ATS or CRM, why recruiters at agencies need both (hybrid) ?

Recruitment is more competitive and complex than ever. Finding top talent is tough, and so is securing new clients who provide the job openings recruiters need to fill. Many recruiting professionals rely on an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to streamline hiring workflows, and there’s a common misconception that an ATS alone is enough. In reality, top recruiters know that you also need a CRM (Customer or Candidate Relationship Management system) to build pipelines and relationships that fuel future success. In this article, we’ll break down what an ATS and a CRM each do, why having both matters, and how an ATS/CRM hybrid solution (such as ai-native ones like Crew) can supercharge a recruiter’s placements in 2025.

What Does an ATS Do for Recruiters?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the core software for managing the recruitment process. It serves as a centralized hub to post jobs, collect applications, and track candidates through each hiring stage. In simple terms, an ATS streamlines and automates the processes of recruiting, from posting a job to onboarding a new hire. Key functions of an ATS include:

Job Posting & Application Tracking: An ATS lets you create job postings and distribute them to job boards or your career site, then automatically collects and organizes incoming applications. You can easily see each candidate’s status in the hiring pipeline and move them through stages (screen, interview, offer, etc.).
Resume Screening & Database: Modern ATS platforms can parse resumes and filter candidates by keywords or qualifications, saving recruiters from sifting through hundreds of resumes manually. All candidate data is stored in a searchable database for future reference.
Interview Scheduling & Collaboration: Many ATS include tools for scheduling interviews, and even AI Notetakers for the most modern ones, as well as the ability for team members to review and leave their notes on candidates in one place. This improves collaboration and keeps the hiring team on the same page.
Compliance and Reporting: An ATS tracks metrics like passthrough rates, numbers of screening or CV sent during a given period, time-to-hire etc... and ensures records are kept for compliance (e.g. GDPR). Through dashboards and reports, an ATS provides insight into the efficiency of your hiring process.

In essence, an ATS is process-centric, focused on managing the active recruitment workflow of today’s open positions. It’s indispensable for staying organized and efficient when dealing with multiple jobs and candidates at once. However, an ATS alone has limits; it typically focuses on current hiring needs and active applicants. This is where a CRM comes in.

What Does a CRM Do in Recruiting?

In recruiting, CRM stands for Candidate or Client Relationship Management, depending on context. Broadly, it’s software to manage and nurture relationships that are crucial to recruiting success. A recruitment CRM often refers to tools for building talent pipelines, keeping track of passive candidates or past applicants and engaging them over time (candidate relationship management). In the staffing agency or recruiting agency world, a CRM also means managing client relationships, i.e. a sales CRM for business development, tracking client leads, deals, and contacts (customer relationship management). Both interpretations are about going beyond the transactions of the moment and investing in future opportunities.

Key functions of a Recruiting CRM include:

Talent Pipeline Building: A CRM allows recruiters to cultivate a pool of potential candidates before a job is even open. You can keep records of silver-medalist candidates, employee referrals, or sourced prospects, and maintain communication so that you have warm leads to approach when a relevant position arises. It’s believed that most hiring actually happens in the pre-application stage, long before a candidate ever submits a resume. By nurturing candidates early, a CRM gives you a head start when a new role needs to be filled.
Candidate Relationship Nurturing: Unlike an ATS which is more transactional, inbound-focused, a CRM helps engage candidates with content and communication over the long term. Recruiters can send updates like new opportunities from new clients / jobs, or career tips to keep passive talent interested. This kind of continuous engagement means when a candidate is ready to make a move, your company or agency stays top of mind. As one recruiter puts it: “An ATS focuses on now. A CRM focuses on tomorrow.” It’s about future opportunities.
Client Relationship Management: For agency recruiters, a CRM is equally vital on the client side. It functions as a sales pipeline tool, helping you reach out to prospects, keep track of the status of each deal or job order, and all interactions with hiring managers (including call notes from the AI Notetaker, typically). Instead of using separate spreadsheets or a generic sales CRM, recruiters benefit from a CRM tailored to their workflow, one that links directly to jobs and candidates, and for the best CRMs out there, they can automatically suggest the best talents in your database that match the hiring manager's request, thanks to AI matching capabilities (read more about this). This ensures you’re proactively tracking business development efforts in parallel with candidate searches. In other words, while the ATS manages candidates in active searches, the CRM manages the pipeline of potential new business (new client companies or job requisitions). Both pipelines need to stay full for a recruiting business to thrive.
Communication & Outreach: A CRM typically includes bulk email or LinkedIn Messages capabilities, sequenced message campaigns, and reminders to stay in touch regularly. For candidate CRM, this might mean automated check-in emails or event invitations to keep talent engaged. For client CRM, it means systematic outreach to prospects, for example, sending a series of introduction emails, case studies, or follow-up calls to convert a prospect into a client. These tools ensure no important connection goes cold due to forgetfulness.
Analytics on Engagement: A good CRM will track engagement metrics, for candidates, things like email open rates or response rates to your talent community newsletters. For clients, metrics on outreach campaigns and conversion rates. While an ATS gives insight into hiring process efficiency, a CRM provides data on engagement levels and the effectiveness of your outreach (source). These analytics help refine your approach to both candidate marketing and client sales.

In short, a CRM is relationship-centric, focused on managing the people and organizations that could be valuable tomorrow (whether that’s a passive candidate who might apply later or a prospective client who might have a job order in the future). It complements the ATS by covering the long-term and proactive side of recruiting.

Why an ATS Alone Isn’t Enough (The ATS vs CRM Debate)

If an ATS handles the core recruiting workflow, one might ask: why isn’t that sufficient? The truth is that using only an ATS can leave significant gaps in a recruiter’s strategy. Here are a few reasons an ATS by itself may fall short:

Limited Focus on Active Applicants: ATS software is optimized for processing active job applications efficiently. It’s reactive, you open a job and then deal with incoming candidates. But what about all the potential candidates out there who aren’t applying right now? An ATS won’t automatically keep you engaged with those passive prospects. Nor will it help you proactively source talent ahead of demand, aside from basic resume databases. This means if you rely solely on an ATS, you might always be starting from scratch when a new job opens, scrambling to source candidates under pressure.
No Systematic Business Development: An ATS is primarily about candidates, not clients. Recruiters who only use an ATS often manage client interactions in scattered ways, sticky notes, separate CRM tools, or not at all. This “ATS-only” approach assumes job orders will come by themselves. In reality, agencies need to continuously prospect for new client leads and nurture relationships with existing clients. Without a CRM, it’s easy to let follow-ups slip or to lose track of where each potential deal stands. Over time, this can stifle the growth of a recruiting firm’s client base. As one industry guide bluntly states, “you don’t need both an ATS and a CRM, you just need an ATS that can do both” (source). In other words, an ATS that lacks CRM capabilities forces you to find other means to manage clients, which is neither efficient nor effective.
Manual Data & Missed Opportunities: If you try to use an ATS for something it’s not built for (like tracking sales leads), you end up with manual workarounds. For example, recruiters might use spreadsheet trackers for client outreach or rely on memory for when to check in with a prospect. This manual labor is time-consuming and error-prone. Important information (like a client’s hiring preferences or past communication) can get lost outside the ATS. Without an integrated system, your valuable recruiting data is siloed, candidate info in one place, client info in another, making it hard to see the full picture or draw connections. Missed connections mean missed placements and revenue.
Lack of Proactive Pipeline Building: In today’s market, being proactive is a competitive advantage. Agencies that wait for job orders to appear or for candidates to apply are a step behind those who actively cultivate leads on both sides. An ATS alone encourages a reactive mindset (fill requisitions as they come). But what if you could develop candidates for roles before they open, or court a company before they have an urgent hiring need? That’s what a CRM enables. Without it, recruiters risk always playing catch-up.

In summary, an ATS is critical but not sufficient on its own. It covers the mechanics of recruiting but not the growth and relationships. To deconstruct the idea that an ATS by itself is enough, consider that recruiting is ultimately a relationship business: you have to manage relationships with candidates and clients. An ATS handles active candidates; a CRM handles the relationships that lead to those candidates and job openings in the first place. Both tools are needed for a holistic strategy.

How a CRM Boosts Your Pipeline and Placements

Integrating a CRM into your recruitment toolkit directly addresses the above gaps. Here’s how a CRM (or CRM features within an ATS/CRM hybrid) can elevate a recruiter’s results, especially when it comes to increasing the client pipeline and making more placements:

1. Proactive Client Pipeline Growth

A CRM gives you a structured way to manage prospecting and client development. Rather than hoping for referrals or incoming inquiries, you can actively target the companies you want to work with. Using a CRM, recruiters can:

Organize Prospects and Leads: Input target companies as prospects with relevant details (industry, size, key contacts, etc.). You can categorize companies by status, for example prospect, lead, active client, or inactive, so you always know your relationship stage and avoid redundant outreach. Knowing if a company is already a prospect, lead, or client at a glance prevents embarrassing overlaps and keeps your team coordinated.
Track Deals and Job Orders: In agency recruiting, each new job from a client is essentially a deal. A CRM component lets you track these deals in a pipeline view (e.g., lead identified → negotiation → signed contract → job filled). This sales-pipeline approach means you can predict revenue and prioritize efforts on deals most likely to close. It ensures no potential job opportunity falls through the cracks because you forgot which stage it was in.
Automate Outreach and Follow-ups: Rather than one-off cold calls or emails, you can set up multi-step outreach sequences to engage prospects. For instance, you might schedule an introductory email, then a LinkedIn message, then a phone call, spaced over several weeks. The CRM can send these communications automatically or remind you when it’s time to reach out. Such multi-channel sequences ensure you’re consistently engaging potential clients over time, which is often what it takes to win new business. Importantly, the CRM logs all these touches, so you have a history of interactions.
One-Click Lead Capture: Modern recruiting CRMs often include browser extensions or integrations (e.g., a Chrome extension) that let you capture lead information from websites like LinkedIn with one click. If you come across a promising hiring manager or company, you can instantly import their details into your system. This saves time on data entry and grows your prospect list effortlessly. One-click importing of leads means your business development pipeline can expand as fast as you can find new targets, without the tedium of copying info between tools.

All of these CRM-driven activities translate into a stronger client pipeline. With a healthy pipeline of potential clients, you’ll have more job orders coming in, which in turn creates more placement opportunities for your candidates. In essence, more clients = more jobs = more placements – and CRM is the engine to achieve that.

2. Stronger Candidate Relationships and Talent Pools

While client development is crucial, CRM capabilities also shine in building talent communities. By nurturing candidates long-term, you increase the chances of making quality placements faster when roles open up. Here’s how a CRM helps on the candidate side:

Maintaining Engagement with Passive Talent: A candidate CRM stores profiles of individuals who aren’t current applicants, past silver-medal candidates, people you’ve sourced, attendees from career fairs, etc. Instead of letting these contacts go cold, you can use the CRM to periodically send personalized updates or check-ins. For example, you might wish someone congratulations on a work anniversary or share a relevant article. This keeps you on their radar. When the right opportunity comes along, those engaged candidates are more likely to respond to you than to a stranger. Recruiters who invest in these relationships are effectively pre-filling part of their candidate pipeline.
Faster Placements Through Readiness: By having a roster of warm candidates, the time to fill a role can shrink dramatically. If a client comes with a specialized role that’s hard to fill, you don’t have to start from scratch on outreach, you may have 5–10 potential people in your CRM you’ve already built rapport with. This means faster submissions and potentially better quality hires, since you know the candidates well. This directly boosts your placement rate and client satisfaction.
Improved Candidate Experience: A CRM helps ensure candidates don’t feel like they’ve fallen into a black hole after applying. Even if they didn’t get a job, you can keep them in the loop about future opportunities. Little touches like sending a quarterly newsletter to your talent pool or inviting past applicants to networking events can significantly improve their perception. A positive candidate experience makes people more likely to accept offers and refer others to you. It’s a virtuous cycle: happy candidates become brand ambassadors, attracting more talent and even clients to your business.

In 2025, candidate experience and employer branding are more important than ever. A CRM is a tool that enables these human-centric recruiting practices at scale, treating candidates as relationships to nurture, not just entries in a database.

3. All-in-One Efficiency and Visibility

The ultimate benefit of having both ATS and CRM capabilities is efficiency through integration. When these tools are combined (either via integration or in a unified platform), recruiters gain end-to-end visibility and save precious time:

Single Source of Truth: An integrated ATS+CRM platform means all your data: candidates, clients, jobs, communications, all live in one system. When a new job comes in from a client, you can link that job to the client’s record (or deal) easily. This linkage provides context at a glance: you can see which candidates are in process for which client and the potential value of the placement. No more juggling multiple software or losing information between them. It’s all connected.
Workflow Automation: Integration allows you to automate workflows that span the entire recruitment and sales cycle. For example, when you mark a deal as “won” (client signed on for a new job), the system can automatically prompt you to create a new job in the ATS side and even suggest candidates from your talent CRM who might fit. Conversely, if a candidate is placed, you could automate updating the deal status to closed and recording the placement fee. These cross-functional automations save time and reduce manual errors. Automation is a key trend in recruitment tech, even more with ai, and when ATS and CRM are unified, automation can cover both candidate and client processes in one sweep.
Task Management & Reminders: Recruiters are constantly context-switching, calling a client one minute, interviewing a candidate the next. An integrated system lets you set tasks and reminders linked to either a candidate or a client, and have it all on one calendar. For instance, you might get a reminder to follow up with a prospect company you pitched two weeks ago, and another to check back in with a great candidate three months after an interview. A unified task list means nothing falls through the cracks on either side of the house. This level of organization simply isn’t feasible to maintain with sticky notes or separate calendars tied to different systems.
Data-Driven Insights (360° View): When all activities funnel into one database, you can get powerful analytics. Imagine a dashboard that shows not only typical hiring metrics (time-to-fill, number of candidates in process) but also sales metrics (new leads added, deals won/lost, revenue per client). Joined-up reporting like this gives clarity on where your recruiting business is thriving and where it needs improvement. For example, you might discover that a particular industry yields faster placements (insight from ATS data) and that your outreach in that industry has a high response rate (insight from CRM data). That could inform your strategy to focus more on that industry. Without integration, you’d have a hard time connecting those dots. In 2025, leveraging data is key to staying competitive, and an ATS/CRM hybrid helps consolidate the data for better decision-making.

As a result of these efficiencies, recruiters can do more with less effort – freeing up time to focus on high-value activities like building relationships and strategy. One article summarized it well: “By using an ATS with CRM capabilities, you can manage your entire recruitment process, from candidate sourcing to client management, all within a single platform. This integrated approach saves time, increases productivity, and helps you build stronger relationships with both candidates and clients” (source). In short, the hybrid approach amplifies everything: your reach, your speed, and your effectiveness.

Essential Features of an ATS/CRM Hybrid Platform

If you’re convinced that having both ATS and CRM functionalities will improve your recruiting, the next question is how to implement it. You might use separate tools that integrate, or choose an all-in-one platform. Whichever path, certain key features are important to look for in order to maximize the benefits:

Unified Contact Records: The system should let you store companies, clients, candidates, and contacts with rich profiles (notes, tags, comments). For instance, a good hybrid system allows detailed client profiles where you can log past placements, contract terms, client preferences, and all communication history. On the candidate side, profiles should include their resume/CV, interview feedback, as well as any engagement history (emails sent, call made etc...).
Pipeline Management for Both Candidates and Clients: Look for visual pipelines or kanban boards that track both candidate stages and deal stages. You might have one pipeline for job applications (handled by ATS workflow) and another for sales leads/clients (handled by CRM workflow). Being able to customize these stages to fit your process is a strong plus. For example, candidate stages might be Sourced → Screened → Interviewed → Offered, while client stages might be Prospect → Meeting Scheduled → Proposal → Client. A hybrid tool should support both seamlessly.
One-Click Data Capture and Enrichment: As mentioned, a Chrome extension or similar tool for one-click importing of new candidate or client leads is incredibly useful. Additionally, integration with databases for email finding and verification can save a lot of time. Some platforms include built-in tools to find verified email addresses or phone numbers of candidates and client contacts. This means you spend less time researching contact info and more time actually reaching out.
Integrated Communication Tools: Email (and ideally LinkedIn, or SMS or even WhatsApp) should be built into the platform so you can send and log messages without switching to your email client. Bulk email sequencing (with personalization tokens) is a must-have CRM feature for both marketing to candidates and sales outreach to clients. All communications should automatically log under the respective contact or company. Bonus points if the system can track opens, clicks, and replies, giving you metrics on what’s working.
Task and Reminder System: The platform should have a to-do list or task feature that can tie tasks to records (e.g., “Call Client X next Tuesday” linked to the client’s profile). Automated reminders and calendar syncing (with Outlook/Google Calendar) ensure you don’t miss scheduled calls or follow-ups.
Analytics and Dashboards: Ensure the tool provides reporting for both recruiting KPIs and sales KPIs. For example, you might generate a report on placements per quarter (recruiting outcome) and another on new clients acquired per quarter (sales outcome). If the system can show revenue forecasting, source of hires, and outreach effectiveness in one place, you’ll have the full picture at your fingertips. Customizable reports are ideal so you can track the metrics that matter to your business.
Collaboration and Permissions: In a team setting, an integrated ATS/CRM should allow recruiters and sales team members to collaborate. Notes on a client or candidate should be visible to the team, avoiding duplicate outreach. At the same time, you may want permission controls, for instance, a junior recruiter might access candidate data but not see sensitive client revenue info. A mature platform will let you configure who sees what.
Automation and AI: Looking forward, many modern systems offer AI and automation that can further enhance an ATS/CRM hybrid. This could include AI-driven matching (suggesting candidates for a job from your database), or automated triggers (e.g., when a candidate reaches “Interview” stage, system emails the client a status update automatically). Some platforms even have AI assistants / notetaker that can log call notes or recommend follow-up tasks. While not strictly necessary to get started, these advanced features are becoming more common and can give you an edge by shaving off manual workload.

When evaluating solutions, keep in mind that “they’re two sides of the same coin”, you want the strengths of both ATS and CRM without the headache of juggling separate systems. Many newer recruitment software providers understand this, which is why integrated ATS+CRM platforms are emerging as the go-to choice for agencies. In fact, industry trends in 2025 show that recruitment platforms are evolving into a single place for all candidate and client interactions.

One example is Crew, which positions itself as an ai native ATS+CRM hybrid for recruiting agencies. Tools like Crew offer the combined features we described, from one-click lead importing and outreach sequences to applicant tracking and talent pools, to AI-automations, all in one package. Adopting such an all-in-one solution can eliminate the need to patch together multiple tools, allowing recruiters to focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing placements.

Conclusion: Embracing the ATS/CRM Hybrid in 2025

As we navigate 2025, the recruiters who succeed will be those who excel at both process and people. An ATS on its own optimizes your recruiting process, but it doesn’t foster future opportunities. A CRM on its own helps cultivate leads and relationships, but without an ATS those opportunities can’t be efficiently converted into hires. It’s the combination, the ATS/CRM hybrid approach, that empowers recruiters to cover all bases.

Think of it this way: An ATS is about today’s jobs, while a CRM is about tomorrow’s opportunities. To thrive in a competitive talent market, you need to master both. By integrating a CRM alongside your ATS (or choosing a platform that unites them), you ensure that you’re not only working efficiently on current fills but also constantly seeding the future, growing your network of clients and candidates. This leads to a virtuous cycle: more client leads drive more job orders, robust talent pools enable faster, higher-quality placements, and successful placements in turn attract more clients.

In an era where technology is leveling the playing field, leveraging an ATS/CRM hybrid can be the game-changer that differentiates your recruiting practice. It allows you to be proactive and data-driven, without sacrificing the personal touch that recruiting relies on. The ROI comes in the form of increased placements, stronger business relationships, and time saved on administrative busywork.

Recruiters often say their job is about building relationships. To do that at scale in 2025, you need software that manages relationships as well as processes. Don’t settle for an ATS that only does half the job. It’s time to embrace the ATS+CRM hybrid model and equip yourself with a platform that lets you manage candidates and clients in one place. By doing so, you’ll position yourself to win more business and place more candidates in the year ahead, and that’s a win-win worth investing in.