Can I get my data out of my recruitment CRM?
Almost always yes for the names and the basic fields. The real question is which of the other six categories come with them, in what shape, and whether you can prove it before the week you actually need it.
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Every vendor will tell you the data is yours, and in the ordinary sense they mean it. What that sentence does not settle is whether you can retrieve all of it without their cooperation, how long they take, what the output looks like when it arrives, and whether the parts that took you a decade to accumulate are in there.
The gap between the two is where agencies get hurt. An export that contains every candidate and client and none of the notes, CVs or history is a contact list, and a contact list is not a business. This piece sets out the seven categories, which of them routinely go missing, and the test you can run this month while nothing is at stake.
What counts as your data in a recruitment CRM?
Seven categories, and vendors mean different subsets of them when they say the word. Records, which is candidates, clients, contacts, jobs and placements. Files, which is CVs, right-to-work documents, contracts and anything else attached to a record. Notes and activity, which is the calls, meetings and comments your consultants wrote. Emails and messages exchanged with candidates and clients. Pipeline history, which is who moved to which stage and when. Custom fields, which is everything your agency added because the standard ones did not fit. And configuration, which is your statuses, templates, workflows and user setup.
Records are the easy category and the one an export always contains. Everything after it is a separate question, and asking about each category by name is the only way to get an answer that means anything. A vendor saying yes to a general question about data has not told you whether the CVs come out.
Which parts of the data usually go missing?
Files, notes and email history, in that order. Records export cleanly because they are rows in a table and a spreadsheet holds them comfortably. The other three are large, are stored differently, and often require the vendor to do something specific rather than press a button.
Files are the most common casualty and the most expensive one. A CV export can arrive as a folder of documents with machine names and nothing tying them to the candidates they belong to, which is technically a complete export and practically useless. Ask how the connection between a file and its record is preserved in the output, because reattaching them by hand across a whole database is not work anybody will do.
Notes and activity go missing in a subtler way. They may export as one long text field per record with the dates and the authors collapsed out of it, so you can read a candidate's history but not sort, search or report on it. Pipeline history has the same failure mode, where you get the current stage and lose the dates that would have told you how long anything took.
Does data protection law guarantee I can take my database with me?
Not in the way most people assume. The portability rights in data protection law belong to the individual whose data it is, so a candidate can ask for their own record. Your ability to take the whole database away from your vendor rests on your contract with them rather than on those rights, which is why the contract is the document to read.
What your data processing agreement will normally cover is that the vendor processes the data on your instructions and returns or deletes it at the end of the arrangement. The details that matter are the ones sitting around that sentence: in what format, within what period, at what cost, and how long they keep a copy afterwards. Get those in writing, and take your own legal advice rather than mine, because contracts differ and so does the jurisdiction you are in.
How do you test your CRM export before you need it?
Run a real export this month, while you are not leaving, and open what comes out. This is the whole of the advice and almost nobody does it, because the export is a thing you think about for the first time in the week you have already decided to go, which is the worst possible week to discover a problem.
Do it on a sample rather than the whole database. Pick twenty candidates you know well, run whatever export the system offers, and then check four things. That the fields you actually use are present and filled. That the CVs and documents came out and can be matched to the right person. That the notes retain their dates and authors. That the pipeline history has its dates rather than only a current stage.
If you cannot run an export yourself and have to ask the vendor for one, that is itself a finding, and it is worth knowing now. Note how long they take and what they charge, because that is the figure your migration plan will be built on if you ever move.
Is an API the same as being able to export your data?
No. An API is a way for software to read your data, and it is genuinely useful, but it is not an export in the sense that matters to an agency owner. Using one requires somebody technical, time, and usually a rate limit that turns a large database into a long weekend.
The distinction to hold on to is who can perform the retrieval. An export is something your operations manager can run and open. An API is something a developer can use, at a cost, on a project. A vendor whose only answer to the export question is the API has given you a real capability and also, in practice, a fee and a delay between you and your own records.
What to check, and what a good answer looks like
| Category | What to ask for | A good answer |
|---|---|---|
| Records | A full export of candidates, clients, jobs, placements | Self-service, standard file format, all fields |
| Files | CVs and documents, tied to their records | Files plus an index linking each to a record id |
| Notes and calls | One row per note with date and author | Structured rows, not one collapsed text field |
| Emails | The threads held against records | Included, with dates and both addresses |
| Pipeline history | Stage changes with their dates | Every stage change with its date |
| Custom fields | Your own fields, with their labels | Named as you named them, not as internal codes |
| Configuration | Statuses, templates, workflows, users | Documented, even if it has to be rebuilt |
What to do if the export is not what you expected
Raise it as a support ticket now rather than as a demand later, and put the specific missing category in writing. A request made while you are a happy customer gets a different answer from the same request made during a notice period, and the written trail is useful either way.
If the answer is that a category cannot be exported at all, you have learned the true cost of your current system, and it is higher than the licence. That does not automatically mean leave. It means that any future move carries a known loss, and you can start reducing it deliberately, for instance by making sure new activity is captured somewhere you control as well.
The view I have landed on from doing this with agencies is that the export test belongs in your annual routine, next to checking your insurance. It takes an afternoon, it tells you what your vendor relationship is really made of, and the one time it matters you will already know the answer instead of finding it out under pressure.
Anshika leads Customer Success at Recruitly.
