So, a while ago we did a post on a bunch of apps we couldn’t live without. Since then we’ve moved on a bit and discovered some more gems. Not the kind of people to keep a great tool to ourselves, we thought we’d share with you our new favourite apps for making everything in your business life easier, quicker, and just…well, better:
Best business banking app: Starling Bank
(App Store | Play Store)
Thanks to their low or next-to-nothing fees, instant notifications and data driven insights into your cash flow, more and more businesses are being drawn towards the new wave of challenger bank apps. Our favourite is Starling Bank, which charges no fees if you have less than 10 full-time employees and a turnover of less than £1.7m/yr. Fully licensed by the FCA and the PRA, a Starling Bank current account is also covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme which protects up to £85,000 of your investment in the unlikely event the bank goes bust.
Best communication app for recruiters: WhatsApp
(App Store | Play Store)
No surprises for guessing that this would be on the list, but WhatsApp is still our go-to means of getting quick updates and responses from our candidates and clients. While the pros of using email are indisputable, it sometimes fails to elicit the kind of quick response that our clients often praise us for. As long as the people you’re communicating with don’t object to it (some regard instant messaging in business as invasive) WhatsApp can increase your reaction times to opportunities, and lead to greater productivity. Besides popularity (over 300 million daily users), the main reason to choose it is security: unlike many other instant messaging apps, the end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you’re communicating with can read what is sent.
Best health tracking app: MyFitnessPal
(App Store | Play Store)
If you’re the kind of businessperson who is always busy busy busy, focusing on diet, hydration, getting enough sleep and exercise often falls by the wayside. Not so with MyFitnessPal! It’s been around for a while now, but MyFitnessPal is still one of the best for tracking, and more importantly, motivation. With the ability to set all sorts of goals, it helpfully reminds you what you need to do, when, and whether you’re falling short or overdoing it. From step tracking to sleep monitoring, MyFitnessPal has you covered. But its most powerful feature is calorie counting – there’s a database of over five million different foods and a variety of ways to present the data you slowly amass, allowing you to tweak and refine your eating habits until you find what works for you.
Best recruiting app: Indeed Employer
(App Store | Play Store)
Eschewing the obvious choice in LinkedIn Recruiter (as its ratings plummet on the app stores due to hanging and log-in problems), we’ve begun using Indeed Employer as our go to mobile recruitment tool. Not only can we post roles, but we can manage candidate communications all in one place, make notes and track results. It offers the ability to post a job in minutes and has a range of ‘smart’ filtering tools to identify the best people quickly and effectively. We particularly like the ability to respond to multiple contacts with canned messages, which, right now, is definitely making us more time efficient.
Best app for looking really professional: Grammarly
(App Store | Play Store)
We can’t stress enough how, in our line of work, bad spelling and grammar can really hold you back. That’s why we’ve come to love Grammarly. Originally a website only affair, Grammarly bills itself as the ‘World’s most accurate online grammar checker’. These days it comes with a great app that really blows us away with its ability to ensure mistake-free writing (er…typing). It’s ‘contextual’ – which means it’s able to understand if you’ve got the punctuation or the grammar wrong based on the actual message you’re trying to convey. Smart, eh? Not only that, but it offers short, clear explanations for every correction, which helps you understand your mistakes so you can avoid them in future…and become more professional looking in the process!
