HR CRMWhat a candidate card needs
The minimum without which a card is useless: first and last name, contacts (phone, email, Telegram), the vacancy, the stage, the CV and the date the candidate came in.
Worth adding: the source (Djinni, LinkedIn, a site application, a referral), the recruiter in charge, short notes after each contact and the reason for rejection when the person didn't fit or declined.
One pipeline for the whole company
When each recruiter has their own stages, reports don't add up. Agree on one pipeline, for example: Application → Pre-screening → Test task → Technical interview → Offer → Hired.
Have as many stages as it takes for the card to show the next action. If nobody ever stays on a stage, it's not needed.
Duplicates: search by contacts, not by name
The same candidate comes from different sites and writes through different channels. Before creating a card, search by email, phone and Telegram — names are often spelled differently.
If a duplicate appears anyway, don't delete the old record: move its history and contacts over so you don't lose earlier experience with the candidate.
Record the source and the rejection reason
Without the source you can't see which site brings people and which only takes money. Without the rejection reason you can't see where you lose candidates — on salary, on the test task or on response speed.
A short list of reasons to pick from is enough to count them later for the month.
Every candidate has an owner
A «shared» candidate is nobody's. Assign a recruiter in charge, and when you hand a person over to a colleague, change the owner in the card, not in a verbal agreement.
When a spreadsheet stops working
Excel is a good start: fast, familiar, free. But it has no reminders, no change history, no CV next to the row and no access for several people. The limit usually comes with more than two or three open vacancies or more than one recruiter.
Moving to a CRM isn't scary when the spreadsheet can simply be uploaded: columns are recognised and duplicates by contacts are skipped.
How it works in HR CRM
In HR CRM the candidate card holds contacts, the CV, the stage, the source and the owner; there is one pipeline per company; duplicates are found by email, phone and Telegram. A base from Excel or another system can be uploaded, and the AI agent creates cards from Telegram chats on its own.
Try it free for 30 days