Are You Hiring a Records Manager? 
(Richard Medina, Doculabs, www.doculabs.com)

When organizations ask us to help them find a Records Manager, we 
start by providing them with a set of qualifications the candidate 
should have. We also suggest questions for them to ask the 
candidates. These organizations are typically implementing ECM and 
RM on an enterprise level and need someone to manage an enterprise 
program.
 
This post suggests some of the questions you should asking your 
candidates. In larger organizations with more developed RM programs, 
these qualifications pertain to the RM Director role. 

First, please understand that managing RM technology – or managing 
paper records management, or maintaining a records plan – is only a 
small part of a Record Manager’s role. It’s mostly about protecting your 
organization through programs and policies that encourage and 
enable compliance and security, representing the organization during 
legal events, and communicating the mission of the program and 
socializing its importance.
 
The companies that are most successful at RM do it with a program 
that addresses overall RM strategy, governance, information 
organization, technology, processes, and change management. Usually 
the Records Manager or RM Director is part of a team that oversees (or 
at least advises regarding) the company’s ECM and RM activities. Your 
firm may not implement a comprehensive RM Program with a Records 
Manager/Director-plus-Team governance structure in the near or mid-
future, but we think it would be wise to hire someone with the ability 
to help develop and participate in such a program.
 
WHAT QUESTIONS SHOULD YOU ASK THE CANDIDATES?
 Here are some of the most relevant questions to ask the candidate:
 
1) Our firm’s (i.e. insert your firm's name here) RM Program will be 
cross-functional, involving Records (of course), Legal, IT, and the 
business. Can you develop, own, and coordinate the cross-functional 
information and records management program? (Or help do so? How 
have you done it in the past? How would you do it at your firm? ) 

2) Our firm obviously needs a record plan that addresses all records, 
paper and electronic. Can you develop and maintain the organization’s 
record plan and retention schedule? How would you address the ESI 
on hard drives, shared drives, in email, in social media tools? They are 
relevant to discovery; are they records or non-records? How would you 
address them? 

3) Can you develop and maintain the records management-related 
policies, procedures, and guidelines for users? 

4) Can you develop and maintain the organization’s ESI inventory? 
(This is the “data map” showing where the actual ESI at your firm is 
stored in various systems.) It’s relevant to the Federal Rules of Civil 
Procedure (FRCP), to good discovery strategy for each litigation case, 
and for proactive strategy for ECM and RM. 

5) Can you develop and implement a process for regular monitoring 
and inspection of business and user adherence to the RM program 
requirements? How do you recommend addressing the political and 
change management issues that typically arise with such initiatives? 

6) Can you work with IT to ensure that our systems can accommodate 
our RM requirements? Can you ensure that our ECM tools are 
leveraged to control and automate RM? (Note that this really entails 
going more slowly and more carefully than the vendors want, and it 
requires knowing enough about the technologies to know what they 
can realistically do, what is/is not cost-effective to implement, and 
what should be avoided – even if the vendors are pushing it.) 

7) Can you work with the Records Coordinators, who are (or will be) 
located in the business units, to ensure effective communication of 
program requirements to users? 

8) Can you work with Legal, IT, and Records Coordinators to define 
and document our firm’s e-discovery process?

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