Todd Nilson directs a recruiting business based in Chicago focused on finding and placing IT executives and senior technologists. At his blog, he recently described why he's found Backpack to be an excellent and affordable way to organize his job searches.
When it comes to keeping all information together for a job search, Backpack is the best thing I've found. There are plenty of sites that can fire off Reminders to your e-mail and cellular phone. But Backpack is a tidy place to organize all of it. I generally set up one Backpack page per client I work with and include notes about that client's process, interviewing preferences, and stuff that I need to do next in my own recruiting processes. If my client has provided me with a written description as a Microsoft Word document, I upload it here. If I have pictures of the work site, I upload them. In short, that page becomes a clearing house of information relevant to my search and helps me to be efficient in tracking my communications and efforts.
The site gets really cool when you start looking at some of its additional functionality. For instance, I can e-mail Notes, To Do items, and Files directly to the page. Backpack automatically generates a random e-mail for each new page you create. By sending an e-mail to that address with To Do: or Note: in the subject line, it organizes up the data appropriately. Once it's on the page, you can click and drag that content anywhere on the page.
The solution is particularly elegant for independent recruiters with a limited budget. It becomes a CRM that is more flexible and easier to use (and certainly cheaper) than commercial 3rd party solutions like SalesForce.
Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.
