RESUMate 2006 Daily Planner Frequently Asked Questions

Here are answers to some of the most common questions we hear.

FAQ Index

» What does the Daily Planner actually do? What is really meant by the term “Daily Plan?”
» You describe it as a “1-click” Daily Plan. How much work do I have to do ahead of time before I make that single click?
» What does it mean to say that the Daily Plan can be “customized?”
» Can I see one Daily Plan for the entire office, as well as individual Plans for each recruiter in the office?
» Does the new Daily Planner make the RESUMate calendar obsolete?

If you need additional help, please contact us.

FAQ's

Q. What does the Daily Planner actually do? What is really meant by the term “Daily Plan?”

A. The RESUMate Daily Plan basically consists of on-screen (and printer-friendly) lists of:

• active jobs
• active candidates who are being considered for those jobs
• planned recruiting calls
• planned marketing calls
• promised call backs

These lists contain information that has been automatically extracted from records in the RESUMate database. Moreover, the lists are “interactive.” Click on any item in a list, and instantly jump back to the underlying record. The lists also display phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and web addresses, so you can work right from the list itself.

The list of active jobs, for example, includes the client’s name, the hiring manager’s name, all important dates from the job order record, plus a count of the total number of people who have been referred on this job, along with a count of the number of people who are still being actively considered.

Of course you can also print any list, along with the phone numbers, so you can work away from your computer if need be.

Q. You describe it as a “1-click” Daily Plan. How much work do I have to do ahead of time before I make that single click?

A. The Daily Plan pulls the information from your database. The data needed to assemble these lists should already exist in your people, client, job order, and job order activity records. The Job Order Activity screen is especially important; the Activity screen provides fields for recording such things as the date the resume was originally forwarded to the hiring manager, interview dates, and finally, offer and acceptance dates. The Daily Plan just digs out all of this data and summarizes it into easy-to-read lists.

If you’re already using the Job Order Activity screen, you’re probably ready to use the Daily Planner right now. If you’re not using this important part of the RESUMate program, the new Daily Planner function gives you even more incentive to do so.

The payback for the few clicks needed to cross-file a candidate record with a job order record is now so great that there is really no reason to keep track of interviews using any other method.

Q. What does it mean to say that the Daily Plan can be “customized?”

A. The Daily Planner function in RESUMate is very comprehensive. It can display separate lists of active jobs, active candidates on those jobs, candidate records or client records with “Next Call” dates selected for any time period, the Schedule and To Do sections from the calendar, and a lot more.

The simple fact is that all this may be more information than you want to see on your screen at any one time. Customizing the Daily Plan window lets you select exactly which lists you want to see. You can set up you Plan to include one or more segments, and then make a different set of selections at any time thereafter. It takes just a few seconds to re-generate the Daily Plan, so you never need to have clutter on your screen.

Q. Can I see one Daily Plan for the entire office, as well as individual Plans for each recruiter in the office?

A. Yes, the new 2006 version has added a new Recruiter field to the Candidate, Client/Department, and Job Order screens. You can set up a drop down list of recruiter’s initials in the File/Database/Tools menu.

The customization dialog box in the Daily Planner window allows you to select one (or more) recruiter’s initials to be used as a filter in assembling the Daily Plan screen. If you turn the filter off, you’ll see a Plan that reflects the activity of the entire office.

Q. Does the new Daily Planner make the RESUMate calendar obsolete?

A. No, although the Daily Planner does replace some of the purposes that have been served by the RESUMate calendar.

The Calendar Items dialog box in the upper right hand corner of the RESUMate screen still provides the most convenient method for setting up a future “To Do” or Scheduled item for a candidate or contact person in the database. Scheduled items (i.e. items with a specific time of day associated with them) certainly still belong in the calendar. “To Do” items (i.e. items with no specific time of day) may still want to be entered through the Calendar Items dialog box, largely because these items automatically roll forward into the future until they are marked as “Done.” This is still very useful.

The Daily Planner, however, does a better job of dealing with the date fields (6 date fields in people records; 4 date fields in client records) that are included in the RESUMate screens. All date fields in all RESUMate records can now be set as “Tracking Dates,” which means they can be selected to trigger a unique list in the Daily Planner screen.

The most useful example may be a “Call List” of records that have been selected for marketing or recruiting calls on a specific date. Clicking in a date in a date field called “Next Call” or “Recruiting Call” in various people records can automatically generate a list, including phone numbers, of these records.

With the Global Editing function in the File/Database/Tools menu, you can set a date (and create a call list) for an entire search result with just a few clicks.