What keeps you from being creative? In a knowledge workforce (that’s a lot of us here in the U.S.) we get overwhelmed with the minutia and administrivia of our work. It’s tiring and deflates the joy right out of the profession we otherwise love. What can you control? Let’s start with something simple: email.
There are between 100-200 billion emails sent global each day. Spam is a constant struggle as you try to get the right balance in your filters(3). If you don’t have an ATS, your email IS your ATS. So what do you do?
Front end: There are plenty of productivity gurus discussing how to better manage your inbox. For Gmail, I’d recommend Steve Rubel. For general email strategy, there is Inbox Zero by Merlin Mann. If you have another favorite, please let me know.
Back end: For the email that you do want to keep for future reference, how do you archive things? An ever-growing series of folders? Perhaps an add-on offered by Outlook/Microsoft itself? How about an email upgrade?
Xobni (pronounced “ Zob-nee“) is a great solution for Outlook users. A few highlights:
* When launched, it can be a sidebar to the side or be expanded to a resizable panel within Outlook.
* Emails are indexed and parsed lightning fast
* The search bar is Google-simple. Results are shown in tiles within the app’s panel. Further refinement of the search shows in increasingly smaller tiles. It’s easy to read and to view your activities.
* Any email you click will show you the author’s:
- Network
- Phone number
- Conversation threads between them and you and anyone else
- Sent/received attachments between them and you
* LinkedIn connection, when enabled, will take you to their public profile in Linkedin
* Assist scheduling appointments by creating an email filled with your availability (pulled from your calendar)
* Analytics – based on various time intervals, view your:
- Email traffic for any period of time, per person
- Unique contacts
- Responsiveness
- Follow-up delay
You don’t need a myriad of folders to track projects or find reference material. Now you can focus on your client and candidate relationships or be more creative with your recruiting programs with more confidence. Some work relief, right? Just remember it’s spelled backwards.
Speaking of backwards here’s a fun music video by Mute Math. 8~)
Love this post. I just got my inbox to zero as a side effect of pre-upgrade email cleanup. I’m committed to keeping it that way.
My “methods” are homegrown so I’m always looking for ideas. I just finished GTD this week and am trying to incorporate some of that, too. Takeaways -I added a “waiting on someone else” folder to my email, and bought a label maker for my files, and am learning to differentiate between projects and actions on my to-do list.
I’ll be checking out some of your links. Thanks.
Glad to hear it Kathi. Yes, there are several lines of thinking in this area. Its great you found something that works for you. This means you’ll be able to spend even more time “getting creative” with what you do best…and it shouldn’t be email.
Xobni is amazing – I’ve been a user for several months and the time it saves with providing immediate access to my contacts phone numbers and in particular the projects we’ve most recently exchanged emails over is fabulous. This is one of my favorite Outlook tools – others? ZoomInfo’s Zipi and YouSendIt’s toolbar for Outlook. Increase the functionality and ease of Outlook for me a lot!
Best,
Kelly
Great options, Kelly! Thanks. Also, don’t forget to: 1) check with their IT in there have been past performance issues on your systems and 2) check the product’s privacy policy (some download all your contacts from Outlook). I’m not say “worry”, just be “aware”.