Two Minute Tuesday: Import Contacts from LinkedIn

Another Two Minute Tuesday video is here! This time we’re going to walk through exporting your contacts from LinkedIn as a CSV file and importing them into your PCRecruiter database with the Generic File Mapper/Importer. This is a great way to load up contacts for a new recruiting desk or when you’re getting started with a fresh database.

Another Two Minute Tuesday video is here! This time we’re going to walk through exporting your contacts from LinkedIn as a CSV file and importing them into your PCRecruiter database with the Generic File Mapper/Importer. This is a great way to load up contacts for a new recruiting desk or when you’re getting started with a fresh database.

NOTE: This video was made in 2016 and some information may have changed. As of 2020, LinkedIn’s instructions for exporting contacts can be found here.

If you have any comments or suggestions for something we can explain in about two minutes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net

Video Transcript

Welcome to this week’s “Two Minute Tuesday,” Main Sequence’s weekly series of very short videos with tips, tutorials and techniques designed to help you become a more powerful PCRecruiter user in just a couple of minutes.

In this episode we’re going to walk through importing a list of contacts from LinkedIn, which can be handy when you’re just getting started with PCR or if you add a new recruiter to your office and want to load their connections into the database.

You can import them one at a time of course, and there are browser plugins that can shortcut the process, but if you want to bring all of your LinkedIn contact data into the system at once, here’s how to do it.
Under “My Network” on LinkedIn, open “Connections”. Now click this little Settings gear on the right, and under ‘Advanced Settings’ you’ll find an Export option. The default data format is a text file with comma-separated values, otherwise known as a .CSV, and that’s just what we want. Click export and fill out the Security Verification to start the download.

The data that’s included in the export will depend on your particular LinkedIn account and connections. I’ve opened my exported data in Excel and deleted all of the empty data columns to save myself some hunting in a later step.

Now, in PCR, we’ll go to the quick-add icon in the upper right, and choose Name. We want to Import a List.
Step one is to create or select a rollup list (see last week’s episode for more on those). I’m going to pick this empty list I made earlier. We can choose from a few pre-loaded data formats, but for this purpose we want the Generic Importer.

Now we browse for the CSV file. The default settings here are just fine for our purposes. After we click ‘Next’, we click in these boxes here to choose which column in the CSV should be imported into each PCRecruiter field listed on the left. My data only had names, companies, email addresses, and job titles, so I can leave the rest alone.

We click “Next” again, and specify how the system should handle any duplicates. I’m going to tell it to update any existing records in the database with the data from the CSV if the Name and Company both match exactly. If there’s no exact match, a fresh record will be made. Any contacts that have no company name at all will be imported into the default candidate pool company.

When we click “Import”, the system starts creating name and company records as appropriate for everyone in the CSV, and adds all the names to the selected Rollup so they’re easy to start working with.
As a final tip, you might want to consider having a blank database added to your PCRecruiter account for doing big imports like this. That way you can make sure the imported data all looks correct and clean before transferring the records from the empty database into your live one.

For more Two Minute Tuesdays, subscribe to this YouTube channel and watch our social networks or your PCR login screen. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net.

Two Minute Tuesday: What is a Rollup?

In this week’s new Two Minute Tuesday video, we’re talking about Rollups. Rollup lists are one of the most powerful tools in the PCRecruiter toolbox, but are often underutilized or misunderstood by new users (and even seasoned ones). This video gives the overview, and in future editions we’ll get into some of the cool things a Rollup can be used for.

In this week’s new Two Minute Tuesday video, we’re talking about Rollups. Rollup lists are one of the most powerful tools in the PCRecruiter toolbox, but are often underutilized or misunderstood by new users (and even seasoned ones). This video gives the overview, and in future editions we’ll get into some of the cool things a Rollup can be used for.

If you have any comments or suggestions for something we can explain in about two minutes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net

Video Transcript

It’s time for this week’s “Two Minute Tuesday,” Main Sequence’s series of very short videos designed to highlight often overlooked PCRecruiter features, concepts, or best practices in a convenient couple of minutes.

This week, “What is a Rollup?” Rollups are one of PCRecruiter’s most powerful features, and yet they’re often misunderstood or underutilized by newer users.

In the simplest terms, you can use a Rollup to group together (or roll up) any bunch of names, companies, and/or jobs. Common reasons for grouping records are to save search results, which you can then sub-search and sort within, manage calling lists, send a bulk email or text message, filter job boards and reports, export and sync with other databases, and make changes to, delete, copy, or move lots of records all at once.

The most common way to roll records up is to run a search, select some or all of the records, and then click the rollup icon in the actions menu at the upper right. You’ll see your most recently viewed rollups presented first. You may be wondering about these name, company, and position columns. Well, think of every rollup list like a three-page pad of paper, with one infinite sheet for each of the three record types. These columns indicate how many of each type of record are on the list. In most cases, my lists will contain just names, companies, or jobs alone, but if I wanted to roll up all of my jobs, contacts, and candidates in Cleveland together, I could put them all on the same Cleveland list. Keep in mind that any one record can be on as many rollups as you wish, but the same record can’t appear on the same rollup more than once.

Now, if I wanted to add the records I selected earlier to an existing list, I’d just select a recent rollup or click “Rollups” in the sidebar to search within all of the lists in my database. But right now, I want to create a new rollup, so I click “Add Rollup”. The Description is all that’s required, but I may want to categorize the list or write a memo about what it’s for. When I click save, PCR generates a new list and puts my selected records on it. If there are a lot of records, I can minimize the window and go about my work in the system while the list is compiled.

You’ll also find a “Rollup” option in the navigation menu on names, companies, and jobs for managing a single record’s appearance on related lists, and a ‘Rollups’ option in the main menu, where you’ll go to manage and work inside of your lists in general.

In future episodes we’ll talk about some of the handy things you can do with Rollups, but that’s it for this week’s Two Minute Tuesday. For more, subscribe to this YouTube channel and watch our social networks or your PCR login screen. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net.

Two Minute Tuesday: Mobile App

In this week’s new Two Minute Tuesday video, we’ll take a look at the PCRecruiter Mobile App for iOS and Android devices. This free mobile app is a great way for staffing and recruiting professionals to access applicant and hiring authority data on-the-go. Being away from your desk doesn’t have to mean being away from your database!

In this week’s new Two Minute Tuesday video, we’ll take a look at the PCRecruiter Mobile App for iOS and Android devices. This free mobile app is a great way for staffing and recruiting professionals to access applicant and hiring authority data on-the-go. Being away from your desk doesn’t have to mean being away from your database!

If you have any comments or suggestions for something we can explain in about two minutes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net

Video Transcript

It’s time for another “Two Minute Tuesday,” Main Sequence’s weekly series of very short videos designed to highlight often overlooked PCRecruiter features, concepts, or best practices in a convenient couple of minutes.

This week’s “Two Minute Tuesday” is about the PCRecruiter Mobile App for Android and iOS, which we released in 2014, but which you might have missed. You can find the app by searching your app store, or going to the downloads area of our website. Best of all, the app is completely free for PCRecruiter 9 users.

The first time you launch the app, you’ll tap the “Change Login Url” option to give the app the web address of your PCR account. Then you can use your usual username and password to connect to a database in your account.

The menu in the upper right takes you to the search and add options for the major record types and to the Settings area where you can change accounts or log out. Tap “Add” to create a new record, or “Search” to do a basic search.

Most often you’ll use the ‘search’ box at the top of the app, which can find names, companies, and jobs all at once.

When viewing a contact, you can email, call, or text them right from the record using the built-in features of your device. And of course PCR will log an activity indicating that you hit the email, call, or text button.

You can also view the resume, and email it or share it to other apps, and work with activities and notes. If there’s a LinkedIn profile stored for this contact, you can jump right to it.

From a job, we can see the description and make changes to the basic fields on the fly, and use the Share icon to push the job’s web extensions link into an email, text, or tweet.

Tapping the PCR icon in the upper left brings the recently viewed items so we can jump back to them at any time.

This is just the first version of the PCR Mobile app, and we expect to add more cool capabilities and connections to it down the road. Download it from the app store today and consider giving it a five-star review!

For more Two Minute Tuesdays, subscribe to this YouTube channel and watch our social networks or your PCR login screen. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net.

Two Minute Tuesday: Snapshot

Today marks the premiere of our new Two Minute Tuesday video series. Each week we’ll be posting a very quick video with a tip, tutorial, or topic that we think will be helpful to our users.

Today marks the premiere of our new Two Minute Tuesday video series. Each week we’ll be posting a very quick video with a tip, tutorial, or topic that we think will be helpful to our users.

This first installment talks about how to use the Snapshot service to review your previous day’s backup on our ASP, which is handy if you accidentally alter your form letters, custom data forms, or other PCRecruiter content in a way that can’t easily be reversed.

If you have any comments or suggestions for something we can explain in about two minutes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net

Video Transcript

Happy new year everyone, and welcome to the first “Two Minute Tuesday,” a new weekly series of very short videos from Main Sequence Technology. We’ll be releasing a timely tutorial, terse topic, or tiny tip every week at roughly this time. Each one will be a quick overview of some often overlooked PCRecruiter feature, or some concept or best practice that we think can be highlighted for our very busy users in a convenient couple of minutes.

Kicking off the series, this week’s “Two Minute Tuesday” is about Snapshot.

Have you ever permanently deleted a record, mass-changed a rollup, or made some other edit to your PCRecruiter data that made you wish you could go back in time? Well, that’s what snapshot is for.

Let’s say one of my co-workers removed some content from one of my form letters by mistake. No problem.

I’ll start by going to my PCRecruiter 9 login screen in another browser window. In the address bar, I’m going to remove the “www2” and replace it with “snapshot2”. If I were using the older PCR 8, I’d be replacing “www” with “snapshot”. The rest of the URL stays the same.

I’ll send the browser to this altered address, and log in as usual. What we’re looking at here is a read-only copy of yesterday’s database backup. I can look at all of the data in the system exactly as it was the day before, but I can’t make any changes to it.

Now I’ll go to the system area, find yesterday’s version of the letter, and copy the contents. Now I can go to my live data and paste what was lost back into place.

Of course, if I needed to go back further than the day before, I could still contact Main Sequence support and arrange for a database restoration, but the snapshot is always there and always free for those times when you need to see what your data looked like when it was last backed up. Try it out on your account today.

For more Two Minute Tuesdays, subscribe to this YouTube channel and watch our social networks or your PCR login screen. If you have any suggestions for future episodes, send an email to twominutetuesday@mainsequence.net.