We are new users of the Zoho One bundle and operate a consulting and engineering company. Our workforce model includes a mix of permanent employees, active job applicants, and freelance/independent consultants. All three groups need to be searchable, comparable, and usable in project staffing.

We are trying to identify the best overall setup in Zoho to support this workflow:

Candidate sources we need to manage:

1. Internal employees (our own engineers/consultants)

2. External job applicants applying through job postings

3. Freelancers who register through our candidate portal to join our consultant network

Core requirements:
• A combined candidate database where all three groups can be searched together
• Ability to filter by skills, project experience, certifications, location, availability, rate, etc.
• An efficient process for creating shortlists for client projects
• Ability to generate anonymised CVs using a custom CV template (PDF or DOCX)
• Ideally centralised data maintenance, so we don’t duplicate profiles across modules
• Clear ownership of where each type of data should “live” (Recruit vs People vs CRM)

We are trying to understand:

1. Which Zoho apps should be the primary system of record for candidates?
   Should we keep everything inside Zoho Recruit and use custom fields/modules for internal employees and freelancers?
   Or should we integrate Recruit + People + CRM and maintain different segments across systems?

2. How do other consulting/engineering companies using Zoho One structure this?
   We want to avoid building a workaround if there is already a proven configuration pattern.

3. What is the best way to generate anonymised CVs?
   – Custom CV template in Recruit?
   – Zoho Writer merge templates?
   – Creator/CRM custom modules?
   We need a clean, repeatable workflow where a recruiter selects candidates → exports anonymised CVs → sends to the client.

4. Is it possible to search across internal consultants (from People) + external candidates (in Recruit) in a single interface?
   If yes, how is this typically implemented?

If anyone from the community has experience setting this up for consulting/engineering companies—or can recommend the best architecture within Zoho One—we would really appreciate a detailed suggestion or workflow example.