Nobody outside of HR quite seems to appreciate the amount of details recruitment workers need to handle. Juggling the particulars of countless vacancies, applicants, and intermediaries can be a tiring task – but we all know that recruiters with a Rolodex memory have a massive advantage and frequently make great things happen just by drawing connections between all those bits of information in their heads.

So what can you do to put yourself in that league? Luckily, there are several tried and tested techniques for making things stick. Some techniques work better for different people, or for remembering different types of information:

• PQRST is the name of a technique that can be handy before going into a meeting where you’ll be expected to answer a lot of questions. It stands for Preview, Question, Read, State, Test – because these are the steps you should take with the relevant data before the big conference.
  
  
• Linking works best when you have sets of information to remember, for example the job requirements for a number of different roles. Find a visual universe (e.g. a farm or a kitchen) in which to place a particular set of data and then convert the facts into images that exist within that space. The way those images relate (e.g. a cow eating grass and making milk) can help you trace your way back through this data in reverse.
  
  
• Acronyms are great for remembering techniques and processes. Write down a list of the steps you need to remember, and then take the first initial of each one. If the steps can be followed in any order, you can rearrange the letters to make a word you’ll remember – otherwise, just try to recall each item letter by letter.

This memory infographic packs in further details on these techniques and more. Get stuck in, and you’ll soon find your memory muscle is punching with the best of them!