The takeaway from this blog is to ‘always’ make sure you never wrap up any interactions or attempt to contact candidates without quickly documenting what just happened, and then to immediately follow up by setting up your next task/follow up action for that specific person (candidate or client) before moving on to the next activity.

Doing these two things, especially as many CRM/ATS systems have built in features to help you along the way, you’ll simplify your life as a recruiter which in turns makes you a lot less stressed out … and oh yeah, less likely to boot! In addition, your co-workers will appreciate that you’re not one of those undisciplined recruiters that never makes notes or never changes a record’s status in shared database environments.

Whether working as an independent recruiter or as part of a recruiting team sharing a CRM/ATS, it’s all too common that these practices are not followed. That is, a note is not entered, or a code is not changed, or something is not logged after a recent contact attempt/latest interaction. If recruiters just take an extra thirty seconds to enter a quick note in a contact record of what just happened (e.g. left message, left voicemail) and then schedule some type of follow up action (e.g. call in one week, six month sync up, etc.) life is so much better for you and your peers as nothing falls through the cracks.

Many CRM/ATS systems have all sorts of automated features to get you to do these things, and all recruiters know they need to do this. But it’s like knowing you need to eat right, exercise more, etc.. The funny thing is that once you learn to do this each and every time, the reward is worth it for sure.