By Christine Rebhorn

Leveraging technology to help advance your career is crucial in the 21st century. Job search engines, résumé generators, salary comparison sites like Glassdoor, and, of course, LinkedIn are popular tools.

But in addition to using technology to search for jobs, it also should be part of your networking strategy. Networking is not a one-and-done interaction. Networking relationships should be cultivated over time, and you should be actively working to expand your network on a daily basis. As you are building these relationships, how do you keep track of who you need to follow-up with? What day did you say you would meet for coffee? Who offered that informational interview? And whose business card is this that you scribbled out a note to contact next Thursday?

Eric Koefoot, MIT graduate and cofounder and CEO of PublicRelay Inc., brought up an interesting point at a recent MIT career workshop: Try using a personal CRM (customer relationship management) tool to help build and manage your network. CRMs allow you to consolidate, categorize, and organize your contacts; make notes on past and current interactions; and schedule reminders for follow-on interactions.

What does this look like? You can start by building your own within a spreadsheet. Zapier.com has a step-by-step guide on “How to Create a Customizable CRM with Google Sheets.” Airtable.com has a suite of templates, including a Personal CRM template that allows you to apply customizable tags for further organizational detail. Do you use a Gmail account as your primary networking email? Services like FollowUp and ProsperWorks takes the CRM to the next step, by allowing you navigate and manage relationships right within your Gmail inbox. Then, of course, there are fully developed apps like Contalist or Cloze that allow for a quick and accessible option for network management. Most of these apps offer a limited free version, with the option for a paid upgrade for additional services.

With technology constantly evolving, we can afford to reserve some time and energy and “work smarter not harder.”