You should know that you can link files--resumes, for instance--to contacts directly. This would be extremely valuable in your business.

To link a file to a contact, an organization, or a project, just drag the file from the Finder to the item in Daylite. Or, select the item in Daylite, and choose Actions > Add File Reference.

Also note that it's easy to link almost anything in Daylite. Just drag one thing to another, or select the first thing and choose Actions > Link "So and so" To...

You can drag appointments to projects, people to appointments, people to organizations, people to people, files to people, tasks to projects. Quite flexible, indeed. If you have a task to do, and it relates to a project, a person, and a company you're working with, just link it to your project, contact, and organization. Then whether you're on your calendar, looking at the project, the person, or the company in Daylite, you'll see the task that has to be done.

So, to talk about how Daylite can centrally manage what you do, here is a possibility. It sounds much of what you do would indeed be organized into a Project.

But first, I would start by making sure that you do the basic linking that will help you as you go along. Essentially, record your correspondence and tasks, and relevant files, by linking them to the people you correspond with before, during, and after a project. If you first select a contact or an organization in Daylite, then create a new note or a new task, it gets linked to that contact or organization. So you have a permanent record of what you said or did with that person. This information is collected into the "Activity" tab that you see when you look at something in the main window.

Naturally, you'll want to link files that are sent to you, especially resumes of candidates. Notes are a general place that you can store bits of information about conversations you had, etc.

Once you get rolling with a specific job that you're filling, create a project in Daylite to represent that. Link the companies and people involved. You may want to define a project pipeline that includes the steps you follow, maybe: Get job details, then find candidates, then interview candidates, then connect candidates with company, then close out project. That way you can see where the project is at. But that's optional.

As you go along, be sure that correspondence specifically about that project gets linked to that project. We have the Daylite Mail Integration module that will automatically link email you receive to the right people, companies, and projects.

With this kind of central management, you'll only ever be a click or two away from things like the candidate's contact record and his resume--even if you started your day by reviewing the appointments you had or by looking at your list of open projects.

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Your second method would be fairly similar: You'd start by setting up the candidate as a contact, attach his resume, then start contacting appropriate potential employers. If it seems like you found a decent match, or if you needed some way of grouping correspondence with all of those potential employers and the candidate, you'd set up a project to bind all of those things.

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The real power, perhaps, in recruiting using Daylite, is that you can use things like keywords to tag the candidates. Before I get into that, in my next post I will describe categories and keywords, and roles and relationships, and how those can help you.

Categories. To approach these, we'll look at them as they would apply to contacts in your situation. You'd want these to be labels that a contact typically would have just one of. For instance, in your case, contact categories would be Employer, Candidate, and perhaps things like Competitor. Never have more than a handful of categories, and make sure they're generally mutually exclusive.

Keywords. These are more plentiful, and describe the people you work with. They would be good to describe skills, interests, and other things that either 'subdivide' or 'enhance' the categories of "Employer" and "Candidate." These also can apply to projects. In your case, I'd recommend that your contact keywords match up with project keywords. That way you can find appropriate candidates for jobs. I'll demonstrate.

If I got a project from a client/employer, and they needed a designer who could use QuarkXPress and was at a Junior level, I would set up a project for that position to fill, and tag it with the keywords "Graphic Design," "QuarkXPress," and "Junior." Note that these keywords may be either specific or general. Keywords like "Junior" are good because they can apply to almost any position.

So, now I've got this project that needs someone who fits those keywords. Assuming I had been tagging my candidates properly, I can do something pretty cool: Create a "smart list" in the contacts area of Daylite. And that smart list would tell Daylite to find all the people who match certain criteria--in this case, give me all contacts who have the category "Candidate" and the keywords "Graphic Design," "QuarkXPress," and "Junior."

Now what I'd have is a list of all the candidates in my database who might be appropriate for this job. Invaluable. And at a glance, I can step through them, and review my last correspondence, to see what they're up to or refresh my memory of who they are. Likewise, their resumes would be right there, linked and ready to look at immediately.

So, when I had maybe contacted those candidates and found a good pair or three, I would link them to the project, and start managing the other correspondence, etc.

Roles and relationships. When you connect two contacts together in Daylite, directly, they are linked by a "relationship," which is defined in Daylite's preferences, just like categories and keywords. Relationships are things like "reffered by" or "assistant of" which are great for many reasons. You may have special relationships in recruiting.

Roles, on the other hand, are 'functions' people or companies perform IN organizations, or IN projects. They are not job titles, nor relationships. For instance, you might have a "hiring manager" role or a "decision maker" and that could apply to someone in a company, or in a project. Sometimes the roles are not the same for organizations and projects. For example, someone might have the role "Owner" in a company, and that might be important for you to know, but in the project maybe they are just someone who is helping out, but not actually the decision maker. That role might be "Participant" or "Interested Party" or something. These are also defined in preferences.

This is useful because as you're looking at a project, or at a company, or at a person, you can instantly see who else they know, what they're involved in, where they work, and what roles and relationships they have. If I'm looking at a person, I can see who they work for, what projects they've been in recently and what they did or what they're doing. If I'm looking at a company, I can see who works for them, what projects have been done recently, etc. If I'm looking at a project, I can see who the participants are and what they do, etc.

So what we've got here if we set it up in preferences right, which takes some time but is very valuable, is a way to stay on top of the fine and important details of the people and companies you work for--from who they are and how they know each other, to their specific skills and roles that they play at companies and in projects, and of course files and correspondence sent to them. Like tasks and notes, appointments can be linked to these people, so again, no matter how you approach your day, things like telephone numbers and resumes are instantly at hand.

Projects bind specific jobs together, and give you a way--if you use keywords--of matching candidates to positions.

Anyway this is a lot to digest so let me know what you think and how you're progressing. EXPLORE Daylite's menus and windows: I can't stress that enough. There is a lot to see and many times it's more obvious than you might at first think!

Also Command-F (Apple-F) or the Find panel, is your best friend. It gives you instant access to the people and projects and companies you work with, so you can drag them to the calendar to make appointments, or drag them to each other, or drag them to your task list, etc. etc.

HTH,

thanks
i will have to let this sink in tonight and read through it

Danny, just wondering how this worked out for you?

Adam -

To be honest - it isn't. I am basically relegated to using just the contact and organization sections.

I am really frustrated with this program. When I used ACT on my windows machine, things were easier to link and they fell into place right where they should be.

Can I ask why the steps I suggested weren't helpful?

I have spoken to several recruiters who have tried Daylite and also given up on the program.

In order to make the program work, have to go into preferences and modify many many fields, keywords, processes, etc. There is no directory of how things are linked or how to use them.

I have to go to a database, type in some test words just to see where they wind up.

Someone needs to do some mapping to show all relationships and their uses.

I'd like to continue to help you; did my descriptions above (which I think accurately picture how things connect to one another) not help? What would make this eaesier to understand?

This is, of course, in your interest as well as ours, and any other specialists who want to come to use Daylite.

I would love to continue and get this program to work. If someday it does, I surely don't mind being the expert in the field and assist.

Like I said, the biggest issue for me is having to go into the preference area, section by section and rename or figure out how things are used.

I'm not sure I follow though. By nature, Daylite must be configured in order to work well for a specific business. For instance, every business has its own kinds of relationships between people, etc. etc.

Have you tried the suggestions I made?

Hi Danny,
Just to chime in here, I understand your hesitancy to configure the Preferences, it can look overwhelming.
But in my opinion this is exactly what makes Daylite so powerful and flexible: the ability to set the Prefs to match your industry or workflow. That's why Daylite can be used by so many different kinds of businesses. When I work with a new Daylite client, the first thing I have them do is spend time nailing down their workflow and configuring the Prefs to match that.
I have clients across all kinds of industries using Daylite successfully, even many from the PC world who say they love Daylite more than they ever loved their old PC program!

Take care,
Cynthia