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Client Management

Client Management gives you a CRM-style pipeline to track company relationships from the moment you discover them to the point where they become active clients. It bridges the gap between finding companies through Client Discovery and converting them into paying clients. Without structured management, even the best leads discovered through search can fall through the cracks.

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Why Pipeline Management Matters

Recruitment business development is a numbers game with a long sales cycle. At any given time, you may be tracking dozens of potential clients at different stages. Without a structured system, it is easy to:
  • Lose track of companies you intended to follow up with — promising leads slip through the cracks when they are only in your memory or scattered across spreadsheets.
  • Forget context from previous interactions when you reach out again — nothing kills a relationship faster than asking questions you already asked.
  • Miss the optimal timing for follow-up because there is no systematic tracking — a company you contacted two weeks ago may need a follow-up today, but without tracking you will not know.
  • Duplicate effort when colleagues in your agency reach out to the same company independently — creating a poor impression and wasting everyone’s time.
  • Lack visibility into pipeline health — without aggregated data, you cannot tell if you have enough prospects, if your conversion rate is healthy, or where your pipeline is stuck.
Recruitier’s Client Management solves these problems by giving you a single place to track all your client relationships with full context, shared across your team.

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The Client Lifecycle

Every client relationship in Recruitier follows a natural progression through defined stages:
1

Discovery

You find a potential client through Client Search. The company appears in your search results based on their hiring activity, industry, location, and other criteria. At this point, you have identified them as a potential opportunity but have not taken action yet. The company exists as a GlobalCompany record in the system.
2

Track / Save

You click Track Company to add the company to your pipeline. This creates a personal Company record linked to the GlobalCompany data, giving you a workspace to manage the relationship. The company enters your pipeline at the Prospect stage. This is the moment your personal CRM relationship with the company begins.
3

Research and Prepare

Using the company detail page, you review their job postings, hiring trends, skills profile, and identify decision makers. You prepare a tailored pitch based on their specific needs — which roles they are hiring for, which skills they need, and how your recruitment services can help. This research phase is what separates effective outreach from generic cold calls.
4

Outreach

You reach out to the identified decision makers. When you send your first outreach, the company status can be updated to Contacted. This can happen automatically when you use Recruitier’s outreach tools, or you can update it manually after sending a message through your own channels.
5

Meeting

If the contact responds positively, you move the company to the Meeting stage. This indicates that a discovery call or in-person meeting has been scheduled or completed. This is a significant milestone — moving from outreach to conversation.
6

Outcome

The relationship reaches one of two outcomes:
  • Won — The company becomes an active client. You have a signed agreement, active placement assignment, or verbal commitment.
  • Lost — The deal did not close. A reason is recorded for future reference and learning. Lost deals can be revisited later if circumstances change.

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What Client Management Includes

Pipeline Tracking

Track each company through your sales pipeline with defined stages: Prospect, Contacted, Meeting, Won, and Lost. Change statuses as relationships progress and maintain a clear picture of your business development funnel.

Company Detail Page

A comprehensive hub for each client showing company info, job postings, contacts, notes, hiring trends, and outreach history all in one place. Everything you need to know about a client is accessible from a single page.

Hiring Trends

Analyze hiring patterns over time to understand when a company is ramping up or slowing down. Use trend data to time your outreach and create data-backed pitches that demonstrate your market knowledge.

Activity Timeline

A chronological record of all interactions with each company — status changes, outreach, notes, meeting records, and more. Provides full context for anyone on your team who touches the relationship.

Decision Makers

Find and track key contacts at target companies using AI-powered discovery. Decision makers are ranked by relevance to recruitment outreach, with automatic LinkedIn profile verification.

Kanban Pipeline View

Visualize your entire client pipeline in a drag-and-drop board view, making it easy to see your BD progress at a glance. Perfect for weekly reviews and team stand-ups.

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Pipeline Stages at a Glance

StageColorMeaning
ProspectGrayPotential client identified, no outreach yet
ContactedBlueFirst outreach has been sent
MeetingPurpleDiscovery call or meeting scheduled/completed
WonGreenDeal closed, active client relationship
LostRedDeal lost or company not interested (reason recorded)
A company marked as Lost can be moved back to Prospect if the opportunity reopens. Recruitment relationships are rarely permanent — a “no” today does not mean “no” forever. Companies that lose their current recruitment partner, start a new hiring initiative, or change their HR leadership may become opportunities again. The system tracks the full history of transitions.

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Agency Collaboration

If you are part of a recruitment agency using Recruitier, Client Management supports team collaboration:
  • Shared pipeline — All team members within an agency can see the same companies in the pipeline. When someone tracks a company, it is visible to the entire team.
  • Activity history — Notes, status changes, and outreach activities are visible to all agency members, providing full context when someone else picks up a relationship or needs to cover for a colleague.
  • Avoid duplicates — When a colleague has already tracked a company, you can see that in the search results (the “saved” indicator), preventing multiple people from reaching out independently and creating a poor impression.
  • Accountability — Every activity in the timeline records who performed it and when, creating clear ownership of actions and follow-ups.
When working in a team, establish conventions for note-taking. Agree on what information to record after each interaction, and use consistent formatting. This makes it easy for any team member to quickly understand the status of a relationship without reading every note in detail.

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Getting Started with Client Management

The typical workflow for a business development recruiter is:
  1. Start with Client Discovery — Use the search tools to find companies matching your criteria. Apply filters for your industry, skills, and location.
  2. Track promising companies — Save 10-20 companies to your pipeline as Prospects. Focus on companies with high hotness scores and recent posting activity.
  3. Research each one — Review their detail pages, job postings, hiring trends, and skills profiles. Understand their specific needs before reaching out.
  4. Identify decision makers — Use the employee discovery tool to find HR contacts and hiring managers. Review the AI-generated relevance rankings to prioritize your contacts.
  5. Begin outreach — Send tailored messages that reference the company’s specific hiring needs. Update statuses as you progress through your outreach.
  6. Maintain the pipeline — Regularly review your pipeline to follow up, update statuses, add notes, and bring in new prospects. A healthy pipeline requires constant maintenance.
A healthy pipeline typically has companies at every stage. If all your companies are stuck at “Prospect”, you need to start more outreach. If all are at “Contacted” with no “Meeting” conversions, you may need to refine your messaging or targeting. If you have many Meetings but few Wins, your sales pitch or qualification criteria might need adjustment. Use the Kanban view to quickly diagnose pipeline health.

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The Relationship Between Discovery and Management

Client Discovery and Client Management are designed to work together seamlessly:
  • Discovery feeds Management — Companies you find through search are tracked into your pipeline. The search results tell you which companies exist and how actively they are hiring; the pipeline tells you where each one stands in your sales process.
  • Management informs Discovery — The “has_saved” indicator in search results shows you which companies are already in your pipeline, preventing duplicate tracking. When reviewing search results, you can immediately see which companies are new opportunities and which are already being worked.
  • View tracking connects both — When you visit a company detail page from search results, the “last viewed” timestamp updates in the search results, helping you track your progress through a batch of search results over multiple sessions.
For detailed information on each Client Management feature, explore the pages in this section using the navigation or the cards above.

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Advanced

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How Client Management Works Under the Hood

Client Management operates on a two-entity architecture:
  1. GlobalCompany: The shared, enriched record representing a real-world company. Contains company name, LinkedIn URL (unique), website domain (unique), description, industry, location, headquarters, founded year, employee count, LinkedIn ID, and enrichment tracking fields. This record is shared across all users.
  2. Company: Your personal relationship record, linked to a GlobalCompany. Contains client_status (prospect/contacted/meeting/won), client_status_changed_at (timestamp of last status transition), new_jobs_notifications (whether to alert on new job postings), favorited, deleted, and other CRM workflow fields. This record is owned by you (or your agency).
When you “Track” a company, the system creates a Company entity linked to the existing GlobalCompany. Multiple users/agencies can independently track the same GlobalCompany with different Company records, each maintaining their own pipeline status, notes, and activity history.

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Activity Tracking Architecture

Every interaction with a tracked company creates a ClientCompanyActivity record that includes:
  • activity_type: One of status_change, note, outreach_sent, meeting_scheduled, contact_detail_added
  • description: Free-text description of the activity
  • old_status / new_status: For status changes, the previous and new pipeline status
  • extra_data: JSONB field for additional context (e.g., loss reasons for Lost transitions)
These records power the Activity Timeline on the company detail page. They are immutable once created — they cannot be edited or deleted, ensuring a complete audit trail.

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Connection to Other Features

  • Client Search: The search results query checks for existing Company records to show the “saved” indicator. This is a LEFT JOIN against the Company table filtered to your user/agency.
  • Decision Makers: Discovered contacts are stored as GlobalCompanyDecisionMaker records linked to the GlobalCompany. They are shared across all users tracking the same company, but the outreach history is per-user.
  • Job Notifications: When new_jobs_notifications is enabled on a Company record, the system monitors for new scraped jobs at the linked GlobalCompany and sends notifications when new jobs appear.
  • Hiring Trends: The trend chart queries scraped job data grouped by month for the linked GlobalCompany, providing a historical view independent of your pipeline status.

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Power User Tips

  • Track companies early, even if you are not ready to reach out: Tracking creates the Company record that enables notes, activity tracking, and new job notifications. There is no cost to tracking, and having the infrastructure in place means you can add context whenever you encounter information about the company.
  • Use the Lost status actively: Do not let unresponsive companies sit at “Contacted” indefinitely. If you have sent 3-4 follow-ups without response, move them to Lost with a reason. This keeps your pipeline accurate and allows you to revisit them later with fresh context.
  • Monitor new jobs on Won clients: Enable new job notifications for Won clients. When they post new roles, it is a natural follow-up opportunity and a way to expand the relationship.
  • Loss reason analysis: Periodically review your Lost companies by reason. If “already has a recruiter” dominates, consider targeting newer or faster-growing companies. If “no budget” dominates, consider targeting larger companies.

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Business Logic Rules

  • A Company record is always linked to exactly one GlobalCompany.
  • The initial status when tracking is always “Prospect”.
  • Status transitions are validated — not all transitions are allowed (see Status Pipeline).
  • The client_status_changed_at field updates on every status transition, enabling analysis of time spent at each stage.
  • Deleting a tracked company sets a deleted flag rather than removing the record, preserving the activity history.
  • Agency members share Company records — tracking by one member is visible to all.