Case Study: Using noCRM.io as a recruitment system

This case study shows how USA Sports Group used noCRM.io as a recruitment system and improved their own sales pipeline.

Last update on January 1

Company Name:	USA Sport Group
Sector:	Events Organizer
Number of Staff:	50s
noCRM.io Edition:	Expert

An Interview with Simon March, Chief Operations Officer at USA Sport Group

Simon March is the COO of the USA Sport Group, an organization providing summer sport camps and year-round sport programs across the North East Coast for children aged 3-14. Simon oversees a team of 50 full-time on-site office staff working in several departments to ensure everything runs smoothly. In addition to using noCRM.io for their outbound sales, they also implement our lead management as a recruitment system.

We had the chance to speak with Simon about how he customized noCRM.IO according to his business needs, his experiences with traditional CRMs, and how using noCRM has helped streamline the sales and recruitment processes.

Here are some insights focussing on the recruitment and HR side.

noCRM.io: Hi Simon, and thanks for taking the time today. Can you tell us something about USA Sport Group?

Simon: USA Sport Group recruits around 180-200 sports coaches every year to run our dedicated camps in schools and summer camps. With 40,000 children over the course of a year attending one of our programs, there is a lot to do internally: from the organization of the program to hiring staff, getting on-site coaches on board, selling the program and marketing the program. Not only do we use noCRM.io for our sales, but also for recruitment and HR purposes.

Not only do we use noCRM.io for our sales, but also for recruitment and HR purposes.

noCRM.io: What’s your recruitment process? How did you adapt noCRM to that particular need?

Simon* All applicants need to be carefully reviewed and selected, for which we’ve adapted the sales steps inside noCRM according to our recruitment process. As soon as an applicant applies, the screening process starts, followed by a phone interview, a face to face interview, the sending out of a contract and the employment of the applicant.

Usually, the way this works is we reach out to a city telling them we want to run a tennis, soccer or any other sort of sports program. Then we start looking into hiring staff, getting the equipment, market the program to the parents in the area who then pay us, and we provide the program.

noCRM.io: What sales steps do you use in this matter and how do you manage your recruitment process?

Simon: We were using the system for sales which was going well, but as our outside sales process was slightly different, we started to use the software as a recruitment platform, which turned out to be super successful.

We have different applicants coming from our website applying for various jobs such as management roles, coaching for the summer or internships in the office. When people apply for jobs, it goes automatically into our CRM system as an unassigned lead with their resume already attached and one member in our team who is in charge of managing the applicants then tags them accordingly, with specific categories which we have all set up.

If we send out contracts, we can easily attach them, and I can search by name, see the contract, look into the salary we will pay them, who interviewed them;

For example, we would use tags such as “football”, “lacrosse”, “tennis” and the leads would then get assigned out to different members of our team who deal with seasonal staff, management or coaches. We then add the various steps along the way and let the applicants go through the sales funnel. If we send out contracts, we can easily attach them, and I can search by name, see the contract, look into the salary we will pay them, who interviewed them; everything I need to know about the candidate from start to finish.

I also get great insights of how many people we have interviewed, how many people we offered a position but didn’t accept the offer, how many applicants we actually hired over the course of a year. All of this was getting done in Excel before, which was an absolute nightmare.

noCRM.io: How did you manage this in Excel?

Simon: We were using spreadsheets before, but I found them quite frustrating as they are one dimensional. From my point of view as a manager, it was painful as I couldn’t see anything – there was no accountability.

It's difficult if the person using the spreadsheet doesn't keep it updated. It worked when we were a smaller team of only two to three users. But as we grew at a rapid rate, spreadsheets and Excel files didn’t work for us anymore.

noCRM.io: How did you then find out about noCRM?

Simon: I was looking around for other options and came across you guys. After playing around with it for a little bit, we started to use the service because it is so simple.

I just remember going to the website and thinking, “this is quite flexible”. And it was, it was cheap, and more importantly, it wasn’t complicated.

Also, it wasn’t hard for me to train other people to use the system because if you use it at a basic level, it really is simple. And now I can just log in every morning and check how many unassigned leads we have got. Everything is logged, which means it's so easy to manage and to keep a clear overview. It has been fantastic!

noCRM.io: Have you ever deployed a different CRM before starting to use our lead management software?

Simon: We were looking into Sugar CRM but found the software way too complicated. There were so many options and so it took us more time getting to know the software and starting to build it around our needs than actually do the sales which is what we didn’t want.

noCRM.io: How do you use the software for your outside sales?

Simon: Very similar. We have about 10 users on that team who are working on different projects, as our leads come in from several sources like our website for instance. For cold calling purposes, we use the prospecting list a lot as this is very helpful when our sales team has to call hundreds of organizations to find out if they would be interested in using our service.

For cold calling purposes, we use the prospecting list

We are also making use of the follow-up system which is really great. That way our salespeople always stay on top of their To-Do’s and know exactly what calls they have to make and when to follow-up with a client. We use it in a pretty simple way, but it works and really fits our needs.

noCRM.io: What features are particularity important to you and are helping you in your day to day work?

Simon: Looking at the pipeline view is very good for a manager’s point of view thanks to the statuses. I can just filter by “to do’s” or “standby” and know exactly where we are at in the recruitment process. If there are too many people in the “screening process” step, for example, I can find out why applicants haven’t been interviewed yet and that way, assure that no applicant is forgotten or gets lost.

The tags are great too. As we have so many people apply, by using those tags it is very easy to filter and access all the important information needed.

noCRM.io: How did you customize noCRM? Did you integrate it with any 3rd party apps?

Simon: We haven’t integrated anything really, apart from Formstack which notifies us when a person applies and then funnels into the system as an unassigned lead.

noCRM.io: All in all, how did our solution help your business? Did you have any KPI’s that changed ever since you used our software?

Simon: It saved us hours and hours of time, it streamlined the process, and therefore we can get more applicants. We can interview them quicker and ultimately hire more people because of it. As it is such a more streamlined process, people don’t get missed anymore and don’t fall into this black hole of forgotten applicants.

We know exactly when they applied, whether we followed up with them and what the current status is. It makes my job more accountable, and I can quickly see if someone is not doing their job correctly.

It has definitely made our recruitment process a lot easier and slashed it in half. It saved us a lot of money as well because we have fewer people involved and everything is managed through the system. A big benefit for us!

noCRM.io: Is there anything you would like to see implemented?

Simon: On top of my head there is not a lot I can think of right now. […] we are very happy with the way we’re using the system. Just don’t make it too complicated! The beauty of the system really is that you kept it very simple.

noCRM.io: Thank you very much for your time, Simon. It was an absolute pleasure speaking with you.

About Simon:

Originally born and bred in South London, Simon left the UK 16 years ago to coach football and is now living and working in New Jersey, close to New York City, where they operate most of their business. USA Sports Group runs their programs all over the so-called “Tri-state area” including New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts and other northeast states in the US.

Simon and his team have been using noCRM.io since the beginning of 2015, tailoring the solution to meet their needs and over this period they have created over 2200 leads inside the system.

We want to thank Simon March and the USA Sport Group for taking the time to answer our questions and discuss their views on You noCRM.io

Want to give it a try? noCRM.io is available online and can be subscribed to on a monthly basis without engagement starting at 10 USD$ / user. Start your 15-day trial today.

The noCRM.io Team

Related Reading What is the Best CRM for Small Businesses?

Recruitment system 50-100 USA