To maximise the number of A-players joining your client’s company, you’ll have to think of recruiting strategies that make sense not only in the present scenario but is also, at the same time, future-proof.

It’s like playing chess. You do not just think of the present move but also several moves in the future.

Most new recruiters commit the mistake of prospecting only when needed and stop prospecting as they focus on filling the job order. Why is this a problematic approach?

Simply because once this present job order is filled, you have no more clients to work with! You are back where you started, and you’ll have to start prospecting all over again.

Isn’t this time-consuming and laborious?

The lack of options will force you to make poor decisions, and who knows, you might even start recruiting for jobs outside your area of expertise. This is where a recruiting sales pipeline comes in.

Did you know that 80% of any sales requires at least 5 follow-ups?!

A recruiting pipeline is similar to that of any sales pipeline. It covers the different stages of a recruitment process— sourcing, screening, candidate assessment, interviewing, onboarding, etc. It’s like a visual snapshot of opportunities in several hiring stages. It enables recruiters to understand which hiring deals to specialize in and where they have to provide effort.

4 Major Benefits of a Recruiting Sales Pipeline

Here’s an insight into the advantages of a recruitment sales pipeline:

  • They provide a much-needed perspective on the financial metrics that indicate which deals with clients are likely to close.
  • Measuring team performance gives visibility into the performance of recruiters in your team and monitors how close they’re to meet their targets. This also lets you find out who is the top biller at your recruitment agency.
  • Helps you understand which steps in your recruiting sales pipeline create bottlenecks, costing you A+ players.
  • It also indicates the number of likely to convert deals, how fast qualified candidates are moving through the funnel, cost, and quality of hire, and thus helps everyone predict revenue month-on-month.

8 Tips to Build a Top-Notch Recruiting Sales Pipeline

1. Who’s Your Ideal Candidate?

Finding out your ideal candidate is significant because this will ultimately determine your recruiting pipeline strategy. Create detailed customer profiles while focusing on areas that can bring you high profitability.

Try to understand which industry, geographical area, company size, etc., work in your favor and the pain points and challenges. Your ideal candidate profile will require work from time to time, but that’s good enough because you have a substantial piece of information that will let you start the groundwork.

2. Market Mapping is Key

Now that you have your ideal candidate profile in place, you can start worrying about market mapping. Create a list of potential clients and target accounts that can benefit the most from your recruiting service.

Keep in mind that this is a continuous process that will help you make data-driven and informed decisions. There are some of the things you’ll need to note down:

  • How large is the market size you’re planning to tap into?
  • Based on the market size, what’s the best recruitment marketing strategy you can use to reach out to them?
  • Plan an email marketing campaign that will allow you to reach out to your prospects every year.

3. Capturing Data is Important

Just like a standard sales funnel of any company is driven by data and analysis, so must be your recruiting sales pipeline.

Note down everything from how the candidates are moving through the hiring process you’ve set up, who’s ultimately getting recruited, how long it took to get them here, the cost per hire, interviews-to-offers ratio, overall abandonment rate, abandonment rate by stage, and more.

A suitable Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will help you get a better analysis. For example, Recruit CRM offers 5 kinds of reports that give your team better insight into your performance and how your business is operating— Team KPI report, job statistics report, deals status report, client performance, and candidate lifecycle report.

The best bet would be to set up a free demo with us, and we will help you explore this in a much more detailed fashion.

4. Sort & Segment Your Candidates & Clients in Your Recruitment Database

Once you have a list of candidates and clients in place, sort them based on priority. These are the following fields that you must have in your recruitment database.

For candidates:

  • Name
  • Priority ranking
  • Current job title
  • Source of lead
  • Reference
  • Outreach or contacts made

For clients:

  • Name
  • Industry
  • Company size
  • Priority ranking
  • Source of lead
  • Job openings
  • Outreach or contacts made

Import all potential clients into your sales pipeline, and place them in their respective deal stages. This will help you figure out where they’re in their buying journey.

For instance, if your agency recruiter had sent out a promotional mailer to a prospect, then the deal would be within the initial contact stage in your pipeline. If a client has requested to speak to you virtually or is willing to come down to your office, the deal would be within the scheduled meeting stage.

If a client or a hiring manager has expressed an interest in taking your recruiting service and discussed the terms of the proposal, then the prospect would be within the deal stage. Identifying where your deals are, helps segment opportunities.

5. Start Reaching Out to Both Clients & Candidates

For a recruitment agency to function, you’ll need a steady flow of both clients and candidates. This is possible only if you have the right strategies in place.

By now, you already have an ideal candidate profile,
and you are well aware of which market you’re willing to tap, you know where your clients flock…therefore, start prospecting.

It’s only natural for recruiters to reach out to prospects that are further in your pipeline because you’ve already contacted them in the past and have an established relationship.

Guess what?

Once you get job orders from them and are done recruiting, you don’t have any more clients to work with. Are you willing to start prospecting again and repeat the same old process?

It’s the same for candidates. If you don’t keep adding suitable candidates to your pipeline, you’ll exhaust them after filling only a handful of job openings.

Thus, it’s essential to block at least 1-2 hours every day to reach out to new clients, candidates and find businesses that fit your needs. Lastly, holding effective sales kickoff meetings can help ensure your team stays on track by setting clear objectives and reviewing strategies for consistent outreach.

6. Keep Your Candidates Warm

Similar to an inbound marketing funnel, you’ll have to nudge a candidate through the different hiring stages.

First comes brand awareness and your employer branding. Top-quality passive candidates will require high exposure to your employer brand before deciding to show up for an interview.

Follow these steps to make sure you’re on the right track:

  • Start by informing the candidates about your employer brand. This is the ultimate ‘meet and greet’. So, take this opportunity to understand more about their career goals, needs, interests, etc.
  • After the first contact is over, make sure you’re regularly checking in (via emails or phone calls) on the candidate. Let them understand more about your company with time. Even if they’re not ready to leave their current job, they’re still building a relationship with your company. This increases the chance that they’re going to consider you in the next stage of their career choice.
  • Recruiters can create content in the form of advertisements, videos, and emails to reach out to them. Paint a profitable picture for the candidate— highlight the importance of your client’s working environment, communicate critical aspects of your agency’s growth, the prospective companies they could apply to, important milestones, case studies, ebooks, and so on.
  • Don’t forget to send them important job alerts that align with their career trajectory.
  • Another interesting thing to note here is that you can segment candidates into groups, personas or based on geography and reach out to them with various types of content. For instance, senior and executive candidates might not be interested in employee stories that match the experience of a junior candidate.

7. Assign Some Level of Activity for Stagnant Deals

Deals, of course, don’t age like wine. As time passes, the probability of converting a deal declines, often turning it into a rotten deal. Therefore, it’s essential to keep track of the duration of your deals.

If you’ve got a stagnant deal that exceeds your recruiting sales cycle for an extended time, then prioritize and concentrate on it. Try and build some activity around the same.

For instance, reach out to them via emails or phone calls and understand their position. This process will assist you in packing up your sales pipeline by preventing old and unlikely to convert deals.

8. Monitor & Manage Your Recruiting Sales Pipeline

Monitoring, reviewing, and managing is significant if you want to have a promising sales pipeline. Be prepared to remove old stagnant deals, add newer ones, and review clients from whom you haven’t heard back in a long time.

From scouring your pipeline to managing it, it might seem like a task, but you can easily maintain it with the help of the right recruitment software.

Reach out via cold email templates, ensure your team has the right sales pitch ready, and work harder on building trust and nurturing relationships.

Read more: 15 responsive recruiting emails | ready to send.

With all these tips in mind, let us know in the comments below if your recruiting pipeline stays full, if you’re able to shorten your sales cycle and whether some amazing figures are getting added every month on the revenue side!