees earned at Placed. A typical set of stages:

• Submitted: the candidate agreed to be put forward and the profile has gone to the client.
• Interviewing: the client has asked to meet them.
• Offer: an offer is out or being negotiated.
• Placed: the offer is accepted and a start date is set.
• Started: the candidate has started and the guarantee period is running.
• Fell through: kept with the reason, such as a declined offer, a counteroffer or a failed reference.

How should agencies run business development calls?

Run business development as its own calling block with its own list, apart from candidate calls. The people, the asks and the follow-up are different, and BD calls mixed into a candidate list tend to get skipped.

Add target companies and their hiring managers, and tag them by BD stage, such as BD target, Spoke, Meeting booked, Terms sent and Client. Tags used this way work as simple business development stages, and a dynamic list of everyone tagged BD target becomes the week's call list. Once terms are signed, a custom field can hold your fee and guarantee terms.

The strongest BD call is usually about a person, not your agency. Calling a hiring manager about one strong candidate, with that candidate's permission, gives them a reason to talk. Recruiters call this a most placeable candidate, or MPC, call. Won clients send job orders, and job orders feed the candidate side.

How often should recruiters follow up?

Follow up on a set rhythm for each kind of contact, and keep submitted candidates updated even when there's little news. Candidates who hear nothing after a submittal start taking other interviews.

• New candidate outreach: call, and if there's no answer, leave a voicemail and send a text the same day. Try again two or three days later and once more the next week, then tag them and move on.
• Submitted candidates: update them every few days until the client decides, and call within a day of any feedback.
• Interviews: call before to prepare them and right after to debrief, then call the client for feedback while it's fresh.
• BD prospects: four to six touches over two or three weeks, mixing calls, voicemail and email, then a check-in every month or two.
• Placements: call the candidate and the client on the start date, after the first week and before the guarantee ends. Those calls catch problems early and often surface the next job order.

Should recruiters use a power dialer or a parallel dialer?

Use power mode for most recruiting calls. It calls one number after another, so whoever answers reaches a recruiter, with their record and last note on screen. When a call goes unanswered, TopReach can drop a voicemail, then send a text or an email on the days you choose, and it tracks every touch so nobody gets the same message twice.

Parallel mode calls several numbers at once and connects the recruiter to whoever picks up. It suits high-volume staffing, such as warehouse, light industrial or call center roles, when you're working a large list of candidates you haven't spoken to in a while and most calls go unanswered. When two people answer at once, one gets dropped. That's acceptable on a big cold list and wrong for submitted candidates and hiring managers, so keep those in power mode.

Both modes come with the one $99-a-month phone licence, so you can choose list by list.

What rules apply when recruiters call and text?

Calling and texting rules apply to recruiters, and candidate data brings rules of its own. This is a general overview, not legal advice, so check with your counsel.

• Cell phones: under the US TCPA, autodialed or prerecorded calls and texts to cell phones generally need the person's prior express consent, whatever they're about. That includes candidate texts and dropped voicemails, which count as prerecorded messages.
• Do-not-call: the National Do Not Call Registry and the Telemarketing Sales Rule cover sales calls. A call offering someone a job generally isn't one, but a BD call selling your services can be. Calls to business lines are mostly outside these rules; a hiring manager's personal cell may not be.
• Abandoned calls: on sales calls, the TSR limits abandoned calls to 3% of answered calls per campaign, which matters if you use parallel mode for business development.
• State rules: states such as Florida and Oklahoma have their own telemarketing laws, and some states require every party's consent before a call is recorded.
• Candidate data: many US states and cities bar asking about salary history, so record desired salary instead, and keep protected characteristics such as age or religion out of your notes.
• Canada: CASL requires consent, identification and an unsubscribe option in commercial texts and emails, including BD emails. Sales calls fall under the CRTC's telemarketing rules and the National DNCL, and privacy laws such as PIPEDA cover how you collect and keep candidates' personal information.