When recruiters spot a promising candidate, they jump into action only to realize halfway through that someone else on the team already reached out. Or worse, that the same candidate is in the system under three different entries. It happens more often than you’d think.
In fact, staffing databases can be cluttered with duplicates that waste time, muddy reporting, and make CRMs feel clunky instead of helpful.
So why is this such a persistent issue? Traditional deduplication tools do exist, but they usually rely on exact matches or limited logic. That means they often miss inconsistencies caused by human error, like name variations, outdated contact info, or inconsistent data entry.
That is where Newbury’s Field-Level Merge comes in. Our intelligent deduplication solution is built specifically for the staffing industry. It helps clean up your systems, work more efficiently, and avoid embarrassing candidate missteps.
We will break down how duplicate data impacts productivity, why the standard approach doesn’t cut it, and how Newbury’s smarter tech helps your team stay focused on what matters: building relationships, not wrangling records.
The Hidden Cost of Duplicate Data
Duplicate data is your hidden drain. It clutters your CRM, wastes recruiter hours, and chips away at your bottom line. Duplicate records are not just entries on a spreadsheet, but you can think of them like background noise in a conversation: What makes you miss important details? Here’s what you should expect when you have duplicate data:
1. Time Drain
Every duplicate piece of data means spending more time cleaning up. Recruiters spend hours manually updating records, second-guessing contact info, or chasing down team members for clarification. It adds up.
Worse, this clean-up often takes up the time that could have been used for more core business activities. This pressure can stretch your team thin, and leave them to neglect their core activities.
2. Lost Revenue
When candidate profiles are fragmented across multiple records, it’s easy to miss key details or miss the candidate entirely. Delayed submissions and miscommunication can cost you placements. In fact, studies have shown that firms lose at least $12.9 million a year on average due to data mismatches and inefficiencies.1
3. Poor Candidate Experience
Duplicate outreach or outdated info leads to awkward conversations, irrelevant job matches, and a sense that your agency is not paying attention. This is not a great look for relationship-driven businesses. All of this adds up to recruiter burnout, lower team productivity, and risks to your firm’s reputation. And the worst part? Most of it could be avoided with better data management.
Why Traditional Tools Fall Short
Most CRMs offer basic deduplication tools. However, for staffing firms, those out-of-the-box options often create more problems than they solve.
- All-or-nothing merging: You either merge records and risk losing valuable info, or don’t, and let the clutter grow.
- No control over what gets kept or lost: You can’t always decide which email, resume, or notes are preserved.
- Poor visibility into record context: Tools may not show who last touched the record or what activity is tied to it.
- Generic match logic: Name + email matching might work for e-commerce, but not for candidates with nicknames, multiple emails, or overlapping work histories.
That is why your staffing teams need something built with their workflows and data realities in mind.
How Newbury’s Merge Tool Transforms Your Recruiting Operations
Implementing Newbury’s Merge Tool is a powerful way to streamline your recruiting operations. When your candidate data is unified and up to date, your team can focus on matching top talent instead of wrestling with messy records.
Conversely, relying on fragmented databases and duplicate profiles only creates bottlenecks, frustrates recruiters, and risks losing great candidates. To see exactly how Newbury’s Merge Tool revolutionizes your workflow, here are the key ways it transforms your recruiting operations.
Field-Level Merging: Preserve Your Most Valuable Data
Newbury’s field-level merging is one of the biggest game changers for Bullhorn in the staffing industry. This feature gives recruiters granular control over which parts of a candidate profile to keep, combine, or update, without losing valuable context.
With traditional deduplication tools, merging records often means losing key data, like the most recent resume, the best phone number, or important notes from a client call. Newbury’s field-level merging flips that script. Instead of forcing you to choose one full record over another, it lets you cherry-pick the best fields across all versions.
You can retain the strongest contact info, preserve a candidate’s work history, and keep ownership details intact, all in one unified profile.
And while the tool offers high-level visibility for managers, individual recruiters still have full control over their own records. For example, a recruiting lead might see a dashboard view of all duplicate cleanups across the team, while each recruiter decides what to keep or discard on a case-by-case basis.
Accelerate Placements with Clean Candidate Data
Clean data is critical for high-performing recruiting teams. Duplicate records slow down workflows, create confusion, and waste valuable time, especially when speed is important for winning placements.
With duplicate records out of the way, recruiters can focus on what matters: finding the right match and getting candidates in front of clients fast. No more toggling between profiles, manually cross-referencing resumes, or hesitating over conflicting notes.
By eliminating clutter and creating a single source of truth for each candidate, Newbury enables cleaner searches, faster decisions, and a smoother handoff between recruiters and account managers. And that speed directly impacts revenue.
Read More: Harnessing Data Visualization and Predictive Analytics to Enhance Strategic Decision-Making
Deliver a Superior Candidate Experience
Delivering a consistent candidate experience starts with clean, centralized data. Recruiters need to know where a candidate has been, what has already been shared, and what comes next. With fragmented or duplicate records, that kind of continuity breaks down.
Consider this common scenario: A software engineer receives calls from two different recruiters at your firm about the same role, three days apart. The second recruiter has no record of the previous conversation.
When the candidate mentions the earlier call, the recruiter awkwardly responds, “I don’t see any notes about that in our system.” These moments erode trust instantly. Your firm appears disorganized, and the candidate questions whether their application will receive proper attention.
Newbury’s merge tool ensures each candidate has one unified profile. Notes, resumes, communication history, and preferences all exist in one place, easily accessible to every recruiter on the team. As candidates move through the funnel or shift between recruiters, the handoff remains seamless.
Boost Team Efficiency and Collaboration
Boosting internal efficiency starts with eliminating redundant work. When teams are working from duplicate records, it is easy for multiple recruiters to chase the same candidate. This wastes time and creates confusion across roles.
Newbury’s merge tool consolidates records into a single source of truth, giving everyone clear visibility into candidate status, activity, and ownership. Sourcers, recruiters, and sales teams can confidently pass candidates between stages without duplicating effort or losing critical context.
With shared access to the most up-to-date information, hand-offs become smoother and collaboration becomes easier. Everyone knows who’s doing what, and no one’s stepping on each other’s toes. By working from one clean, centralized system, your team moves faster, stays aligned, and operates as a cohesive unit.
Make Better Decisions with Accurate Reporting
Accurate reporting is essential for staffing firms to track performance, spot trends, and make informed decisions. Yet dirty data—duplicate candidate profiles, inconsistent fields, and incomplete records—will mislead even the best reports.
The impact goes beyond administrative headaches. Your quarterly talent pipeline shows 15 qualified Java developers ready for placement, but the reality might be just 5 developers with multiple profiles. This discrepancy leads to misinformed resource allocation and unrealistic revenue projections. Your team invests time sourcing a skill set you have sufficient coverage for, while neglecting genuine gaps in your candidate pool.
Newbury’s merge tool helps teams align fields and remove duplicates, so reports reflect actual business activity. With consolidated candidate profiles, teams can track true submittal-to-hire ratios, identify top-performing sources, and measure recruiter productivity with confidence.
Read More: How to Achieve High Quality Data for your Staffing and Recruiting Firm
Clean data, faster placements: unlock your team’s potential
By eliminating duplicate records and centralizing candidate profiles, Newbury Partners’ field-level merge tool gives your team the clarity they need to work efficiently. Contact us today to learn how the field-level merge tool can help you streamline your Bullhorn CRM, improve team collaboration, and enhance the candidate experience.
Reference
1. Data Quality: Best Practices for Accurate Insights. www.gartner.com/en/data-analytics/topics/data-quality.
