- Client
- A retained executive search firm
- Industry
- Executive search
- Messages sent without a human pressing send
- Zero
- CRM and ATS merged into one system
- 2 → 1
- Integration check-ins generated at placement
- 30/60/90
The problem
The firm was doing what almost every search firm does: running a CRM for relationships and an ATS for candidates, and entering the same person into both. The two never agreed. A finalist who didn't get the role in March was a hiring executive by the following spring, and nothing in either system knew that. Relationships went cold without anyone noticing, because nobody was tracking who hadn't been spoken to. Placement was treated as the finish line even though the firm sells the months after it. And the person doing the work lives in meetings, so every minute of data entry came straight out of the work clients pay for.
What we built
We built one system with a single record for each person, where their roles come from what has really happened rather than being typed in: the same record picks up Candidate, Client contact, Referral and Placed as each one applies, all on one timeline. Companies move from lead to prospect to active to past client. Business development runs on a drag-and-drop board, and a won deal turns into a search in one click. Each search holds its candidates and where each one stands, the position spec, scorecards scored against that spec, the engagement fee with its invoice milestones, and the assigned team. A placement automatically sets up the 30, 60 and 90 day, six month and one year integration check-ins. The home screen is a to-do list rather than a dashboard: what's due, what's overdue, who needs a check-in. Meeting transcripts, recordings and forwarded emails come in as draft notes, and the system picks out who took part and offers to add anyone it doesn't recognize. For each search, the client gets a link to a portal, with no login needed, showing only the candidates the firm has chosen to share, with assessments, a comparison table and a feedback box that goes straight back into the search. Internal notes, votes and fees never leave the building.
The outcome
The firm's real asset is its network, and it now grows in one place instead of being split across two systems. Adding a candidate checks the existing relationships first, and past finalists come up as a warm pool on new searches. Stay-in-touch reminders flag who has gone quiet, with a summary of the last conversation one click away. The post-placement integration care the firm sells is now scheduled and tracked by the system instead of relying on memory. And the system drafts but never sends: every outgoing message needs a person to approve it and a person to send it. That's built into the design rather than left as a setting, because of too many stories about a rejection arriving next to an offer.