Gadgets and phone based technology for recruitment consultants

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.