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You are here: Home / Archives for sourcing

recruitDC MoCo Sourcing Roundtable Meetup Recap

October 2, 2013 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

In 2013, recruitDC responded to the demand from the local recruiting community to provide more learning and networking opportunities by producing a series of ‘Meetups’ at various locations throughout Maryland and Virginia. The Meetups so far have primarily been free, brief, less formal events where 30-40 recruiters could get together for free to learn from each other and some of the area’s top recruiting professionals. Tabletalk session
On Thursday, September 26th, Aronson/Champion Recruiting hosted the 4th recruitDC Meetup of 2013 at their office in Rockville, MD. Sourcing was the topic-du-jour, and we took a new fun and interactive approach for knowledge sharing and collaboration on a variety of sourcing topics. Each table had a different topic with a local ‘rockstar’ facilitator including: candidate engagement (Pete Radloff), phone sourcing (Conni LaDouceur), LinkedIn (Caitlin Banks), Boolean search (Kelly Dingee), tech communities (Matt Duren), other social channels (Holly Bienia), pipeline development (Derek Zeller), and sourcing strategy development (Ben Gotkin).

Participants had the opportunity to participate in two table discussions over the course of 90 minutes, the ‘buzz’ was so great that it probably could have gone on all day. Some of the key learnings from participants through the day included:

  • How to effectively conduct phone research and cold calls by being ready with your follow up questions and by using terms to make you sound credible
  • Avoid using closed questions on a cold call that might solicit a yes/no answer
  • Build a strong word-of-mouth brand through a great candidate experience and transparency
  • The benefits of using the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar
  • Using Rapportive to confirm email addresses and make easy connections to candidates social profiles
  • Leveraging librarians at your local public library to help conduct research for you
  • Using a ‘tilde symbol’ or ‘~’ in a Boolean search on Google gives you synonyms for search terms
  • Google is best for xraying LinkedIn
  • How Github profiles can demonstrate a specific level of expertise
  • Using ‘whois’ when searching social or tech profiles
  • Using Twitter search to find candidates

The feedback for this event was so positive that we are likely to use this format again for future Meetup events, so stay tuned. Also stay tuned for information on our next Meetup event, likely to happen in DC in the near future.

Don’t forget to register for the Fall 2013 recruitDC event at the AFI in Silver Spring, MD. You can get your tickets here!

Filed Under: recruitDC Events, Uncategorized Tagged With: Github, LinkedIn, Meetup, MoCo, sourcing, Twitter, WhoIs

Talent42 – The Current & Future State of Sourcing

September 4, 2013 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

Ed. Note: We’ve asked our friend, Amy Ala permission to repost her review of the session by Glen Cathey at Talent42. It was originally posted on RecruitingBlogs.com

By Amy Ala

The most valuable commodity I know of is information, wouldn’t you agree?
-Gordon Gekko, Wall Street

The most over-used word in my house right now is “epic”. My boys (ages 16 and 7) say it about EVERYTHING. World of Warcraft is EPIC. That hamburger was EPIC. I just did an EPIC trick on my skateboard. NO. Glen Cathey’s keynote at Talent42 was EPIC.

I was surprised to hear that Glen has never been a dedicated sourcer. He’s always been a full life cycle recruiter. (LIKE ME!!) Not that Glen has ANY challenges in the credibility department, but I love that he’s played the entire game. He gets it.

Like his keynote title promised, Glen went on to break down the current and future state of sourcing.

Current State of Sourcing

  • Heavy focus on tips and tricks and hacks vs. methodologies
  • Many ATSs sill offer terrible search capability
  • Sentiment that LINKEDIN is “easy” and concern over heavy reliance
  • Sourcers seek answers rather than learning how and why
  • Few purpose-built sourcing tools (structured, deep human capital)
  • Search providers continue to “dumb down” search interfaces and functionality, promise to do the “thinking” for you
  • Candidate messaging not significantly different than 10 years ago

Disagree with any of this so far? Nope, me neither. I especially love what he said next – “Stop worrying about how many people are fishing in the Pacific – fish better and actually get some fish before moving to some obscure pond.”

We’re talking to you, LinkedIn is easy audience. Or any job board and social media snobs. The simple truth is that people, and by people I mean potential candidates, are everywhere. Maybe Facebook, maybe GitHub, and yes I’m sure there is some rock star developer living in a cave off the grid with ZERO online presence. Fine. But Glen’s point, or at least how I decided to interpret it, is a great one – stop worrying so damn much about “where” you’re finding candidates and just be better at talking to them.

So we can continue to spend lots of time scouring the deep bowels of the interwebs in search of the elusive purple squirrel that NO ONE ELSE CAN FIND, except there’s one small problem with the internet. A search engine can only give you what you asked for. It doesn’t “know” what you want or need and can’t determine relevance.

Ah, so that’s why my results are sometimes so full of garbage.

According to Glen, we must be able to control our searches. Boolean logic is the simplest way to write a query. (if you have not already, go to Glen’s website NOW with any Boolean questions.) The change we need to see in sourcing is not a better search engine, or longer more intricate strings. Nope, we need to focus on asking better questions. The more we know about our target candidates, the better we’ll be at finding and closing them –

Critical Candidate Variables

  • Skills/experience
  • Desired opportunity
  • Location
  • Availability
  • Remuneration
  • Diversity

We (should) know the unique combination of these variables needed to do the job. Now the problem with traditional postings is that we have no control over the skills/experience of who applies. The beauty of sourcing is that you control who you contact. Which is awesome.

Back to our big pond. Or our Pacific Ocean, if you will. A big chunk of the Talent42 audience uses LinkedIn Recruiter. Most of us don’t use LIR to its full capability. It’s headed towards full CRM – we should be creating tags, custom notes, tons of meta-data that we can create.

Then there’s the new Facebook graph search – cost a dollar to send a message. Unbelievable. It’s in beta right now, so could take time to sign up. Glen says it’s worth it and will give you other search options it thinks you might be interested in. I like options in my sourcing strategies… Glen went on to list a few more –

  • Dice open web search
  • Entelo – Entelo button
  • Talentbin – social aggregation and matching Chrome extension works in Linkedin Recruiter
  • Gild – algorithmic Sourcing/Recruiting

Future State of Sourcing

  • Heavy focus in sourcing methodologies and disciplined approach to the retrieval, analysis, and action upon human capital data
  • Manual mining disappears
  • More purpose-built sourcing tools (structured, deep human capital)
  • ATS leveraging best in class search/retrieval
  • Search providers “smart-up” search interfaces and functionality and involve/communicate with users
  • Human sourcers will not be replaced by matching algorithms
  • Sourcing (finally!) matches marketing in segmentation and messaging

Glen sums it up with this – “we’ve all got a lot of data. How well you use it is what matters.” He was also kind enough to share a quote I found very fitting –

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
– Max Plank

Amy Ala is a Seattle based recruiter with over 10 years of diverse industry experience. She’s recruited her way across the country living and working in Southern California, Arizona, and Michigan including a 6 week stay in Louisville, KY to open a new staffing office. After several years on the agency side, having specialized in everything from light industrial to executive finance search, she detoured into public service. Connect with her on LinkedIn, follow her on Twitter, or send her an email at alarecruiter@gmail.com

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Amy Ala, BooleanBlackBelt, Conference, Glen Cathey, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Recruiter, sourcing, Talent42

Sourcing, You say? Join Us For a Meetup September 26th – Rockville, MD

August 21, 2013 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

Please join us for a morning meetup on Thursday September 26th from 8am – 10:30am in Rockville, MD. Come have some breakfast with your fellow purple squirrel hunters, mingle, and as always – LEARN!
Register today for the event on our Eventbrite site!

A very special thanks to our most gracious host, Aronson, LLC

Filed Under: recruitDC Events, Uncategorized Tagged With: Eventbrite, Meetup, sourcing, Tweetup

Managing The "TMI" Syndrome

August 16, 2013 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Doug Munro
too many tools
As recruiters we are bombarded with information on tools, methodologies and tricks that purport to make us more effective at identifying and recruiting talent. A huge industry has evolved around vendors and thought leaders telling us that we need their products and insights to perfect our craft. Some of this information is certainly beneficial, but the sheer mass of it can be daunting. Before you get sucked into a morass that slows you down rather than makes you more efficient a little analysis is in order:

• Consider the source. Some industry thought leaders make their living analyzing the 20,000 foot view of recruiting and haven’t worked a desk in many years. Their insights may still have practical value, but often they are working from a perspective that doesn’t apply to someone who is recruiting in the trenches. Moreover, a great deal of what we see is designed to sell us something, whether we need it or not.

• Consider the success stories. It’s exciting to read about all the cool things Google does to attract and retain talent, but your company may not have the bandwidth (either in brand recognition or resources) to apply much of what Google does. What works in one organization does not necessarily work in others.

• Take a good luck in the mirror. Be honest with yourself when it comes to your own strengths, challenges, and ability to commit time to a new initiative. I don’t doubt that someone, somewhere is recruiting through Instagram but I doubt many of us are going all-in on that platform. Don’t spend valuable time on anything you don’t have the time and acumen to truly leverage to your advantage.

• It’s okay to give up. We all want to improve and stay abreast of new ideas in our profession, so by all means try new things that seem to make sense in your particular circumstances. If they don’t achieve tangible results or you can’t seem to make them fit into your process, however, there’s no shame in putting them aside – it’s better than wasting precious cycles on something that isn’t adding value to your work.

I’m not a thought leader. I’m no different than most recruiters. I am tasked with finding and recruiting technical talent for the specific needs of my company. I lead a small team of recruiters and am constantly trying to make us a better unit despite all the challenges we face: hard-to-find niche skillsets, budgetary constraints, federal personnel requirements, and internal process challenges. Sometimes I look at all the tools and methodologies being sold to us as recruiters and I think I must be recruiting in the Stone Age. I must be inadequate if I haven’t incorporated gamification into my own recruiting function! So to make myself feel better I will hesitatingly join the white noise and offer what I think is a simple recipe for success:

• Master the search. The first logical step for any recruiter is sourcing, so time spent improving search strings is always time well spent. Learn how Boolean logic operates and study the nuances of difference in how disparate search engines apply that logic. Perfect your searches in iterations so they produce more relevant results. Glen Cathey’s website Boolean Black Belt is a treasure trove of tutorials on how best to search a wide array of platforms. He is the definition of a thought leader, he is still an active recruiter, and his lessons are free!

• Pick up the phone. We operate in a landscape that now utilizes social media, compiled job boards, internet branding, and creative marketing strategies to encourage candidates to want to apply for our open positions. You might be able to scratch out a living without making any calls at all. To master the craft, however, you have to connect with your talent pool and emails aren’t going to build those connections. Talk to candidates. Sell not just the job and the company, but yourself. Build a real and sustainable relationship that can keep paying dividends (referrals) for years.

• Everything is a tool. Applicant Tracking Systems, social media platforms, marketing strategies – they are all tools. They are only going to be as effective as the work you put into mastering them. If you can only be a mediocre practitioner of something you’re better served focusing on something else. Put the time in to master your personal tools as well. Perfect your individual voice, your value pitch, your understanding of the technologies you’re recruiting for – those unique qualities that will set you apart.

• Follow wisely. Identify recruiting leaders who speak to your sensibilities as a recruiter. Follow their feeds and their blogs and try to engage them with questions and observations. Some of these leaders are not sales-driven and generous with their insights; following them can be an effective way to stay current on trending tools and methodologies.

• Join the community. Connecting with other recruiters pays off in multiple ways: information sharing, candidate referrals, job prospects, and of course recruiters tend to be good company in general. As much value as there is to connecting with national experts, we are fortunate to be in the DC Metro area with its diverse and thriving recruiting community. You don’t have to attend SourceCon or ERE events to stay abreast of trending best practices; RecruitDC offers all of the benefits of the larger national events without the cost factors that can be prohibitive. Connect with your peers and build relationships that will pay off indefinitely.

It’s easy to get sidetracked as a recruiter. We have so many moving pieces to track, so many conflicting priorities, and so many opportunities to get overtaken by events. Focus on the fundamentals, master your own unique skills, connect with real people in real ways, and be discerning in how you evaluate new products and practices – you will be the best recruiter you can be.

Doug Munro is the Director of Technical Recruiting at Optimos, Inc., a strategy and enterprise information technology provider to the federal government. Find Doug on Twitter at @DoDRecruiterDC

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Doug Munro, recruiting, Social Media, sourcing, tools

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