Are you looking to improve how you manage your personal network? In other words, how are you staying connected with people you’ve met or used to work with?
Keeping track of all the people you know, their contact information and when you’ve communicated with them can become a daunting task. It doesn’t have to be.
If you’ve learned anything, it’s that a strong network is key to your career success. So it’s imperative that you find a way to keep track of people.
Managing your personal network involves two things:
- Data collection
- Human contact
So let me ask you this. How are you:
- keeping up to date with what’s going on with people you know
- collecting information on target companies and hiring managers
- reminding people about your talents
It’s not enough to have an address book filled with names and contact information. You need to take action. Reach out, touch base! That’s what keeps your network alive!
People in sales live and die by their contacts. In fact, they’ve developed tools to track “leads”. CRM (customer relationship management) databases are important. But as the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. As the owner of this database, you will want to do a thorough job of collecting and categorizing your contacts and updating your interaction with them.
Spreadsheet
Many already know how to use spreadsheets. That’s great. But, given the fact that you seldom sit behind your computer, you may want to have mobile access to your network. You want to be able to access your information via your smartphone. Using Google Sheets is a good idea.
LinkedIn is a great tool for finding and messaging people. However, you don’t own the information nor is it easy to keep track of how you met people you are connected with. It’s a good tool to use to find your connections and invite them to connect. This then gives you access to their email address so you can send the person an email. You can also review a person’s updates on LinkedIn. If you still aren’t using this tool to manage your network, please, get going.
FREE Personal CRMs
Tracking your conversations during job search eventually becomes challenging to manage. That’s why you’ll want a CRM (customer relationship management) tool.
You may use your email address book as a kind of CRM, but it doesn’t give you an easy way to manage, track or flag contacts. If you were lucky enough to use Salesforce or similar CRM, you understand the power a good CRM is capable of.
I’m always on the lookout for free resources. At one point, I was piloting HubSpot’s CRM and it was great at helping me schedule follow-up emails.
Teal offers a CRM and job tracker.
Huntr provides a contact tracker and job tracker.
Notion has templates for job search that can get you started.
There are other tools to help you manage projects and tasks like To-Doist, Asana, Trello. If you already are familiar with a tool, find a way to adapt it for keeping track of your contacts and when you’ll follow up. Learning a new tool, while valuable, can be a huge time-suck. Ask around and see what tools your friends are using to help organize their work (not just a job search).
How To Stay In Touch
Sometimes it helps to categorize your contacts. You can always change how you’ve categorized someone, but it may help you prioritize when or how often you reach out.
Strategically Grow Your Network helps you understand exactly what you need to do to be more purposeful in who you decide to contact.
In Nurture Your Network With These 11 Ideas you’ll find ways to stay in touch with the network you’ve built.
And here is a quick story about what NOT to do if someone offers you a name./lead Follow up on Leads
The post Managing Your Personal CRM and Network appeared first on Career Sherpa.
from Career Sherpa https://ift.tt/yuFXD86