Managing Contacts and Your Contacts Book

Your contacts book is your living. Good contacts mean a better job and more money. Your contacts book is to be guarded with your life and treasured like you would your mother.  Never lose it. Never lend it. Never leave it lying around on a desk - contacts are hard-won, so why let your rivals take the easy route; and are you really prepared to let a colleague or a rival use one of your contacts when there may be sensitivities, where confidentiality may be involved, where something unhelpful might be said about you? Didn’t think so. Converse to all that, if you get the chance to nick contact’s data – do so!

When I ask students who are starting the National Broadcasting School radio news course if they own a contacts book, the answer is usually ‘no’. A few do, most don’t. Those who don’t point proudly to their mobile phones. Hopeless! A mobile phone is not the place to keep contacts – mobiles get stolen or lost, and given the way I’m going to suggest that you record your contacts, they’re not user-friendly. What’s more, you’ll run out of space after a couple of years.

So, first – buy yourself a contacts books that has loose-leaf pages and which can be expanded. If you’re doing your job properly, you’ll be adding to your contacts book the whole time. Something like a Filofax is perfect. You may not wish to spend big money, so look for an alternative. There are plenty. Make sure it’s built to last. Get yourself some alphabetical dividers too. A make sure that each entry box has enough room for the information you want to include. Mobile numbers and email addresses are the most important. Many people have two of each these days. 

The way you use your contacts book – sometimes under extreme time- pressure – is by story. So, enter your contacts by the point of relevance – not by name. Realise too that each contact may have several points of relevance and so may require several entries. Examples: - there may be a heated local debate about building more houses on a flood plain. You’re sent out to interview a councillor who fiercely and articulately opposes the development. You get his contact numbers. You enter them in your contacts book that makes them easy to find; under F for Flood Plain, or perhaps P for Phoenix development or E for environment.  Similarly, you might bump in to a young woman whom you discover to be President of her Students’ Union, and an international rugby player. So perhaps, E for Essex University, S for Student politics, W for women’s’ rugby. Geddit?

When collecting contacts, do so in two stages. First, get all the information you need. Often, you only have time to scribble down the data in your notebook or, perhaps, you get handed a business card (by the way, when you’re given a business card, check it has the data you want, eg mobile number and email address before leaving.) Then, when you have the time to spend with your contacts book, enter the information with care in your contacts book. Contacts books need time - a few minutes a month of private time to update.

Rory McLeod, is the director of the National Broadcasting School. A Radio school providing Radio courses and really good radio training to start a career in radio.