I was in two minds about writing this post as I sell recruitment software, still I was a Recruitment Blogger first, so honesty should win me a few more friends!!

This post was inspired as a result of a comment on UKrecruiter forum by Mark of Project House, in regards to Recruitment Software. What caught my eye is he mentions Google Desktop for searching candidates. A concept I had not thought of before. So before I tested it out, I spent some time searching for any free recruitment packages on the web.

Obviously it was difficult to find, because who in their right mind would give it away for free, still I managed to come up with one company called chameleon-i who offer the first user licence for free, but you will still need to pay for some add-ons and of course extra users.

As an alternative I wanted to test out Google Desktop as mentioned by Mark, so yesterday I downloaded the application and let it index my computer. Whether or not you use this application for recruitment, I will still recommend it because on a personal note I found it a very useful tool. What I particularly liked is how it integrates with outlook or thunderbird to find messages with ease, in all my folders and even on my gmail account. I have to admit I hate spending 10 or 20 minutes looking for an email, when all I can remember is their first name or just part of the conversation, or am I just getting old 😉 .

So if you have a database of a few thousand cvs and want to find a sales engineer in Manchester, then Google Desktop will do it. There is also a nifty preview screen of the cv, saving you the need to open the document. Then just attach the cv as a contact in Outlook, which you down loaded for free with an email account at Fasthosts and you have a fully functioning free recruitment software package.

To be honest it isn’t the most ideal scenario but it will get you up and running on a limited budget. On a personal note I still would prefer to pay the £50 per month to Arithon, but then again I am biased. The reason is that by using a recruitment software package that has been developed exclusively for Recruitment Consultants, over a number of years will save you time and money, because you will get your candidate in front of the client faster than your competitors. Which is what its all about at the end of the day.

So to finish with a small sales pitch, which I had too do after passing some fee leads to our competitors!!

Isn’t Arithon free, if it saves you between 1 and 2 hours a day?

I will let you make that decision.