Bring back the Old or Bring in the New ?

Now I am all for new technology when it comes to benefiting my business processes. I have developed my skills in recruitment and sales through quite a few technological changes and started in recruitment with a Rolodex and some applicant cards (we now call them candidates!). We have been introduced to that wonderful piece of technology called the database or if you are really into your terminology I think the today's trendy description would be a CRM or Customer Relationship Management system, personally I prefer the word 'database' and call me old fashion but each to their own!

When I first started out in the crazy world of recruitment the use of a pen was as common as James Bond ending up in bed with a woman who turned out to be working for the dark side.. The use of the pen was an everyday occurrence from the moment you walked into the office to the moment you left. But alas the pen is a thing of the past and the keyboard is now its replacement.

It took me a great while to perfect the use of the keyboard and if truth be know I still am not a fluent touch typist! It also has taken me a great while to really get to grips (or not so) of not using the pen as the main tool in every day business. We are now encouraged and to a degree forced to record every single piece of business process onto the database by using our wonderful keyboard, we spend more time tapping the keyboard than near on anything else in our everyday lives, if its a call, if its a new candidate, if its a lead, if its a new client - we log it. In fact we record everything that happens, although I do wonder sometimes if we do actually record and log information because we can rather than if we actually need to?

I accept that the human mind cannot remember everything, but computers can. I also accept that technology is very much here to stay and we should embrace it and make it work for us and not us work for it! I do still miss the pen, my wife bought a Montblanc pen for a 'special' birthday recently, and if I use it twice a week its a lot! This blog post was not to dismiss technology at all, in fact I have welcomed technology with open arms to the point that I am the Co-Founder of MyResourcer.com an internet based application for the global recruitment industry and therefore realise the power and potential that we have at our finger tips. But just for one tiny moment, let us all remember (if we are old enough) the days when fountain pens, ball point pens and any other types of writing device were used in every day business. I guarantee that the 'Pen' will be a historic feature within our museums worldwide within the next 50 years as digital signatory will be the new age and our beloved ink friend will be a distant memory. Long live the ballpoint.