An agency does not need to buy a list to know who is hiring: companies say so themselves, by publishing their job ads. An ad online means an identified need, a department concerned, often a named manager, and an implicit deadline.
So the problem is not finding the signal, it is acting on it before it goes cold. Without a tool, the ad spotted at nine in the morning becomes an open tab, then a line in a spreadsheet, then nothing.
Four moves, all from the page you are looking at.
A job ad on LinkedIn, France Travail, Apec, HelloWork or Indeed, in your specialism or your region.
From the LinkedIn company page or the Pappers record: legal name, website, domain, contact details, account type.
From the ad itself, with the label, the type, the sales stage and the amount. The matching role can be created straight after.
A history of every exchange on the record, multichannel sequences and scheduled follow-ups until you get a reply.
On a job ad, the plugin opens an Opportunity tab pre-filled with the details of the ad. You add the amount and the sales stage, you confirm, and the deal is in your pipeline. The same screen lets you create the matching role.
Example of creation from an ad. Fictional data.
On a company's LinkedIn page, or on the profile of someone who works there, the plugin shows what your CRM already knows: prospect in progress, active client, last invoice issued. Enough to avoid approaching an account a colleague is already handling.
The four alert cases. Fictional data.
An account approached once is not an account won. Exchanges attach to the contact, whatever the channel, and follow-ups run on their own until you get a reply.
Example sequence. Fictional data.
Six situations from an agency's business development.
A published ad is a stated need. The plugin turns it into an opportunity while you are reading it, instead of a tab left open for three days.
From a LinkedIn company page or a Pappers record, the account arrives with its official details, with no manual entry and no guesswork on the legal name.
The contact spotted on LinkedIn joins the account concerned, whether it already exists or is created on the fly, with their details and your notes.
The alerts displayed inside LinkedIn tell you whether the company is already a client, already being approached or already invoiced. Two consultants no longer go after the same account on the same day.
A reminder task from the very first contact, then a sequence chaining email, SMS and LinkedIn until you get a reply, stopping on its own when it comes.
The won deal opens the assignment, the candidates arrive in the same record, and invoicing picks up the terms you agreed.
LinkedIn, France Travail, Apec, HelloWork and Indeed, plus Pappers and LinkedIn for the accounts.
The CRM, the plugin and invoicing are included in Nicoka CABS, alongside the ATS and AI.
Agencies, IT services firms and staffing agencies grow their commercial activity in Nicoka CABS.
What we get asked about prospecting in Nicoka CABS
Prospecting for a recruitment agency is nothing like prospecting for a software vendor. It is not about convincing a company that it has a problem, but about arriving at the right moment on a problem it has already made public. That moment has a name: the publication of a job ad.
When a company publishes a role, it says three things: the need exists, it is budgeted, and it has a deadline. It often names the department concerned, the level of responsibility, and on professional networks the person doing the hiring. That is more qualified information than any bought prospect list holds, and it is free.
The difficulty lies elsewhere: that signal goes stale. An ad seen three days too late means a competitor already mandated, or a role filled internally. Speed of handling matters more than volume of contacts.
In most agencies the chain breaks in the same place. The consultant spots the ad in their browser, but their CRM is somewhere else. They leave the tab open, note the company name in a spreadsheet, promise themselves they will find the right person later. By the end of the week, half the signals spotted have led to no action at all, and nobody can say which ones.
Bringing the tool to where the signal is removes that loss. The Nicoka plugin creates the account from LinkedIn or Pappers, the contact from the decision-maker's profile, and the opportunity from the ad itself, with a reminder task scheduled straight after.
The second pitfall of agency prospecting is the misstep: calling a company a colleague has been working for three weeks, or pitching to a client you invoiced last month. The alerts displayed inside LinkedIn settle that by showing the account status as it stands in your database, with the date of the last invoice if there is one. In parallel, namesake detection stops you duplicating a contact you already know.
A first contact is almost never enough. The difference between an agency that fills its pipeline and one that wears itself out often comes down to the follow-up: the one that goes out on the fifth day, then the eighth, on another channel, without anyone having to think about it. Multichannel sequences chain email, SMS, LinkedIn message and a call task, stop by themselves on a reply, and leave every exchange on the contact record thanks to the multichannel inbox. You then measure what was opened and what got a reply, so you can adjust the angle rather than the volume.
A won deal should open a recruitment, not a new file in another tool. The opportunity pipeline gives the commercial view, the assignment takes over on the application trackingside, and invoicing picks up the terms you agreed. The client account, meanwhile, keeps the whole history, from the first exchanges to the fees collected.
Go further: multichannel inbox, candidate sourcing, pricing.