Case Study
Why a Tech Recruiting Agency Replaced 3 Enterprise Data Vendors with Crustdata
Company
A Mid-Size Tech Recruiting Agency
use case
Candidate Sourcing Quality
company overview
A 40-person tech recruiting agency that places engineering and product roles at VC-backed startups and mid-market technology companies. The agency works with clients across the US, sourcing candidates from a proprietary database built over eight years of placements.
scale
40 recruiters, 200K+ candidates in database
The agency's recruiters had the candidates and the client relationships, but connecting the two required hours of manual company research and three separate tool subscriptions.
The agency's ATS held over 200,000 candidate records built across eight years of sourcing and placements.
Every candidate record included employer names, titles, and dates, but nothing about the companies themselves. Funding stage, headcount, growth rate, and headquarters location were all missing
When a client asked for "engineers from Series B companies scaling their engineering team in the US," recruiters had the candidates in their database but no way to filter for those company attributes
Clients specified company stage, growth rate, and headcount range, but the ATS could only search on title, location, and employer name, so every brief started with manual research before a single candidate could be shortlisted
Qualifying candidates against client briefs required recruiters to piece together company context from multiple external sources.
Each candidate's employer history sent recruiters into Crunchbase for funding data, PitchBook for investor context, and news sites for recent growth signals, each behind its own subscription
A 10-person shortlist meant toggling between three or four tools per candidate's employer history, spending 15 to 20 minutes of research per company
The agency paid for multiple data subscriptions that each covered a fraction of what they needed, and recruiters still had to stitch the full picture together manually
The research hours added up across every open role the agency worked.
Senior recruiters spent their mornings researching companies instead of speaking with candidates or building client relationships
The time from client brief to qualified shortlist stretched to days because company qualification happened one record at a time
Every hour spent verifying funding rounds and headcount numbers was an hour not spent on candidate calls and client conversations
The Company Enrichment API returned 250+ datapoints per company: funding stage, total raised, headcount, HQ location, and growth rates
A bulk enrichment run covered the 200,000+ distinct company records in the ATS, adding structured, filterable data to employer names that previously had no context
Recruiters now search "candidates who worked at Series B companies in the US with 100 to 500 employees" directly in their ATS, instead of manually researching each company across multiple tools over several days
The People Enrichment API added 90+ datapoints to candidate records: full career history with employer details, skills, education, seniority progression, and the role descriptions candidates wrote for each position, so recruiters can assess actual impact and responsibilities without opening a separate profile
Recruiters see where a candidate worked and what that company looked like at the time. A Series B with 80 people reads differently from a public company with 5,000, and that context changes how a recruiter evaluates the same job title
A candidate who joined a 50-person startup that grew to 300 during their time is now distinguishable from a candidate at a company that stayed flat, without any manual research
New candidates sourced through browser extensions or bulk uploads are enriched automatically on ingestion, with no manual research step
Company records refresh automatically. A company that closed a Series B last month already shows the new funding stage and post-raise headcount, so recruiters stop second-guessing what they see in the ATS
Candidates on every shortlist match client criteria for company stage, size, and growth profile because those attributes are now searchable fields in the ATS
Rework cycles from rejected shortlists dropped because filtering catches company-fit mismatches before a candidate is ever presented to the client
Clients return with new briefs and extend retainer relationships because the agency consistently delivers shortlists that match their company-level criteria on the first pass
Recruiters no longer toggle between Crunchbase, PitchBook, and news sites to qualify each company. That two to three hours per day shifts to candidate calls and client conversations, the activities that generate placement fees
Junior recruiters who previously relied on senior colleagues to identify which companies fit a brief can now filter on those attributes directly, closing the experience gap without additional training
The agency cancelled three separate data tool subscriptions after Crustdata's enrichment covered funding, headcount, growth, and firmographic data in a single API
One integration replaced a manual workflow that involved four different tools, reducing both subscription costs and the time recruiters spent switching between them
Fewer subscriptions means lower fixed costs, and the budget previously split across three vendors now covers higher API volume from a single source