Storing & organizing resumes without a dedicated program

What candidate resume management tools or process do you find effective?

“We are a consulting firm and receive and retain hundreds of resumes annually. Currently these are retained physically in folders in a file cabinet in alphabetical order with notes detailing the hire/do not hire decision. Several people may take notes during the interview and they are all placed in the folder.

“Can you offer an application or process that you find effective for storing and retrieving resumes?”

Answer:
I am surprised that, in this day and age, anyone works with paper resumes. By using a printed a resume (or any document for that matter) you forgo the ability to search and retrieve it using powerful computer-based tools. Moreover, if you loose the paper resume, you also loose the notes and comments.

As a recruiter, I am deeply reliant on retrieving bits and pieces of information I’ve collected over time–including resumes and notes of conversations. Although I sometimes print out resumes in order to take notes, I always copy the notes back in to my PC. It doesn’t matter where or in what format notes are kept since I use Google Desktop to retrieve all the information I need.

Say, for example, that I am aware of a potential candidate for a position I wish to fill and I want to pull together any notes or resumes I might have. I type the candidate’s name (”pete moss”) into my Google Deskbar search (on my computer’s taskbar) and Google will retrieve every reference to that name anywhere in my PC–every resume, note, outlook file, spreadsheet, email, even any website I’ve visited that had the words “pete moss” on it.

This ability to search through my whole computer (like Google searches the entire web) without regard to the location of data frees me from the requirement of keeping my information neatly stored in some particular “resume management system.” My computer IS the system.

Furthermore, Google allows you to coordinate searches between computers, so you can search through resumes, notes, and other data that the HR Director has on the HR department system and they can search through your information as well.

Ideally, you should not be storing hand written notes of interviews anyway. Each interviewer should debrief in a consistent manner–a short memo is fine–and then email that to the person coordinating the hire. Better still, upload the note to Google documents for storage and sharing, or use one of Microsoft’s many group collaboration tools. This solves the problem of record keeping, searching and group access all at once.

I realize it’s comforting to know exactly where your data is stored, but you no longer need to do so. Tools exist that can instantly retrieve information from the nooks and crannies of your hard drives–Google remembers where your data is, so you don’t have to.

Michael G Smith