Switching recruiting CRMs: a checklist

Before you decide

• Find your renewal date and your notice period. Some contracts renew automatically and need notice well before the renewal date. This sets your timeline.
• Check what your contract says about your data. Whether you can download all of it, in what form, and whether there is a charge.
• Write down why you are leaving. Three or four specific things your team cannot do today. You will use the list to test the new CRM.
• Pick one person to own the switch. Someone who can decide which data comes over and how the new CRM should work.
• Count what you have. Roughly how many candidates, clients, and jobs, and how many years of notes. A move is planned and priced on this.

Getting your data out

Ask your current vendor, in writing, for a full download of your data. This is often called an export. Check that it contains all of this:

• Candidates and contacts, clients, jobs, and placements.
• Notes, and the history of calls and emails on each record. Check this part carefully. It is what your recruiters will miss first.
• CVs and other attached documents, as files, linked to the right person.
• Which recruiter each record belongs to, and when it was last updated.
• Do-not-contact and consent markers.
• The fields and tags your team added.

Open the download and look up five people you know well. If their notes and documents are missing, ask again. Keep your own copy, and do not give notice until you have it.

What to clean up on the way

A move is the cheapest moment to fix your data, because every record is being handled anyway. Decide these three things before it starts:

• Duplicates. Which record wins when the same person is in there three times.
• Old records. Whether candidates nobody has contacted in years come over. The ones you leave behind stay in your own copy.
• Fields and tags nobody uses. Leave them out, so the new CRM starts clean.

Six questions to ask the new vendor

1. What exactly will be moved, and what will not? Get the list in writing.
2. Who does the move, and what does it cost?
3. How long will my team be without a working system, if at all?
4. Can I see my own data in the new CRM before I commit to a changeover date?
5. What happens to records we create in the old CRM after our data is copied across?
6. Can I get all my data back out of your system later, and in what form?

The changeover

1. Give notice in time. Check your contract: giving notice often does not end your access, which runs to the end of your term. Give notice once your download is checked, and before your notice deadline, even if the changeover is not finished.
2. Check the data in the new CRM. Have two or three recruiters look up candidates and clients they know well. They will spot what is missing faster than anyone.
3. Reconnect your email, and anything else that fed the old CRM and that you still use.
4. Train the team before the first day, not during it.
5. Set a cut-off day. After it, nobody adds anything to the old CRM.
6. Work a full week of live jobs in the new CRM before you stop paying for the old one.
7. Keep a way back in. If your contract allows it, keep a login to the old CRM for a while after you switch.

If you are moving to a CRM we build

We do the move. Candidates and contacts, clients, jobs, placements, notes, the history of calls and emails on each record, and CVs and other attached documents all come over, from Bullhorn, Loxo, JobAdder, Recruiterflow, Recruit CRM, or anything else that lets you download your data. A first working version with your data in it is ready in about two weeks.

The move is part of the fixed price of the CRM. The cost guide has the rest of the prices.