Changing your Recruitment CRM? References are Pointless!

Perfect timing for this article ahead of our technology showcase event on the 8th October. Wayne Barclay and Lisa Jones will be at the event, they are part of our magnificent 7 expert team and are hosting workshop too. Wayne ran a webinar for recruitment and IT leaders last week about Changing your Recruitment CRM that you might like to listen to. Here are Wayne’s thoughts on why, when changing your CRM, references are pointless:

Changing CRM is a big strategic decision for any recruitment business, getting WORTHWHILE references is a critical process… read this for some worthwhile pointers to getting it right

2015 is a really important year for both recruiters and recruitment software firms alike – lots of recruiters are finding budgets to upgrade / move their Recruitment CRM.

One of the points Lisa and I discussed was references.

Now, I bet you get that you need references, and I bet you ask your Recruitment Software company to provide you with people to give you them.

I also bet that part of you wants “real” references – ones that may not have had the best experience but are more theoretically relevant as they have not been “primed” by the supplier.

Health Warning

We are fans of canvassing opinion – you are about to spend a lot of cash (and time) on this change to your business, so you want confidence that moving forward with a particular provider is the right thing to do.

You may be part of a network of other recruitment leaders or IT leaders. Clearly you’re going to take advantage of this… but be warned…

An “I had a nightmare” reference needs to be treated with caution.

Recruitment Software Horror Stories are Fiction?

We often hear horror stories from our clients. Perhaps they have had a bad implementation, the software is not delivering what they were sold. The end users (recruiters) are not engaging with it. Everyone is stressed. They are still trying to get the system working a year on.

Sometimes when we dig about a little we see there are tangible reasons why there has been an issue:

The wrong product was bought (too much buying and not enough scoping)
Lack of implementation skills in the client camp (lack of resource and understanding)
Lack of uptake from recruiters (lack of training / support / scope)
Yes, there will be real examples of the recruitment software company failing – it happens!

But we often see that the recruiter has not spec’d enough time / budget / resource to the project, and sometimes the enthusiasm to implement outruns the reality of the project and hence issues start to surface.

Get the Best References

Here are 4 questions that I think you need to ask other recruitment and IT leaders when getting references, irrespective of whether you have sourced the referee yourself or had them given to you by the supplier.

What commercial benefits have you seen since going live?
What experiences have the users had since going live? What do they have to say about the system?
If you had to re-implement the system, what would you do differently?
And finally, how have you assessed project success (or failure)? What criteria are you using (and would that be the same you would use?)

Your job as the leader of the project is to mitigate risk and ensure project success. Ask relevant questions about the project and its outcomes and ensure that if you come across any negatives, you give it context by asking about the product bought, and how it was implemented (and by whom), not simply how they feel about it.

Referees are really good at giving fantastic information about the product, why they purchased it and the lessons learned from implementation. This is some of the best information you’ll get relating to your possible project.

This is the reality of moving / upgrading your Recruitment CRM: