Tools of the Trade – Instapaper

Every now and then a tool (or in this case a mobile app) will come along that makes a huge impact in how you go about your day. If you are like me there are not enough hours in the day to read all the articles and blogs that I like to keep up with. In fact our popular ‘Around the Industry‘ section is updated daily with great articles that would take a considerable amount of your day to read completely. So what is one to do? All recruiters know that time kills all deals. Well say hello to Instapaper.

A simple bookmarking tool that allows users to read articles from the web on their time.

So how does it work? Instapaper gives you a Read Later bookmark. This is a simple button that you can drag to your browser tool bar. As you come across links/articles, users can simply click read later and that article will be saved to your account to be viewed later. This article can be accessed by your smartphone, iPad, Kindle, etc. There’s no limit to how many articles you can store, and your archive of read items is kept indefinitely (unless you delete from it).

The real attractive function of this tool is that the articles are not simply a link back to the original source, but rather a clean text only version that contains only the images associated with the article. There are no banner ads, hyperlinks, or other clutter, but a nice clean way to read your content.

Instapaper was created by Tumblr developer Marco Arment and has been around for a bit, but if you are not yet using it I strongly recommend checking it out. You can learn more by visiting the official site here. It is one of those simple tools that once you try you will begin to use daily. As we preach here at Recruiting Daily- stay an expert and now you might just have the time to do just that between all the other tasks your desk calls for.

If you are a first time user we would be interested in hearing your feedback on this tool, so please take a moment to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Likewise if you know of another great tool that can make a impact from a productivity standpoint, feel free to share with Recruiting Daily and we will feature in a future installment of ‘Tools of the Trade’.

By Tim Spagnola