CRM for Recruitment Agencies: From Client to Mandate

A CRM for a recruitment agency keeps the two halves of the job in one flow: selling to the client (contact, proposal, contract) and delivering the search (mandate, candidates, shortlist, placement). Setting it up takes a sales pipeline that mirrors how your deals really move, services with hourly or fixed fees, a mandate template with the stages of a search, and a rule that turns a signed contract into a mandate with no manual handoff. The rest is the habit of updating each candidate in the right place.

If today your clients live in a spreadsheet, your proposals in a folder of documents and your candidates across email, chats and notes, by the end of this guide you will have a written, configured process that runs from the first conversation with a company to the placed candidate, readable by the whole team.

What you need before you start

• The list of services you sell: contingency search, retained search for senior roles, hourly HR consulting, assessments, onboarding support. For each one, how you charge for it today.
• Your commercial terms in writing: fixed fee, a percentage of the role's salary, hourly, with a retainer on signature and the balance on placement. If they change from client to client with no rule, write down at least the two or three formulas you really use.
• The stages of a search as your team runs it, from the client brief to closing the mandate.
• The list of people on the team and who does what: who sells, who recruits, who does both.
• Admin access to the CRM, so you can create stages, services and automations.

Decision	Options	Practical effect
Fee	fixed / percentage / hourly	decides how the proposal is written and when you invoice
Mandate stages	same for all / different per service	separate templates if retained search follows other steps
Candidates	one item per candidate inside the mandate	each profile keeps its own history, status and feedback
Owner	one per mandate / sales plus recruiter pair	it is always clear who answers the client

Step 1: build the sales pipeline

Write down your deal stages as they really happen. For a small recruitment firm a typical sequence is: contact, first meeting, needs gathered, proposal sent, contract signed. Five stages are almost always enough; if a stage stays empty for months, it probably does not exist.

Set up the stages in the pipeline. In Flusia the sales pipeline is a kanban view with customisable stages: each company is a card you move from column to column, with meeting notes and the contact person's details. If you want a refresher on designing stages, read the sales pipeline guide.

Record the reasons deals drop out. "Hired internally", "chose another supplier" and "search postponed" are different signals. After a few months they tell you whether the problem is price, timing or the kind of role.

At this point every company you are talking to sits in exactly one column, and anyone on the team knows where the deal stands without asking.

Step 2: prepare the proposal, fixed fee or hourly

Create your services with their rates. One service for each thing you sell: "contingency search", "retained search", "hour of HR consulting". Set the rate and terms for each, so the proposal is built from a list instead of being rewritten every time.

Build the proposal from the client record. In Flusia proposals can be hourly too, with services, rates and terms; the feature is described on the quotes page. In the proposal, spell out the role you are searching for, the stages included, the payment terms and what happens if the placed candidate leaves in the first months, if you offer a guarantee. If proposals are your weak spot, start with how to write a quote.

Send the proposal and move the card to "proposal sent". From now on the deal has a date and a value, and you know when it is time to call the contact again if they go quiet.

Step 3: on signature, the mandate creates itself

This is where most recruitment firms lose information: sales closes the deal, and the recruiter gets the brief by email, in pieces.

Prepare a mandate template. List the stages of the search as tasks with deadlines: client brief, job profile, sourcing, first screening, interviews, shortlist, presentation to the client, client interviews, offer to the candidate, placement. The moments that matter to the client (presenting the shortlist, for example) become milestones.

Link signature to mandate creation. In Flusia, with automations, when the contract is signed the recruitment project is created automatically with tasks, milestones and deadlines, and the team gets its assigned tasks. How projects work is described on the projects page.

Test it with a dummy contract. Sign a test proposal and check three things: the mandate carries the right client name and role, every task has an owner, and deadlines start from the signature date.

If you want to see this handoff already set up for recruitment work, have a look at how Flusia handles it for HR and consulting firms: the 30-day free trial is there too.

Step 4: track candidates inside the mandate

Add each candidate as a task in the mandate. In Flusia candidates are managed as tasks inside the recruitment project: each one has notes, status, feedback and a timeline. A profile's history (who spoke to them, what they said, what the client thinks) sits next to the mandate, not in someone's inbox.

Use simple statuses, and always the same ones. For example: to contact, under review, interview booked, shortlisted, presented, rejected, placed. If every recruiter invents their own, within a month nobody can read anyone else's.

Write the feedback straight after the interview. Two lines are enough: strengths, doubts, availability, salary expectations. When the client asks "why didn't you put that profile forward?", the answer is already written.

At this point every mandate shows how many candidates are still in the running, at what stage, and what is missing before the shortlist goes out.

Step 5: keep the client updated and close the mandate

Set an update rhythm. One message a week on where the search stands saves you the "where are we?" calls. In Flusia you can also message the client contact on WhatsApp from the CRM: the chat stays with the company and linked to the client, even if the recruiter changes.

Check the workload on the dashboard. The dashboard shows active searches and team workload: if one person is running six mandates and another two, you see it before a search slows down.

Close the mandate and hand over for invoicing. Once the candidate is placed, tick the final milestone and pass accounts what they need to invoice: the agreed amount, any retainer already collected, the start date. If the proposal had a retainer and a balance, make both of them milestones of the mandate from the start, so nobody has to remember them.

Variant: firms that only do recruitment

Here almost every contract is a fixed fee or a percentage, and the value lies in closed searches. Keep one mandate template with the standard stages and a short sales pipeline. The number to check every week is how many searches are open and at which stage: if many are stuck at the shortlist, the bottleneck is sourcing, not sales.

Variant: firms that also sell hourly HR consulting

When assessments, organisational reviews or ongoing support sit alongside recruitment, you need hourly proposals and projects that differ from a search mandate. Create a separate project template for consulting, with looser tasks and deadlines per deliverable. The setup is close to the one described for professional firms, with one extra rule: the client record stays single. A client who buys a search today may buy consulting tomorrow, and whoever looks after them needs the whole history.

Variant: the solo headhunter

On your own the challenge is not coordinating a team, it is not forgetting anything while you run three searches and two negotiations at once. Three pipeline stages (contact, proposal sent, signed), a short mandate template and the discipline of written feedback after every interview are enough. The automation on signature still pays off: that is exactly the moment when, working alone, a step gets skipped.

Candidate data: mind the privacy side

CVs, interviews and assessments are personal data, and recruiters handle a lot of it. In general terms it makes sense to collect only what the search needs, give candidates a clear privacy notice, limit access to the people working on the mandate and decide how long profiles are kept. Official guidance on processing personal data is available from your data protection authority; in Italy that is the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali (garanteprivacy.it).

Common mistakes

Clients and candidates in the same list. Mixing the companies that pay you with the people who apply makes the pipeline unreadable. Clients live in the sales pipeline, candidates inside the mandate they belong to.

A brief passed on by word of mouth. If sales describes the mandate to the recruiter in the corridor, half the terms get lost. Needs, role and terms belong in the proposal and reach the mandate on signature.

Payment terms settled after the search. Retainer, balance and what happens if the placement does not work out go in the proposal. Deciding them afterwards turns every close into a negotiation.

Flusia for recruitment firms

Flusia is an Italian CRM for small and mid-sized businesses that keeps in one place a kanban sales pipeline with customisable stages, proposals that can be hourly with services, rates and terms, recruitment projects created on contract signature with tasks, milestones and deadlines, candidates with notes, status and feedback, a dashboard of active searches and WhatsApp inside the CRM. It is built for small teams that today work across spreadsheets, email and chats. You can try it free for 30 days, no credit card required.

Frequently asked questions

Does a three-person recruitment firm need a CRM? Yes, if several people work on the same clients or the same mandates. With three people the problem is not volume, it is knowing who spoke to which candidate and what was promised to the client.

Can I manage candidates in the CRM? In Flusia candidates are managed as tasks inside the recruitment project, each with notes, status, feedback and a timeline.

Can I send both hourly and fixed fee proposals? Yes. Services are set up with rates and terms, hourly included, and you build the proposal by picking them.

Can the mandate be created automatically on signature? Yes. With automations, when the contract is signed the recruitment project is created with tasks, milestones and deadlines already in place.

How long it takes

Pipeline and services take a couple of hours to set up. The mandate template with the search stages takes half a day, mostly to agree on candidate statuses as a team. Within a normal working week your first real mandate runs through the new process.

This is general guidance, including on candidate data: for your specific situation, check with your adviser.

The next step is to try it on a real mandate: see the Flusia page for HR and consulting firms and try the process for 30 days.