090528 Sourcing Links

Thought for the Day: There are no people to be found on the internet. But, there are a lot of documents. Good sourcing is all about looking for documents. It is not about people at all.

• GRecruiter
  Ami Givertz is singlehandedly revising the sourcer’s desktop. GRecruiter is the emerging outcome. Get onboard.
• Boolean BlackBelt
  A unique combination of spin-free observation, good training and smart views about Recruiting. Here’s how he makes the case for sourcing: “”
• Top Influencers v1.04 Elaine Orler
  Knowledge Infusion’s Recruiting powerhouse. Sourcing is a waiting game.
• Claudia’s Wednesday Wisdom: Lying Sack of Recruiters
  “It’s your job search, tied to your career. Nobody has a higher stake in the outcome than you do, so stop whining, get a stopwatch of your own, and start firing the bad ones. If you’re not sure how to assess a good recruiter from a bad one, RBC is an excellent forum to engage in that conversation; put up a post and I’m sure you’ll get an earful.“
• Sourcing Webcasts from HCI

Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.08: The death of sourcing

Sourcing, as currently practiced, is a short term phenomenon. There is money to be made in the field today because the techniques required to find people are arcane and confusing. Additionally, with the strong exception of Avature and Broadlook’s products, there are no useful tools for the automation of the process.

Meanwhile people are getting easier and easier to find.

The next waves of innovation in social networks will be all about making the membership accessible to each other. Right now, finding additional network nodes, new friends or interesting potential connections is a black art. You’ve got to be a Boolean Black Belt. You need a guru. There’s an entire consulting industry built on specialized knowledge.

You may rest assured that this situation will not last.

The web is best when it tears down the friction that separates information from the people who need it. The folks who work hard mining data manually today will be flipping burgers in the near future. The skills required to move forward are unlike the ones being taught. Contemporary sourcing is a dead-end occupation with little in the way of transferrable skills.

Next generation recruiting is about relating intimately, not about mutual discovery. It’s about fidelity and long term value exchange, not one night stands. It’s about data that updates itself because the relationship is constantly working. Finding each other? Easy. Building an enduring relationship? Hard.

For a while, sourcing will be a high dollar, easy pickings income source. But, in the relatively short term, the need for the expertise will evaporate. Former sourcing luminaries will be familiarizing themselves with the alarm on the French fry machine and the relative difference between Rare, Medium and Well done.

Evaporate, as in “What air freshener scent would you like with your car wash?”

So, what do you do if you’re a sourcer (or any kind of Recruiter, for that matter)?

Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.05

Unsung Hero Sings

(Jan.30, 2009) Amitai Givertz, Mr. Recruitomatic, works tirelessly to aerate the featured content on RBC. Ami, as he is known to his friends, compiles the daily feature articles and his exhaustive “best of the week” collections. His blog here on RBC is an inventory of the great posts that top the site each day.

Ami is widely known for content density (he’s really smart), link mania (his stuff is heavily annotated with really useful pointers). a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor (bless Mother for that), limitless intensity (at last count, seven observable blogs), passion and dogged persistence. He has been in and around the recruiting industry since before the first sailor was shanghaied. He recently won the Recruiting Animal’s 2008 award for Recruitosphere Excellence. It sits on his trophy shelf alongside his Mikey’s Monkey Award from 2006.

These days, Ami is turning the world upside down with his humbly named Brown Bag Recruiter program. The innocuously titled webinars are the gateway to Recruiting mastery. Like a bottle of Absinthe, the seminars are deliciously mind expanding. Ami has discovered an enormous cache of riches and is busily trying to give them away to any recruiter who wants them.

Ami’s webinars show you how to crack the code. Using Google accounts and Google toolkits, the programs teach recruiters to construct astonishingly rich and complex resume databases. Rather than focusing on hitting a home run like some search seminars, Ami teaches the virtue of looking ahead. Building an arsenal of data that can be reused and renewed is the ultimate object of the class.

Here’s the upcoming schedule. You’ll be glad you made the investment. Each webinar is $45 and lasts a generous hour. The entire series price is $95

* Wednesday, February 4, 2pm EST G-Recruiting: A 60-minute Digest (Register)
* Tuesday, February 10 2PM EST Search Engine Secrets, Part 1: Customized Candidate Search (Register)
* Wednesday, February 11 2PM EST Search Engine Secrets, Part 2: Vertical Search and Sourcing to Profile (Register)
* Thursday, February 12 2pm ESTSearch Engine Secrets, Part 3: Purposeful Sourcing to Drive Meaningful Relationships (Register)
* Tuesday, February 17 2pm EST Search Engine Secrets: A 60-minute Digest (Register)
* Thursday, February 19 2pm EST Search Engine Secrets: A 60-minute Digest (Register)

Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v1.25

Thanks, Dave

(Nov 14, 2008) I spent an amazing couple of days with Dave Mendoza, our resident networking genius, sourcer extraordinaire and all around good guy. Dave organized a group of us (including Dan DH Harris and Sean Rehder) to spend a day engaging an amazing organization on the full range of Staffing and Recruiting Issues.

I tackled the big picture and “why” questions of Recruiting Strategy. Dave focused on microsites and the general “How” question. DH dug even further into precise sourcing tactics. Sean gently touched on the “architecture of community”.

It was amazing to be in a place where those ideas resonated. It allowed me to see that a fully implemented Recruiting Strategy has (at least) four main components:

* The Current State of Things (What we have, how we got here, weaknesses and strengths)
* The Strategy (Where we want to be and how we want to get there, the plan for all recruiting, tactical guidelines…sourcing hierarchy.. which too to use first)
* Sourcing (Candidate Acquisition)
- Gathering and Articulating the Current Requirement
- Media Planning and Candidate Acquisition
- The Network Energizing Function (outreach, networking, ongoing value to the community)
- Data Cataloging, Mining and Maintenance (keeping the data live, growing and up to date)
- Detailed Data Acquisition (enthusiastic data acquisition)
- Short List Development
* Hands On Recruiting (Presenting and Closing The Deal, Refining The Requirement)

We were fortunate to be in an environment where everyone clearly understood that transactional reactive recruiting is a great way to make long term mistakes.

It also became clear that the downturn will be a great time for retrenchment and reconsideration of strategy and the architecture used to implement it. I am seeing more and more firms trying to get their arms around the process of identifying all of their potential hires well in advance of the requirement (even years). They are using economic slowness as a way to retool for the future.

Lots of people in our industry are on the receiving end of difficult economic news. While there is general agreement that those who survive the next 18 months will be long term winners, it’s still hard to see who they will be. There are lots of financial pressures on organizations that looked strong yesterday.

The cool thing about Mendoza is his resilient focus on doing things for others. He tends to stay away from the sort of patronizing help that feels like pity. Rather, he thinks long and hard about how to help other people make money.

We talked at length about how Recruiters might productively use the downtime.

Here are some suggestions (blame me for this, Dave just got me thinking):

1. Slow economic cycles are inevitable in recruiting. Success means learning ho to thrive in them.
2. Look at the opportunity and the 18 month horizon line, Failure comes from over focusing on the immediate challenge.
3. Retool. Rethink your strategy. Where do you want to be in five years. Take some time to figure this out and write it down.
4. Spend an hour each week thinking about the ways in which you can be helpful to other people. Do two specific things to make someone else’s business better each week.
5. Read about the changes in the environment. Old industries are dying and new ones are forming. Which category are you in?
6. Take the time and energy to personally and actively reject a candidate. Many of us hide from this human process with form letters, dropped email and unreturned phone calls. Take ownership of the dark side of the work.
7. What is your greatest weakness as a Recruiter? Make a plan to improve in that area.

Are you doing something productive with unplanned free time? Take a moment and let us know.

080906 Dallas Recruiting Roadshow

(September 06, 2008) On September 25, 2008, the Recruiting Roadshow will be returning to Frisco, Texas (a Dallas suburb near Plano) for our second annual visit. As usual, the event, including Breakfast and Lunch, is free of charge.

Register here.

The Recruiting Roadshow is a continuing education project designed to meet the needs of local recruiters in local markets. The event is sponsored by a group of Recruiting Industry vendors who hope to strengthen the industry’s infrastructure. Each Recruiting Roadshow is a half day event featuring four presentations and an interactive networking experience.

Register here.

The Dallas Recruiting Roadshow will be held in the same venue as last year:

University of Dallas College of Business
Graduate School of Management, Professional Development Center,
Frisco Campus
7460 Warren Parkway
Frisco, TX 75034

Google Map - Yahoo Map - Mapquest

Register here

Registration begins at 8:00am. The event starts at 9:00am. Presentations are finished at 1:00pm. Lunch begins at 1pm.

The presentations begin with “Spiky and Flat: Why Local Recruiting is Critical in a Flat World”. John Sumser, Founder and CEO of the Recruiting Roadshow, describes critical changes in the Labor Market that offset the trend towards a flat world. The material is a logical follow-on to last year’s Multigenerational Recruiting presentation.

“Next Level Strategies for Creating a Next Level Workplace” is Jeff Kay’s contribution to the proceedings. Get a birds-eye view of the best practices your competitors are using to woo and retain employees. Jeff runs the world’s largest single site Recruiting Office as the CEO of Kaye/Bassman International. His presentations are always full of energy and useful guidance.

There wouldn’t be a contemporary Recruiting Industry without the work of Hank Stringer. Founder of two major online Recruiting ventures (Hire.com and itzbig.com), Stringer is one of those visionaries who can’t keep the dirt out from under his fingernails. Hank’s presentation, Elements of Excellence in Search Relationships, is his latest take on the Recruiting Landscape. He promises to deliver a list of things you should expect in any excellent Recruiting relationship.

The final piece of the puzzle is an offering from Dennis Smith. (Dennis is also the host of the Dallas Roadshow). Dennis built his career using out-of-the-box thinking. He is one of the leading voices in the world of Recruiting Blogs. He will share his experience using “Advanced Social Sourcing Tools”.

Register here.

Here’s the schedule:

Register now. The Roadshows fill quickly and once the seats are gone, you have to join a waiting list.

ATS.3 (Applicant Tracking Systems)

There are seven essential, interrelated components of an Applicant Tracking System. (You might take a look at this great little piece …Animals are Tracked, People have relationships.) The actual functionality is very simple and can all be generated from a single database.

The basic components are:

1. Candidate Database (Resume and Relationship Information) This may need to be two separate databases to meet regulatory requirements
2. Jobs Database
3. Publication Services (for Managing the Talent Pools)
4. Workflow Management (Routing and Scheduling)
5. Searching and Matching Technology
6. Embedded Wisdom (Help, Templates for Letters and Newsletters)
7. Workspace Integration Services

Rather than cover a lot of old ground, please take a look at this series:

• ATS Market Basics
• ATS Market Basics II
• ATS Market Basics III
• ATS Market Basics IV
• ATS Market Basics V
• ATS Marke Basics VI
• ATS Market Basics VII
• ATS Marke Basics VIII
• ATS Market Basics IX
• ATS Market Basics X
• ATS Market Basics XI
• ATS Market Basics XII
• ATS Market Basics XIII

Great Job Posting

In the transition, I’ve gotten all sorts of new accounts. Johnsumser.com is hosted by a company called DreamHosts, these days. I haven’t been a customer long enough to decide whether or not I like them. But, they do know how to write a job ad.

Item #3 in their current newsletter (sent to customers, exclusively) is the following gem:

Have you always dreamed of a career in groveling and prostrating oneself before the almighty customer? Do you love offering your bare soul up to the masses for piercing scrutiny and painful mockery? Are you a natural-  born apologizer like me?

Then a career at DreamHost could be the job for you! We’re now taking applications for our (paid) “Summer” internships, which are actually for whenever and for as long as forever:

   http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/03/15/friendless-summer/

And, we’re always hiring people for regular jobs too… see:

   http://www.dreamhost.com/jobs.html

If you’ve already got a great job with great people and great apologies, then I hope you’ll accept my sincerest regrets at wasting your time with this section.

It’s funny, specific, targeted gives a flavor of the culture and very, very authentic. By putting it in the newsletter, DreamHost acknowledges what most companies know….great customers make great employees.

Inflection.2

There are a number of converging elements that make up the current inflection point. They include

• The Redefinition of the Sourcing Function
• The Explosion in Information Sources (Blogs, Podcasts and VBlogs))
• The Continued Growth of Job Boards, Niche Job Boards in Particular
• The Emergence of Regional Recruiting Phenomenon
• The Free Fall In The Pricing of Storage, Video and Still Images
• The Rapid Multiplication of Social Software Tools and Environments
• The Generational Power Shift In The Industry (and In the Workplace)

In this series, we’re going to look at them all in some detail.

Sourcing used to be a back office function known as search research. It included the development (or theft) of organizational phone books, org charts and inbound direct phone calls. In small third party shops, the recruiter was the sourcer. In larger shops, sourcing became a discretely managed function. HR Departments rarely had sourcing teams.

The internet changed all of that.

First it was job boards and a limited amount of Internet Research. AIRS developed a curriculum that made it clear that some people would work the data and some people would work the candidates. Soon, Recruiting teams routinely included someone in charge of data.

Sourcing has matured.

These days, it’s common to hear people talking about sourcing as if it were a well understood profession. There is a wide variety of opinion about the meaning of sourcing. Some “sourcers” characterize job board usage as “post and pray” recruiting. Mostly, that reflects the ignorance of the source.

It’s clear that sourcing is “any activity that brings candidates to an opportunity”. Sourcing techniques include:

• Referral Networks
• Internal Postings
• Employment Branding
• Job Board Utilization
• Internet Research
• Contract Recruiting
• Temp to Perm
• Third Party Search

For the sourcing process to be truly effective, the organization must know, in detail, its hiring requirements and the state of the local labor market. These two elements, market awareness and workforce planning are the elements of a long term sourcing success.

Great sourcing starts with requirements and budget. Then, the appropriate tactic is chosen. No one technique works cost effectively for all positions.

The inflection point is caused, in part, because sourcing now needs to be defined with some rigor.

John Sumser .-. ©2008 Two Color Hat, Inc. Santa Rosa, CA