“It’s a matter of business intelligence. It’s a matter of thinking differently about recruiting.” Marcy and I had been talking about sourcing candidates to fill two open positions in her company. “Marcy, how do your salespeople keep up with all the customers and prospective customers in their world?”

“Well, the sales department uses a CRM program. You know, Customer Relationship Management. It’s a database that they can use to keep track of contact information, conversations, likes and dislikes, birthdays, all kinds of stuff.”

“Marcy, have you ever thought about using a low-end off-the-shelf CRM software to keep track of prospective job candidates? Listen, when your sales people go out to meetings, conferences, mixers, do they meet people, collect business cards and find out important information related to customer needs? I just want you to do the same thing. Always be recruiting, always be gathering information, always be collecting business intelligence. You should have the best rolodex in the business, only these days, your rolodex needs to be on steroids, using CRM software. Find out who the players are in your community. Always be sending them information, enticing them toward your company. Invite them to events, send them a card on their birthday. Get aggressive about recruiting.” -TF