A recruitment placement pipeline should track each candidate against each vacancy, with its own interviews, feedback, offer and start date. Putting one sales stage on the candidate record loses that distinction. A useful recruitment CRM connects people, employers and applications while making the next action clear for the consultant responsible.
This guide proposes a workflow for permanent recruitment. Temporary assignments, shift scheduling and payroll introduce different records and should be scoped separately. Begin with the placement journey your desk actually uses, including withdrawals and delayed starts, before choosing screens or automations.
The application is the unit of progress
Keep a candidate record for the person and a vacancy record for the employer's requirement. Connect them through an application record. One candidate can then interview for two vacancies without one interview changing the other application's stage. Likewise, a vacancy can hold several active applicants without becoming several copies of the same job.
The vacancy needs an employer, hiring contact, location or working arrangement, role brief, intended start window and number of openings. Store the candidate's current availability separately from an application's proposed start date. Availability can change across the person's search; an agreed start belongs to a specific placement.
Give records stable identifiers. An email address can change, and two vacancies may share a title. When a consultant receives an updated CV, retain its date and version. The application should show which version was submitted so later feedback can be understood against the material the employer actually saw.
Set stage exits that a consultant can demonstrate
A workable sequence might be identified, screened, submitted, interviewing, offered, accepted and started. These are suggested operational states, not universal recruitment rules. Define the evidence for entering each stage. Submission needs a recipient and timestamp; interviewing needs an interview event; accepted needs the recorded offer version and acceptance details.
Represent interviews as child records with round, participants, time, format, outcome and feedback owner. Moving a meeting should update that event and its history, not create a second apparently active interview. A cancelled interview must remain distinguishable from a candidate who attended and was unsuccessful.
Keep withdrawn, rejected and vacancy cancelled as distinct outcomes. Record a concise reason and closure date without forcing speculative explanations. Reopening an application should retain the original history and assign a new next action. It should not silently erase the time already spent or restart every introductory message.
Two owners can matter at the same time
The employer relationship may belong to an account manager while another consultant handles the candidate. Make the application owner responsible for progressing that match, with the relationship owners visible. Specify who asks for interview feedback, negotiates an offer and checks the start. A shared inbox is an intake channel, not an accountable owner.
Build a daily work queue around missing decisions: interviews awaiting employer feedback, offers awaiting a candidate response and accepted placements approaching their start date. Each task needs a due date and a named person. If someone is absent, reassign outstanding work while preserving who performed earlier actions.
A reminder should inspect the current application before sending. A candidate who withdrew this morning should not receive yesterday's queued interview preparation message. Record delivery failures separately from business outcomes; a failed email does not mean the candidate declined.
Placement readiness checklist
- The accepted offer identifies the vacancy, candidate, employer contact and agreed version.
- The intended start date has an owner for confirmation and a visible last-checked date.
- Outstanding operational checks are named tasks with responsible people, rather than one unexplained green tick.
- Commercial details use the agreed fee basis and currency, with restricted editing where appropriate.
- The record distinguishes an anticipated placement from a confirmed start and an invoice request.
- A failed or postponed start preserves the accepted offer and records the subsequent decision.
Do not treat this checklist as a statement about legal suitability or eligibility. Its purpose is to make your agreed operational checks traceable. Decide separately which information each role needs to see; candidate notes and employer commercial terms need not be visible to every user.
Acceptance test: one person, two vacancies, one delayed start
Use a fictional candidate, Maya, applying for vacancies A and B. Submit different CV versions to each employer, arrange an interview for both and reschedule only vacancy A's interview. The expected result is two independent application timelines, with the correct submitted document and current appointment on each.
Next, record an accepted offer on A and a withdrawal on B. Confirm that B's outstanding interview reminders are cancelled, while A receives a start-confirmation task. Delay A's start by a week. The placement should retain the former date in its history and move only the relevant future tasks.
Finally, process the same start-confirmation action twice. Expect one confirmed placement and one downstream invoice request, if that integration is in scope. Check the application as the candidate consultant, account manager and administrator. Each should see the context needed for their role without gaining unrelated editing rights.
Measure the bottleneck your desk can act on
Separate submitted applications, interview events, accepted offers and confirmed starts in reporting. Counting all four as placements makes a busy pipeline look more complete than it is. Measure time awaiting feedback by employer and vacancy, and distinguish still-open applications from those closed during the reporting period.
Start with one desk and a small set of representative vacancies. If the business also sells advisory work, compare the separate acceptance boundary in our consultant proposal and delivery handover guide. Both workflows need a clear transfer of responsibility, but their records should remain distinct.
For Visuosofts CRM development, bring an anonymised vacancy, application timeline and placement checklist to the discussion. You can contact Visuosofts to scope a first version around those journeys and the exceptions your consultants encounter.