PC based technology for recruitment consultants.The recruitment industry in the UK is a highly comme

The recruitment industry in the UK is a highly commercial and very competitive arena.Recruitment consultantswho ignore the available advancements in technology are at risk of loosing to agencies who embrace developments and build them into the way they work. Here are some top tips to help you get ahead of your competition.

• Linux operating system. Not for the technologically faint hearted, Linux is a 'community engineered' alternative to the Windows operating system. Benefits to recruitment agencies are

  • The machines are usually cheaper and faster than a Windows PC

  • They carry equivalent packages (e.g. word processor, spreadsheet, presentation etc) for all available Windows office software with one key difference, the Linux software is all open source and is therefore free!

  • Linux machines tend not to suffer virus attacks. With Windows I used to loose 2 to 3 days per year (plus sleep) over virus attacks and having to recover data. With Linux in 2 years I've had none!

The one thing to be careful of here is that Linux is different kit to windows, so you should

have a specialist Linux company to support you. But, if you can get this, my opinion is, and

I stress it's my opinion, Linux is fantastic for recruitment consultants, cheaper to buy, cheaper

to run, faster and more reliable!

• Open source software. Office software, and in particular CRM systems can cost recruitment agencies vast amounts of money to set up and run. Open source software is free, created and updated by a large community of techies it's presents highly sophisticated alternatives to traditional software. There are now very good open source CRM packages, totally free as they are open source and perfectly usable as recruitment agency database software. As with Linux, it's advisable to find a company who will support you through it, but other than support, the software is free to obtain and use on an ongoing basis, and it's web based, making it easy for recruitment consultants to view from any location. Have a look at Sugar CRM.

• Messenger. Not that new, but essential technology for any recruitment agency, messenger enables staff to communicate from anywhere, real-time, so long as they can get an internet connection. There are a number of benefits

  • Saves on phone and text charges, messenger communication is free.

  • Highly effective for team working with channels to all open all of the time

  • Excellent to support home working in maintaining contact with staff.

  • It will Work on any PC or mobile device with an internet connection.

• Social Networking sites. These have become somewhat of a craze for all recently. There are a number of business orientated sites which can act as huge and free resource for consultants. One example is linkedin. On this site you link to business people you know and have worked with. If they all do the same and you link to all their colleagues, AND the you link to all of their colleagues as well, that is you are linked to people twice removed. If you think this through, if you are a recruitment consultant, and you link to someone in your market, say the engineering market, and you link to a candidate placed, you may pick up hundreds of contacts onto your network form the engineering market. Once linked, you have access to all their details and the ability to contact. If this is done properly this is possibly the largest free database on the world!

Each of these may offer a large or small competitive advantage. However, recruitment consultants who employ them all are bound to do far better than those who don't, so take note! Good luck.