We all know being a recruiter is a fast-paced career (there literally aren’t enough hours in the day!). To get the most from the job, you need to be ruthless with your time, and there are a few great browser extensions for recruiters that can genuinely help with that.
From limiting distractions, to fixing bad grammar and remembering passwords – here are a few of the best browser extensions I’ve personally found help me save time, stay focused, and generally make the most of each working day.
1. Rescue Time
Ever find yourself in a situation where you start off doing some research on a role you’re working on, then next thing you know you’re ten YouTube videos down and watching a video on ‘how to set up a home aquarium’ when you don’t even have a fish? Then this is the browser extension for you!
Rescue Time lets you label your frequently-visited websites as ‘productive’ or ‘unproductive’ so you can work on restricting the amount of time you spend on sites that get in the way of you reaching your daily goals. As such, you can use it to build a more truthful picture of how you’re spending your time each day so you can re-focus where it matters. Another great thing about Rescue Time is it can teach you to be more productive with your working hours so that those long days get shorter: Already hit six hours of productive time by 5pm? Let yourself go home on time for once!
2. LastPass
We all know we shouldn’t be using the same passwords for absolutely everything we do online, but let’s be honest - how many of you reading this do exactly that?
With so many different accounts to log into each working day, it can be a struggle to remember your password for your email, CRM, job-board accounts, amazon, and various social media channels, so it’s inevitable that you’ll be recycling the same passwords around the internet. And if you do the sensible thing and change your passwords up every other day, how much time are you wasting each day entering and re-entering until you get it right?
LastPass is a great solution to this. With this extension, you only have one strong master password to remember (which you can change as often as you want) and it will automatically generate really high-security passwords for different accounts on your behalf (and remember them for you!). And if you’re worried about security, it uses extremely high-end encryption so no need to worry.
3. Grammarly
Whenever you write, it’s really important that your spelling and grammar is on point (God I hope there aren’t any mistakes in this blog post).
Think of Grammarly like your own virtual editor-cum-browser extension, as it makes sure that this is always the case. What’s really clever about Grammarly is that it checks the copy you’re writing online as you write it, no matter where you’re writing it. It even picks up on contextual errors, so for those of us who tend to mix up our ‘dears’ with our ‘deers’ this is a real life-saver.
4. Momentum
Momentum is a nice, clean and easy way to ensure you stay focussed and get those daily tasks completed. At the start of the day, you’re presented with a desktop image like the one shown below. While you drink your morning coffee, you can set a few tasks that you want to get completed before the day is out, then every time you open a new tab, you’re presented with that desktop picture again to remind you what your focus is for that day.
5. Buffer
Buffer allows you to quickly schedule your social media updates without having to take time to jump to your social platforms first, or get distracted from important tasks. If you land on a good blog and want to share it out (*ahem*), it’s as easy as clicking on the buffer icon in your toolbar and scheduling. Very useful if you are looking to add value to your connections, and you can also click for a quick overview of your social accounts to keep an eye on what’s performed well and what hasn’t.
Hopefully you can see from the above examples that using the right browser extensions every day really can help you recruit smarter, giving you more hours in the day to focus on billing and meeting targets.
Now that you know what my favourite Chrome extensions for recruiters are, do you have any to share that I’ve missed? Comment below!
