Without
making a special effort it's easy to get left well behind in the age
pof technology as it is today.
Recruitment
consultants exist in highly competitive markets, and they need every
advanatage they can to eclipse the competition. In todays market
recruitment consultants and agencies who grasp all of the latest
advancements in technology are likely to win. Here's some of my top
tips for gradets and technology to help you get ahead.
Smart phones. Todays mobile phones offer
exceptional functionality with broadband speed interent connections
enabling full mobile e-mail capacity and interent browsing whilst
out interviewing. If your company places it's database on a server
attached to the internet, you'll have full access to your
recruitment database whilst out with clinets or interviewing. The
days of recruitment consultants having to synchronise with outlook
when you're back in the office are gone. Run a web based e-mail
package (try Zimbra) for all your e-mail, calender and notes and
you'll never need to synch again, simply use in on your phone over
the interent.
IP phones. To look at and use these are just
the same as any other phone. However, they don't need a phone line,
simply a connection to the internet, but here's the good bits.
No phone line, no monthly rental charge
Phone comes with a an 0845 number which
follows the phone. If you travel to the other side of the world
and plug into the interent, and you have your same 0845, your same
office extension (so your PA can still put calls through) and free
calls to anyone else on an IP phone, or at worst a local rate
elsewhere.
The biggest application for recruitment
consultants is home working. You can be in the office one day, and
at home the next, and still on the end of your office extension,
the potential savings to recruitment agenices here are huge.
Web based e-mail. Gone are the days when web
based e-mail was just hotmail, which was convenient but lacking the
sophistaication of packages like outlook, which carried calenders
and other useful office functionality. Now, packges such as Zimbra
offer unparallled functionality on a web based package, also now
configured ro work on smart phones for mobility. Rather than having
to synchronise e-mailpackages on PC and smart phone, now mobile
recruitment consultants can use the same package where ever they
are, on any computer, anywhere in the world. The softeare is
opensource, so it's completely free!
Mobile broadband. It was only a few years ago
that mobile internet connection speeds were around 8Kbs, receiving
e-mail, wasn't great, for a recruitment consultant receiving a CV it
might take half an hour, if the connection didn't drop before it all
came through. Subsequently came the datacards, a device to plug a
SIM card into a Laptop and get a much faster connection which was
perfectly usable, if you had a pot of cash! The costs per meg were
hughe. Now, the advent of the unlimited boradband speed connections
has change all that. For as little as £15 per month,
recruitment consultants can sit in hotels interviewing with full and
uninterrupted access to their companies servers for database
access, Cvs, e-mails calenders and so on, without concern for the
costs.
Mobile
phones are advancing all the time in parallel with advancements in
the internet. Recruitment consultants who embrace these changes and
build them into their working practice are bound to gain a
competitive advantage each time they do this.
