Recruitment Tech & Automation
Why your Notion setup isn't enough once your recruiting agency starts growing
Chris Allen
Nov 7, 2025
TL;DR
Notion and Airtable might work for solo recruiters starting out, but they quickly fall short once your agency begins to grow.
Agencies relying on manual tools see a 62% drop in effectiveness once their team expands beyond five recruiters.
As operations scale, 68% of agencies using Notion report data silos and workflow fragmentation, making collaboration harder.
Teams with 5+ recruiters on Notion also spend 22% less time actually recruiting, and more time managing spreadsheets and updates.
Happlicant solves these pain points with custom dashboards, in-depth reporting, and built-in team collaboration tools designed specifically for growing recruitment agencies.
The limitations of Notion for growing recruiting agencies
Notion and Airtable are great starting points for small recruiting agencies. They’re flexible, easy to use, and get the job done early on.
But as your agency grows, so do your needs.
That’s where these tools start to show their limits: they weren’t built for the complexity of modern recruitment workflows or team collaboration at scale.
Happlicant, on the other hand, is a purpose-built ATS/CRM designed specifically for growing recruitment agencies. It gives you the structure, automation, and scalability you need to manage more clients, more candidates, and more growth — all without the headaches of patchwork tools.
The growing pains of Notion and Airtable for recruiting agencies
With 71% of job seekers feeling optimistic about the job market and 91% of staffing leaders expecting growth of 10–20% in 2024, the pressure is on, especially for fast-growing agencies still relying on manual tools.
What works for a one- or two-person team quickly starts to crack under the weight of expansion. In fact, productivity drops by over 60% once agencies surpass five recruiters, according to industry data.
I saw this firsthand with a small agency that tried to scale using Notion. As their client list grew, so did the chaos: missed follow-ups, duplicated work, and frustrated recruiters juggling too many spreadsheets. Clients started to feel the strain, too.
It wasn’t a lack of effort holding them back; it was a lack of the right system to support their growth.
Limitations of Notion and Airtable as your agency scales
As agencies expand, 40% of talent acquisition leaders say they struggle to track key performance metrics, largely because their systems are fragmented and disconnected.
For the 57% of staffing agencies focused on temporary and contract placements, the challenge grows even more complex. These workflows demand features like timesheet management, contract tracking, and automated renewals — things that simple Notion templates just can’t handle.
And with over 62 million people employed through staffing agencies worldwide, the sheer volume of candidate and client data makes proper organization and tracking non-negotiable.
In fact, our research found that 68% of growing agencies experience data silos when trying to manage operations across multiple recruiters using Notion.
Once a team starts scaling, these silos can create serious operational pain:
Recruiters waste time duplicating data or chasing updates across separate systems.
Reports become unreliable because the numbers don’t align.
Clients start to lose trust when updates lag or information gets lost between recruiters.
What starts as a flexible solution turns into a bottleneck that slows growth and adds unnecessary stress.
That’s where platforms like Happlicant make the difference.
By consolidating candidate, client, and job data into one intuitive system, Happlicant eliminates silos entirely. Recruiters can collaborate in real time, managers get full visibility into metrics, and agencies can scale confidently — without sacrificing organization or efficiency.
Recognizing the signs that you've outgrown your current system
With contractor hiring expected to rise to 21% in 2024, up from 18% last year, agencies are handling more moving parts than ever before.
But for teams with more than five recruiters, manual systems just can’t keep up, and it shows.
Agencies relying on spreadsheets or Notion-based setups experience 39% higher candidate drop-off rates, often because follow-ups slip through the cracks or key data gets buried in disconnected tools.
The warning signs that you’ve outgrown your current system are easy to spot:
juggling multiple custom databases for different clients,
spending hours reconciling spreadsheets for reports,
or realizing each team member has built their own version of a “tracking system.”
These might work in the short term, but they eventually create more confusion than clarity.
I recently spoke with an agency owner who put it perfectly: they realized they were spending more time managing their Notion setup than actually recruiting.
That moment was a turning point. The system they’d built to help them grow had become the very thing holding them back.
Upgrading to a purpose-built platform like Happlicant gave them the structure, automation, and visibility they needed to get back to what they do best: connecting great people with great opportunities.
Increased manual workarounds and inefficiencies
With 86% of fast-growth agencies running formal referral programs (compared to the 60% industry average), Notion simply can’t handle referral tracking at scale.
Staffing leaders report spending 14.7 hours per week on manual data entry when using general-purpose tools.
For teams of five or more, that adds up fast — agencies using Notion spend 22% less time actually recruiting. At a $75/hour recruiter rate, that’s nearly $57,000 in lost productivity per recruiter each year.
Beyond the wasted time, it also means slower response rates, missed candidates, and fewer placements — all of which directly impact growth.
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Difficulty in maintaining data consistency and accuracy
The recruitment industry runs across three or more distinct product lines, each with its own revenue streams and performance metrics — which means proper tracking is essential.
Yet 41% of recruiters say they need to connect with candidates faster, while 39% cite poor communication as a major reason for candidate drop-off. When systems aren’t connected, these problems only multiply.
I saw this firsthand with an agency that lost one of its biggest clients after repeated data inconsistencies and missed follow-ups caused by their fragmented Notion setup. Recruiters were logging updates in different databases, key information got lost, and client confidence eroded quickly.
It was a tough (but valuable) reminder that data-driven hiring decisions require tools built for recruitment, not repurposed productivity apps.
Once they switched to a purpose-built system like Happlicant, they regained full visibility across all client accounts, improved communication, and rebuilt trust with their clients.
How Happlicant addresses the needs of growing recruiting agencies
Happlicant gives recruitment agencies the visibility and control they need to scale with confidence.
Its customizable dashboards and reporting tools deliver quick, meaningful insights into performance across clients, roles, and recruiters, helping teams make smarter, data-backed decisions.
Everything happens in one centralized platform, making team collaboration and communication effortless. Real-time updates keep everyone on the same page, while role-based access control ensures the right people see the right data at the right time.
As your agency grows, Happlicant grows with you. Its scalable design, customizable workflows, and seamless integrations adapt to your evolving needs.
And with dedicated customer support always on hand, you’ll never feel like you’re navigating that growth alone.
Making the transition from Notion or Airtable to Happlicant
Making the move to Happlicant starts with understanding your agency’s unique needs and matching them to the platform’s powerful, easy-to-use features.
The Happlicant team guides you through a smooth migration and onboarding process, ensuring all your existing data, candidates, and client records transfer safely and seamlessly. Dedicated support and tailored training help your team hit the ground running, so adoption feels natural.
I recently worked with a sales-focused recruitment agency that saw their productivity double after switching from Notion to Happlicant. With customized workflows and built-in automation, their recruiters spent less time on admin and more time doing what really matters: nurturing relationships, closing placements, and growing their business.
The benefits of switching to a purpose-built ATS/CRM
Switching to a purpose-built ATS/CRM like Happlicant can completely transform how your agency operates.
Recruiters instantly gain efficiency and focus, freeing up time for high-value work like building client relationships and closing more placements. With clean, consistent data, decisions become faster and smarter, and communication with both clients and candidates feels smoother and more personal.
The result? A better experience for everyone involved.
Happlicant’s scalable design grows with your agency, eliminating the need for constant manual fixes or system overhauls. On average, clients see a 27% increase in placements after making the switch from general-purpose tools, which is proof that when your software is built for recruiting, everything else just clicks into place.
Embrace the power of a purpose-built ATS/CRM for your agency's growth
As your recruiting agency expands, the cracks in tools like Notion and Airtable start to show. What once felt flexible and convenient soon becomes messy, with scattered data, inconsistent reporting, and workflows that slow your team down instead of speeding things up.
These growing pains are a clear sign that it’s time for a system built to handle the real demands of recruitment.
By switching to a purpose-built ATS/CRM like Happlicant, you can finally eliminate the inefficiencies holding you back. Happlicant gives you the scalability, automation, and clarity you need to grow with confidence.
It’s built specifically for recruiting agencies, so instead of wrestling with workarounds, you can focus on doing what you do best: connecting great people with great opportunities.
See Happlicant's software in action
Jump on a quick demo call to see how Happlicant's ATS/CRM can save you time and help you grow your agency.
