How long does it take to move to a new recruitment CRM?
Vendors commonly quote six to twelve weeks for a basic implementation and three to six months for a complex one. Very little of that is moving data, which is usually a matter of days. Most of the time goes on configuration workshops, field mapping decisions and training, which is why the quote often arrives with a services invoice attached.
It is worth separating the two things that get bundled together. Exporting candidates, clients, contacts, notes, jobs and pipeline from one system and loading them into another is a technical task measured in hours or days. Deciding what the new system should look like, and teaching everyone to use it, is a project measured in weeks.
The second is where implementations stall, and it is not really a data problem. A configuration workshop asks an agency to specify its process in the abstract, before anyone has used the tool, which is the worst moment to be asking. Decisions get made that get revisited three months later.
The other thing that slows migrations is the state of the data. Every agency database has duplicates, half-filled records and columns that fit no standard field. Treating that as a cleanup project to complete before go-live is how a migration turns into a quarter.
The alternative is to do the mapping and the deduplication during the import rather than before it, and to let the system propose the mapping rather than asking the agency to specify it cold. The owner's time then goes on checking the proposal was read correctly, which is a review task rather than a workshop.