Dive Brief:

• Customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation are having an impact on recruiting, hiring, applicant tracking and candidate management software applications, according to CIO Magazine.
• The basic problem with existing solutions, CIO reports, is recruiters and hiring managers looking to fill a job typically don't know if any qualified candidates already exist within the company's applicant tracking system (ATS). No centralized place exists to hold potentially qualified job-seekers.
• According to CIO, emerging solutions offer the ability to create a highly searchable, open access repository for past candidates and applicants, as traditional systems often relegate job candidates into a black hole once a job is filled.

Dive Insight:

Evan Lesser, general manager at getTalent, one of the new apps cited by CIO, says his firm is solving the most common problems companies have with sourcing and hiring: aggregating information about all potential candidates; maintaining updated information about candidates; and communicating with that candidate pool on an ongoing basis. 

He compares the strategy to Salesforce.com, with job candidates being customers. It's not a brand new concept, but it requires "forward-thinking practices to build and maintain a candidate pipeline and effectively communicate with potential hires throughout the entire process."

"Keeping those leads all in one place, keeping them 'warm' and primed with information about your company is going to help you when it's time to fill a position," Lesser told CIO, adding that data is automatically pulled in and added to a candidate profile so the information's the "freshest possible."