What stays the same, and what gets added
Your CRM stays the place your data lives, and your recruiters keep working in it. The new tool does one job that your CRM does badly, or charges extra for.
| The CRM you rent | The AI tool you add | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Holds your candidates, clients, jobs, and placements | One job, such as finding candidates or ranking them against a role |
| Who owns it | The vendor | You |
| What it costs | Per recruiter, every month | One fixed price, from $5K |
| When you hire | The bill goes up | No per-recruiter fee |
The three tools agencies add first
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| AI sourcing | Reads the job, searches outside candidate data and your own database, and shortlists the people worth contacting. |
| Candidate matching | Scores the candidates you already hold against every new job, and shows why each one ranked where it did. |
| Call notes | Records the call and writes the notes to the candidate's record. |
Each of these starts at $5K on its own. Agencies also ask for a tool that keeps every profile up to date, with an alert when a candidate changes jobs, and one that tests a candidate's skills when they enter your pipeline.
Which CRMs and ATSs it works with
Bullhorn, JobAdder, Loxo, Recruiterflow, and other systems that let outside software connect to them. If your data lives in spreadsheets, that works too. How the tool connects to yours is confirmed on the first call.
Your recruiters keep the CRM they know. Where the CRM allows it, results are saved to the record, so they see them there. Where it doesn't, the tool has a page of its own.
Where it runs, who sees your data, and the guarantee
- It runs on an Amazon Web Services account your firm owns. We set it up, so you don't need an IT person.
- Your data stays in your accounts. We work inside them while we build, under an NDA and a data processing agreement, and we hold no copies when the work ends.
- You own the tool, whatever CRM you use.
- Guarantee. Every build comes with a two-month guarantee. If anything we agreed to build does not work the way we agreed, we put it right at no cost to you.
What it costs to run
- Hosting. Keeping it running online typically costs under $10 a month.
- AI usage. The AI runs on an account with an AI provider, which many firms already pay for. You pay for what you use.
- Outside data. A sourcing tool searches data that is bought from data providers. That is pay-as-you-go. You see what it costs.
When one tool is not enough
Adding a tool fixes one job. It does not fix a CRM that is slow, that your recruiters work around, or that costs more every time you hire. These are the signs that adding tools one at a time has stopped working:
- You are about to add a third or fourth tool on top of the same CRM.
- What you pay per recruiter over three years is close to the price of owning a CRM. The build vs buy guide shows where that point is.
- The problem is the CRM itself: the screens, the search, or the way it handles contract desks.
At that point a full CRM of your own is the better call. The cost guide has the prices.
How to start
Start with the one tool that takes the most work off your desks, and add more once it is paying for itself. Before you spend anything, do five things:
- Name the one task that costs your desks the most hours each week.
- Confirm the tool will work inside your current CRM and save its results there.
- Get the price, the list of what gets built, and what counts as finished in writing before work starts.
- Make sure the software and the data end up in an account your firm owns.
- Keep recruiters approving every message and every hiring decision.