Records Manager

Records Managers are responsible for one of the least glamorous and most consequential functions in any organization: making sure the right information exists, is findable, is protected, and goes away on schedule. When a regulatory audit arrives, when a lawsuit triggers discovery, or when a department needs records from five years ago to resolve a dispute, the Records Manager's program is either ready or it isn't.

The practical scope of the job covers three domains that have to work together. First, policy: the Records Manager builds and maintains the retention schedule — a living document that maps every record type the organization creates to a defined lifespan and disposition rule. This requires working knowledge of applicable regulations (HIPAA, SOX, Dodd-Frank, state public records laws, IRS guidance, and others depending on the industry) combined with enough operational fluency to understand what records departments actually create and why they need them.

Second, systems: most of the actual management happens inside software — an ECM platform like OpenText, Microsoft SharePoint with Purview compliance features, Laserfiche, or a purpose-built records management application. The Records Manager configures the taxonomy, sets up retention labels, manages user permissions, and works with IT when systems behavior doesn't match policy intent. Email archiving and SharePoint governance have become especially complex as organizations move to cloud-first environments where records are scattered across OneDrive folders, Teams channels, and shared inboxes that no one systematically manages.

Third, operations: the Records Manager runs the physical and digital lifecycle end-to-end. For physical records, that means managing contracts with offsite storage vendors like Iron Mountain or GRM, maintaining box-level indexes, processing retrieval requests, and scheduling destruction runs with documented certificates. For digital records, it means coordinating with IT on automated deletion jobs, overseeing e-discovery collection workflows, and keeping audit trails that demonstrate the program actually works.

The legal hold function deserves specific mention because it is high-stakes and time-sensitive. When litigation is anticipated, the Records Manager must move quickly to suspend normal destruction, identify all custodians of potentially relevant records, and document the hold in a way that will survive scrutiny in court. Errors at this stage — failing to preserve records that should have been held — can result in sanctions and adverse inference rulings that dwarf whatever the underlying case was about.

Records Managers also function as internal educators. Most compliance failures in records management come not from malice but from employees who genuinely don't understand what to keep, where to store it, or why it matters. Translating policy into practical behavior change — through training, job aids, coordinator networks, and periodic audits — is a core part of the job and one that requires communication skills as much as technical knowledge.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in library and information science, business administration, public administration, or a related field
• Master's degree in library science (MLS/MLIS) with an archival or records management concentration for senior roles at large institutions
• Some government and healthcare roles will consider candidates with substantial experience in lieu of a graduate degree

Certifications:

• Certified Records Manager (CRM) — ICRM; six-part exam covering principles, practices, technology, and project management; widely considered essential for senior positions
• Information Governance Professional (IGP) — ARMA International; preferred for roles with a broader enterprise information governance charter
• Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) or Technician (RHIT) — AHIMA; relevant for healthcare records roles
• Microsoft Certified: Information Protection and Compliance Administrator Associate — increasingly relevant for organizations running compliance programs in Microsoft 365 Purview

Technical skills:

• ECM platforms: OpenText Content Server, Laserfiche, Hyland OnBase, M365/SharePoint with Purview compliance features
• E-discovery tools: Relativity, Exterro, Nuix — at minimum familiarity with legal hold workflow and collection processes
• Records management software: HP TRIM/Content Manager, Gimmal, Jira (for hold tracking in smaller organizations)
• Retention schedule development: understanding of NARA general records schedules, state public records laws, IRS Rev. Proc. 98-25, and industry-specific regulatory frameworks
• Physical records management: offsite vendor management (Iron Mountain, GRM, Recall), box indexing, chain-of-custody documentation

Experience benchmarks:

• Entry-level positions (Records Coordinator, Records Specialist) typically require 1–3 years and a bachelor's degree
• Records Manager roles typically require 5–8 years of progressive experience in records, information governance, or related compliance functions
• Director-level roles at large enterprises or government agencies expect CRM certification plus 10+ years, often including team management and budget responsibility

Soft skills that matter:

• Organizational authority without organizational power — Records Managers routinely have to get departments to comply with policies they didn't create and don't always agree with
• Precise, defensible documentation — audit trails and destruction certificates need to hold up under legal scrutiny
• Project management discipline — retention schedule overhauls, system migrations, and legal hold campaigns all run on parallel tracks

Demand for Records Managers has been quietly growing for a decade, driven by regulatory expansion, litigation risk awareness, and the explosion of digital content that organizations accumulate without any coherent management strategy. The job isn't shrinking — but it is changing shape, and the direction matters for anyone entering or advancing in the field.

Regulatory pressure is a persistent tailwind. Data privacy laws at the state level (CCPA, CPRA, and a growing list of state equivalents) have added data subject rights — including the right to deletion — on top of existing retention requirements. Managing the tension between "keep this for seven years" and "delete this because a consumer asked" requires active records program governance. Healthcare organizations face HIPAA retention guidance, financial firms face SEC and FINRA books-and-records rules, government agencies face state public records laws with real enforcement teeth. Each of these creates demand for people who understand both the regulatory requirement and how to implement it in practice.

The information volume problem is accelerating. Most organizations are drowning in unmanaged content — email archives, SharePoint sites with no governance, Teams channels where project records live indefinitely, cloud file shares that no one has inventoried in years. Microsoft 365 Purview and similar tools have made it technically feasible to apply retention policies at scale, but the tool doesn't work without a thoughtful retention schedule and someone who understands both the business and the compliance requirements well enough to configure it correctly. That person is the Records Manager.

AI-assisted classification is real and worth taking seriously. Platforms like Microsoft Purview now include trainable classifiers that can auto-apply retention labels based on document content rather than requiring manual tagging. E-discovery platforms are incorporating AI review tools that can identify responsive documents with minimal human coding. These capabilities are reducing the labor cost of managing large, unstructured document sets — which means fewer entry-level records clerks and technicians, and stronger demand for the senior practitioners who can design and govern the systems.

Government employment remains the largest single sector for this role. Federal, state, and local government agencies are required by statute to maintain records programs, and municipal clerks, county records managers, and federal agency records officers are a steady employment base. NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) sets the federal framework, and state archives offices play a similar role at the state level.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics groups Records Managers within information management occupations and projects modest but consistent demand growth. Healthcare, legal services, financial services, and government are the most active hiring sectors. For professionals who add ECM platform expertise and data privacy knowledge on top of a traditional records background, the career is increasingly positioned as information governance rather than records management — a reframing that connects to data officer and compliance officer career tracks and commands commensurately higher compensation.

Dear Hiring Manager,

I'm applying for the Records Manager position at [Organization]. I've spent seven years in information governance roles, most recently as Records and Information Manager at [Company], where I owned the enterprise retention schedule for a 2,400-person organization operating in three regulated industries.

The project I'm most proud of during that time was a SharePoint governance overhaul we completed last year. We had approximately 180 active site collections with no retention labels applied, inconsistent naming conventions, and no legal hold capability. I worked with IT and outside counsel to map the existing content against our retention schedule, configured Microsoft Purview to auto-apply labels to the highest-volume content types, and built a coordinator network in each business unit to handle exceptions and new-content classification. Eighteen months in, we have 94% label coverage on active repositories and ran our first e-discovery collection entirely within the system — no manual email exports or shared drive crawls.

I hold the CRM credential and completed the IGP in 2023. I'm comfortable managing offsite vendor relationships — currently oversee an Iron Mountain contract covering 12,000 cubic feet of physical records — and have issued and released nine legal holds ranging from single-department to enterprise-wide scope.

What I'm looking for is a role with more exposure to M&A records integration and a larger cross-functional scope. [Organization]'s scale and your pending acquisition activity look like exactly that environment.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Your Name]