By: Tony Barlow, Managing Consultant/Digital Lead

When it comes to recruiting physicians there is often A LOT of data. Lists of physicians, lists of residency programs, lists of residents, etc. Organizing and using the data to its fullest can be a challenge, especially when time is so hard to come by. At Barlow/McCarthy we do sourcing for clients. In this role we actually assimilate with their team and work on their behalf. For our team this means a number of searches for a number of clients and we have data coming out of our ears!

We initially started out using Microsoft Excel as our main tool for keeping track of our lists of physicians. However, with multiple people editing and accessing the files it was a nightmare with different versions floating around and people emailing spreadsheets. That is where a couple of tools from Google have been life savers. It has changed the way work and made things more efficient and cleaner. We use Google Docs and Google Drive to access and store our spreadsheets and other documents. The Google Docs suite of tools closely mirror the Microsoft tools, and going from one to another is a piece of cake. Using their spreadsheet tool we can have multiple people editing and viewing the same spreadsheet at the same time. By using some pretty simple functions within the spreadsheets we keep our data sound and are able to easily track outcomes and activity. Google Drive is a cloud storage system similar to Dropbox (except you get a little more free storage). We are able to store our spreadsheets, documents, and images all in one place on Google Drive; we are then able to easily share these documents with the right people and keep all of our clients separate,

The main goals as we looked to transition was to make everything easier (who doesn’t like easy!). Online tools like Google Docs, Google Drive and Dropbox have all made life easier. The biggest challenge is taking the steps to learn a new platform and transfer your documents over. I can tell you that from our perspective the adjustments have been easy and the changes have been great.

Are you using any new online tools in your recruitment work? If so what have you found to be most helpful?