Now that I’ve used a CRM from scratch for startup sales and support, I’m coming around to the idea that you should start a personal CRM as early as possible in your career.
Seeing who you’ve talked to from which company over time can be incredibly useful for making connections. Those connections are useless if you don’t engage with them (meeting, hang outs, events, or social media). A CRM helps you keep track of these connections and offload some of the mental overhead of engaging with them.
I’m not quite sure about separating personal/professional, but it is certainly important that your CRM is portable. You should not lose all of your connections when you change jobs.