Anyone using SugarCRM for Job Hunting?

[swduncan]

Hello Everyone,

I was looking for software to help me manage a job hunt, to track leads & opportunities and to remind me to follow up. I installed SugarCRM to give it a try, and it seems very promising.

BUT, before I start trying to get really into it and making modifications, I thought I'd see if anyone else is using this software for the same purpose. I tried to search for threads here but didn't find anything. If I've missed a good thread or doc please let me know!

Thanks!

Steve

[lindelof]

Amazing that you should ask. I just spent the whole weekend installing Apache, MySQL and PHP on my machine in order to do just that.

It would be nice to exchange some ideas concerning the use of SugarCRM for job hunting. To begin with, I was thinking of listing as leads any contact persons I would write to or otherwise get in touch with. I'm not sure how to handle companies where I do not have any contact details, the 'Leads' module seems to require a contact name.

I do not need a job until about the end of the year, so any person that definitely expresses some interest should be converted to a contact for follow-up. Any positive offer on their part should probably be represented as an opportunity.

That's about as far as I have come for the moment, and I would really like to see this topic discussed further in this forum.

Cheers,

David

[swduncan]

Yeah, I added it this last weekend too - I just put it on the same server that does my blogs.

Anyway, so far the way I have things set up are:

Contacts are people, regarless.

Accounts are companies, either recruiters or employers

Opportunities are specific jobs/ads that I'm responding to. I put the job description in so that I can refer to it later.

I'm not using leads at the moment, but my needs are a bit different than yours with regard to timing.

So far it works pretty well, aside from a few email troubles that are fixed now. But to be honest, and I haven't found interesting opportunities since setting up the new system.

[Haney]

I am using Sugar for job hunting. Here's what I do:

* I used the drop down editor in Admin to modify the options for 'sales_stage_dom'.
* I deleted the defaults there and added: Application, Interviewing, and Closed.
* Whenever I create an opportunity I use $1000 for the Amount.
* Now my pipeline displays a bar chart of how many opportunities in each phase.

Other things I do:

* Paste the job description into the opportunityDescription field.
* Post my resume, cover letters, bio, case study files, etc to the Documentation library.
* In addition to uploading the file there I past a text version into the Description field. This allows quick access for pasting into sites that take text only.
* I put some job search sites into the shortcuts of Portal.
* "accounts" are companies.

I'd like to hear what others are doing with Sugar for job hunting.

Tom

[swduncan]

Haney - those are some good suggestions. After taking a break for a while, I'm back at it, and will soon upgrade to 4.5. I also need to get Outlook to Synchronize to Sugar.

I've bought lists from www.zapdata.com, because I've decided the job I seek will not be advertised and I'll have to go find it on my own. So I've been importing the company data as leads, and then I convert each lead to an opportunity when I send the initial letter. I then schedule calls, etc. as followup.

I haven't decided if this is the right way to do it, or if I should leave things as leads until I have more contact that the initial letter. What drove me initially to convert to an opportunitiy was to provide a space for storing info on the company using an account record.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[secondtear]

I've used Sugar in three different sales organizations as a sales person or sales manager. I'm a headhunter now and I've been thinking about mods that are specific to the jobsearch world. BTW, I never used the leads fields. It seemed like anything worth entering should have an opportunity, or at the very least, an account tied to it.

I also changed the opportunity fields to reflect pipeline categories from Miller Heiman, i.e Universe, Above the Funnel, In the Funnel, Best Few, Closed Won, and Closed Lost. A similar approach for job hunting might be: Contacted, Sent Resume, Phone Screen, F2F, F2F2, Offer.

I'm not a developer, but I'm an agressive user and have made numerous modifications at the drop-down level. The only reason I haven't launched Sugar in my new position is that the last time I tried the Outlook Plug-In, it was horrible. It's important to me that I be able to integrate all of my tracking, including my emails, in whatever system I use. Have any of you used the Outlook plugin lately?