Debbie Walton: Can you provide an overview of TargetRecruit’s importance of being built on the Salesforce platform and its role in the recruitment industry?

Neil Curry: TargetRecruit has provided CRM to the recruitment world for over 15 years, so we’re well-renowned and experienced in that space. A big difference with us is that we’re not part of a large software house and we don’t have multiple products in the portfolio – this allows us to have complete clarity on our business model and essentially: make our customers successful. What this means is that everything from the research and development through to the implementation and ongoing customer success, is done with one product – built on Salesforce, which is the world’s most widely used CRM solution. What Salesforce do is they offer their technology out to software vendors to build their own tech on top of it. So, if you need a finance, payroll, HR automation, an email marketing tool built on Salesforce, you can do it.

DW: So many recruitment firms use various tools and products for their operations. How does TargetRecruit differ by positioning itself as a platform rather than just a product?

NC: Whilst TargetRecruit CRM is technically a product, it’s a product which sits in a platform. When you’ve got a product which isn’t part of a platform the technology tends to be siloed. For example, you’ll have CRM, pay & bill, email marketing and scheduling; all of which are siloed technologies, bolted together with an import or an export routine. There will be question marks over data security and potentially a bad experience for everyone involved. Being based on a platform is different because you’re part of an eco-system. What that means practically is your CRM, onboarding, compliance, scheduling, candidate & client portals, telephony, emails and more, can all be based off the same platform. What this means to recruiters is that they don’t have to use workarounds or waste their time jumping from one system to another as everything is under the one roof.

DW: Let’s talk about data. Data’s the buzzword of the moment. Are you doing a lot of data analysis for your clients?

NC: We provide the tools that clients can use to properly interrogate their data. TargetRecruit as a standard has dozens of reports to do just this, clients are always amazed at the number of options and parameters you can report on to get the valuable information they need. The dashboards are all editable and the beauty of our product is that clients don’t have to work around it; they get the CRM to work around them.

DW: How does being built on a Salesforce platform benefit users in terms of scalability, integration, and customisation?

NC: In terms of scalability, if a client is looking to branch into new regions, for example from the UK to the US or if an organisation would like to open new lines of business, from temp to contract, it’s all easily done. We haven’t come across anybody who’s reached the limits of what Salesforce can do. When it comes to integration, we’ve talked about the app exchange and the 4,000 plus apps clients can download to then operate off the same platform. However, if there are businesses out there, and there are many who are already using third party technology, we don’t force their hand to move to one from the AppExchange, Salesforce is very flexible with APIs, often, we can integrate into third parties. When there’s established tech, which is working in the business, we work with that. And on the “customisation” side, there’s two levels, customisation and configuration.

So, it’s usually when businesses have a specific idea of what they need, and it may not be fully applicable to the rest of the TargetRecruit client base, but it’s relevant to their business they would then go away and customise it so it’s specific to them, whereas configuration is the ability to adapt reports to for their needs, access classes, workflows etc.

Salesforce is so widely adopted, there are so many options available; it not only has the capability to solve immediate needs in an organisation but also solves any future problems

DW: What trends and challenges do you see on the horizon for recruitment software?

NC:  The big one! Most people now are asking about AI and how they can actually use it.

Because we’ve seen AI in our personal lives for years in science and medicine, it’s making clients want to know more about and how they can use it in various ways. Now that Generative AI is available for everyone to use, the best first steps are for people to use it in daily tasks and push out the experience out to candidates and clients.

The place to start is to speak with your supplier and understand what their plans are for AI. If they’re thinking about the future of their product, they’ll have ideas and likely even released some functionality already.

It’ll be gradual at first, which is what is needed. But once AI becomes the norm in our working lives, the advances will become vast and if adopted correctly, advantageous to be increase efficiencies.

DW: But let’s define it. There’s automation and there’s AI.

NC: Yes! And both work together, hand in hand. The whole AI discussion is making people think about automation in general and the accuracy, or not, of their data.

Both are making data accessible and it’s also making people look at automation and how it can enhance their organisation. There are still quite a few organisations out there using Excel spreadsheets that might have a CRM, but it’s not fit for purpose. By bridging the gap between those spreadsheets and AI, people see that they don’t have automation built into their processes. It allows organisations to cleanse the data they have and make sure it’s accurate, and at the same time, they’ll think about what processes they can automate and have AI sit on top of those processes.

Those are the some of the building blocks that businesses need to be thinking about.

DW: And then finally, what advice or insights can you offer to recruitment firms looking to leverage a platform-based solution like Target recruit for their long-term success?

The phrase ‘long-term’ is key here. If an organisation has an immediate problem to fix sometimes getting a standalone product, which isn’t built on platform, can be more cost effective and can quicker to implement. But this option tends to be more of a short-term fix. If an organisation is looking at more of a long-term solution, a tech platform is the answer because they’re able to build on it as and when the business changes and expands.

Because Salesforce is so widely adopted, there are so many options available; it not only has the capability to solve immediate needs in an organisation but also solves any future problems or needs as well.  it just opens people’s eyes to what is possible, not just now, but in the future as well.