Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques: E-Sourcing

How to quickly find related job titles for your search strings free

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:23:09 GMT

Disclaimer: I am not compensated by Broadlook, but my employer is a paying customer and I occasionally review pre-release versions of their products, which gives me a chance to inject feedback. I'm happy to report they've incorporated a few of my suggestions...

Many of you are already familiar with Broadlook Technologies, a company that makes software that helps recruiting researchers and salespeople. Most of their offerings incorporate some form of data spidering -- targeted collection and parsing of information related to your search criteria. While the software tends to be on the pricey side and a bit hard to learn to use, once you do master their tools, the sourcing ROI is impressive: you should be able to do your job more exhaustively and efficiently. However, lately they have been making more user-friendly products (e.g., Diver) and doing a better job with video tutorials and other how-to training on the more complex products (e.g., Eclipse).

Just as importantly for the budget-conscious (and more to the point of this blogpost), Broadlook is starting to release more free products. Joining Contact Capture (formerly a fee-based product) and also worth a look is a new freebie called Broadlook Title Research. This is a handy jumpstarter when you have been handed a job requisition with a title that's clearly internal jargon for that company/department/client/hiring manager -- your gut tells you there must be a slew of alternative ways that the same skillset is referenced by candidates at other companies. Or if you recruit in a fast-moving industry where job titles evolve regularly, it's worth checking periodically for new job titles that may relate.

So for those of us constantly on the lookout for alternative job titles to help flesh out our search strings, Title Research (free download/install) should help. It's basically a four step process:

Enter the job title(s) that you know already, and hit search
It returns dozens, many of which may be irrelevant. But you can type keywords or partial root words in the Filter field to limit the results.
Click the right-pointing arrow to select desired results (you can also fix spellings)
Export the results as an OR substring, AND substring, or simply as text. This allows you to build a boolean expression quickly.

The example (in Title Research's built-in Help menu, select Help, then click the plus sign preceding "How to Use Title Research") takes you nicely through how to find Sourcer-related job titles and is easily adaptable to whatever you're searching for. The only things it doesn't indicate are that you can:

click any column heading to sort the results by that field (click again to toggle between ascending or descending order), which can be helpful when scanning through the results to sort the job titles alphabetically. However, you will want to click the Hits column to display the most commonly-found job titles first.
type a minus sign immediately before any keyword/partial word to eliminate any job title results containing those characters, functioning just like the NOT boolean. For example, I might type -vp -vice to get rid of VP-level people. Note that this Filter is super-powerful, so be careful: it even looks WITHIN words for your characters, so if you type -gram it will eliminate Programmer from your results! That's why -vp is enough to get rid of EVP, SVP, etc.

Broadlook claims to search against many different sources to compile its results (they won't tell me which), and it runs in real-time, but is remarkably fast. Even searching against several common, synonymous job titles took just over a minute to generate full results. Download from http://files.broadlook.com/download/tresearch and install as usual (it may still say trial version only, but it's the full version). The required registration screen will prompt you to get a license key from their website, which is a quick and also free.

However, I would still recommend checking a job aggregator resource like Indeed or SimplyHired, which searches jobs across all the major job boards, quite a few niche ones and even many individual corporate career websites. When you are viewing results, note that the left-column displays job titles that the site thinks relate to what you searched for. I find these are generally very good matches, and thus worth adding to your search string. You can use these results as a point of comparison with Broadlook Title Research. You'll get more job titles from Title Research so it's vital to use the filter to eliminate the noise results.

Broadlook, cybersleuthing, internet recruiting, recruiting research, internet sourcing, sourcer tools

Internet Recruiters and ‘Old School’ Recruiters

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:11:12 GMT

HireAbility Connects the World's Recruiters and Parses the World's Resumes
Author Website: http://www.hireability.com/join

Editor's note: There's a not-very-subtle underlying sell in this guest blogpost, but I think the intended main message is worthwhile: There are sourcing methods and tools that people aren't using, both on the phone and online sides -- and one's success depends on tapping into both, depending on the requisition and other circumstances. The first step in knowing which ones to utilize is to have a basic understanding of all the proven ones, at a minimum.

In the late 90’s, the staffing industry witnessed a proliferation of job boards available on the internet. Since that time, this once nifty tool has turned into the crutch on which much of the staffing industry places their weight. Of course, there were (and still are) staffing professionals that shun the job boards in favor of what I’ll call "old school’ recruiting. As time and innovation have progressed, there has become a divide between these two groups.

A lot of the new folks in the industry don’t know what it’s like to really recruit; as in ‘headhunting’ (yes, this kind of recruiting works fine for corporate recruiters too!). This is what our industry was before the internet. These days, most recruiters are really sourcers, leaning entirely on sourcing job boards and databases for resumes. And the old school folks may not use job boards and may have no idea that Infogist, Zoominfo, Linkedin and a plethora of other tools out there even exist. In fact, I’ve heard many people tell me that using all this new fangled techno stuff is a waste of time that could have been spent cold calling someone.

I’m not faulting either of these groups necessarily. Both methods of runnning a recruiting desk have shown to be successful. But in my personal quest to improve our industry, I feel obligated to expose as many people as possible on the ideas, training and tools we have available to elevate us as an industry. As we’ve all heard, a high tide raises all boats.

So, I’m proposing a middle ground between the two extremes. The middle ground is this: If you live and breath job boards only, start looking into other methods of recruiting. It’s a small difference between what a $70k per year earner and a $200k earner do in a given year. My advise would be to sign up for an account with AccordingtoDanny and learn some of the small things you can do to really make a difference in your daily activities. Or pick up some of the products from billradin.com and read at your leisure on some of the same ‘old school’ ideas. Note: as the Director of Marketing for HireAbility, I can get you a discount on either of these as well as many other common training tools you may be considering. Trust me when I tell you that I’ve seen a few simple ‘old school’ ideas result in a recruiter earning triple the revenue. And yes, you’ll have to work a little harder for it, but you’ll retire 10 years sooner, too!

If you are the ‘old school’ recruiter who thinks using the internet as a crutch creates weak recruiters, I can assure you that this isn’t always the case. With Zoominfo, for instance, you can locate high level contacts who are 100% passive and 100% cold calls. You specify the job title and industry (or more info if you have it) and they tell you the person in that job and their contact info. It’s the ultimate tool for tracking down hard to find contacts.

Or perhaps Infogist is right for you. Imagine a single software tool (so you only have to go through the learning curve for one thing, not several) that can search almost every available database of candidates and bring them to your desk. The candidates are passive as well as active and can come from 1400+ different locations, so there’s a great chance you’ll be the only recruiter talking to them.

And you can’t overlook the online networking tools on the market. Linkedin has over 10 million registered users. Look me up and you’ll see all the people I know and who they know, etc. It’s like a huge virtual cocktail party except you don’t have to print and bring business cards. Can you imagine 10 million business professionals at the same cocktail party carrying lists of every person they know? How could you not go to that party? I could go on and on, but trust me when I tell you that there are some really great tools just waiting to be had. Feel free to contact me for more information on any of these tools, or register an account with HireAbility to recieve free trials and member discounts on many of the ones I mentioned above.

I call on all the ‘old school’ recruiters whom I admire so much to reach out and learn some of the new tricks. And if you’re in a position to do so, learn from some of the new folks out there. And for all of you who source job boards for candidates, do yourself a favor and check out some of the resources above for learning the art of direct recruiting. It’ll make you feel better about what you do, you’ll make more money and most importantly: you’ll have a lot more fun!

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

How to Find Manager Candidates Online Based on Number of Direct Reports: Very Creative & Effective Sourcing Method Using Google

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:35:59 GMT

How to Find Manager Candidates Online Based on Number of Direct Reports: Very Creative & Effective Sourcing Method Using Google

by Glenn Gutmacher

Q: I am trying to source for software development managers who have supervised at least 25 direct reports. Is there a way to efficiently target them in an Internet search?

A: The most elegant solution I can think of utilizes Google's numrange command, which lets you find any number in a range, in the format lowvalue..highvalue (note there are no spaces on either side of the two dots). I explained another powerful way to find candidates via their certifications using this command in a previous post, which occurred to me long after Shally first explained to me how to use it on zipcode search in early 2006 for finding resumes geographically (revisited by Tim O'Connor), but this application is different enough from both of those to merit a separate treatment.

If you think about what's in a resume or profile of somebody like this, it probably says something like:

"managed virtual team of 25 professionals", "managed cross functional team comprised of 25", "Managed geographically distributed team with 25", "managed and developed the development team of 25", "managed and trained global project team consisting of 25", etc.

Note the pattern (as all good sourcers do!). There are words between "managed" and "team", and again between "team" and the number, which you can manage in one move with the * (wildcard). This represents a placeholder for any other word or words, so assuming you were ok with people up to 100 direct reports, it would yield this string:

"managed * team * 25..100"

which simply and elegantly finds them all! However, if it's "managed team..." (no words in between), then you also need this:

"managed team * 25..100"

But don't try to get too efficient, because

"managed * 25..100"

generates a lot of irrelevant results having nothing to do with one's employees.

Of course, there are other variations like "managed 25 direct reports", "managed multinational 25 person staff", "managed a 25 person organization", etc., so you should account for those if the above doesn't generate enough results for your pipeline, a la "25..100 direct reports" and "managed 25..100 person". However, *don't* try putting them in an OR statement. If you search for something like:

("managed 25..100 person" OR "managed * 25..100 person") "software development"

it basically negates the numrange criterion. You might get a few good results at the beginning (first 5), but after that, it's only searching for "software development". This seems like a bug in Google to me, but it's not hard to tell when there's a problem, because the results count summary atop the first page changes from something like "results 1-100 of 439" to "results 1-100 of 63,700,000". The latter should always trigger your radar that there's something wrong with your search string.

Last but not least, don't expect much from (present tense of the verb)

"manage 25..100 person" "software development"

which generates only a few results. When you're searching within a phrase, realize it's doing an exact search -- don't expect it to find various forms of the root word. Since "managed" appears to be how most people reference it in their resumes/bios, you need to search on the past tense phrasing.

Glenn Gutmacher is a senior Recruiting Researcher at Microsoft Corporation and founder of Recruiting-Online.com, creator of the Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques self-paced sourcing course.

Marriage Announcement and Passive Sourcing

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:42:25 GMT

Below is a creative way to source online. I would also encourage people interested in this method to look at the announcements of who's been promoted in the People / Who's Who / Moves section of most major newspapers. Anyone who has just secured a new job means their previous company (which is also listed in the newspaper item) may have a hole that a recruiter needs to fill (or multiple holes!).

-- Glenn Gutmacher

Wedding Announcement Sourcing
by Rithesh Nair: http://researchersecrets.com/2007/11/20/marriage-announcement-and-passive-sourcing.aspx

Spreading the joy is always a fun. Even before the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1447, weddings in the United Kingdom were commonly proclaimed by a town crier and then came the newspapers announcements.

Every Sunday, the New York Times' Sunday Style section lists at least 3-4 pages of people who were married or engaged or going to be. It has its own wedding/celebrations page.
Cha- ching!
National papers like this have an entire section for online wedding directory and in print on Sundays (or check out Wednesday's for the Washington Post).

How is this important to sourcing? Here's a small list of selected details I picked from last Sunday’s New York Times (I left out their names):

    Account Director at Hawkins International
    Sales Director at Quickcomm
    VP Marketing FibroGen
    VP Media buying JP Morgan
    Sr. VP for Finance
    Project Manager with AIG
    Search Analyst at the American Institutes
    Sales Associate Goldman Sachs
    Director Private banking Citi Group
    MD and Counsel for AIG
    Marketing Manager for American Express
    Senior Analyst at Fortress Investment Group
    Consultant in the Health care for Navigant Consulting

Each list announcement has the bride's and groom's name, what they do, the company they work for, and where the live. What more you could ask for? All you have to find is their E-mail id or phone number which is so easy.

Cha- Ching, again!

If you're doing a Google Search, you'll get thousands of results for a Financial Analyst in New York or New Jersey. Marriage Announcements not bad at all! All you have do is to find people who are celebrating, and maybe you can add more joy with a new job.

So now the question is: how ethical is it to reach out to these passive candidates?

p.s: It’s a goldmine if you are looking for people working in law firms.

So won't you check you local newspapers for wedding announcement this week?

Stay tuned..........

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

How to Perfect Shally's Google hack on Jigsaw to eliminate all noise results

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:44:34 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

Over the past year, Shally Steckerl has come up with several creative (and legal) hacks to leverage the content spidered by the major search engines on the public versions of recruiting-rich candidate portals, notably LinkedIn (the large professional social network) and Jigsaw (the large business card exchange network). What's nice is that these free hacks don't require you to belong to either portal in order to tap the information.

Shally's recent post lists the basic Jigsaw hack. But if you run it as is, you'll probably notice many irrelevant (noise) results with the string, which is, by the way:

site:jigsaw.com intitle:in.jigsaw's CompanyName

You should eliminate the directory-type pages on Jigsaw which are not the pseudo (i.e., semi-blinded; read Shally's post if you don't know what I mean) business cards. (This step is just as important if you adapt the above Google hack to find LinkedIn profile results. I highly recommend you check out Shally's LinkedIn cheatsheet for the clean version, which works fabulously.)

So this tweak fixes the Google string to hack Jigsaw in that respect:

site:jigsaw.com intitle:in.jigsaw's CompanyName -intitle:business.contacts.from -intitle:company.directory.from

Now let's use an actual example (Virtual Iron, a software company), which will illustrate a couple of further useful string tweaks:

site:jigsaw.com intitle:in.jigsaw's Virtual.Iron -intitle:business.contacts.from -intitle:company.directory.from

The above still generates a number of business card results that are not people at the company, but rather contain the body text "Contacts with similar titles as [profilee's name]" followed by the name of someone else who is at Virtual Iron (or whatever target company you wanted) but there's no link to him/her. Some of you may find that valuable, but those names are almost always for people whose own business card pages will be among the results you obtained.

So in order to get really pure results (i.e., just the Virtual Iron personnel's business cards), you should use this template (again, substitute your target company for Virtual Iron):

site:jigsaw.com intitle:in.jigsaw's "co-workers at virtual iron" -intitle:business.contacts.from -intitle:company.directory.from

Notice that I did *not* type dots between words in the revised clause (which I kept in the rest of the string to be consistent with Shally's original post). Why? Because you can actually lose valid results if you don't use quotation marks. I don't know why that is, since these are supposed to be equivalent ways to indicate a phrase in Google, but notice what happens if you do the following string instead:

site:jigsaw.com intitle:in.jigsaw's co-workers.at.virtual.iron -intitle:business.contacts.from -intitle:company.directory.from

You lose Steve Noyes (which is a Virtual Iron employee result in Jigsaw at the time Google last spidered that part of the site) from the results!

P.S. Many people have asked why LinkedIn and Jigsaw are giving free access to their people content via the search engines. It's also being done by Spoke and a number of other portals, by the way. They let the search engines spider a fairly robust public version of their people content on purpose because it generates a lot of click-through traffic back to their websites. That lets them generate new member registrations, additional advertising revenue through increased page views, etc. In their view, the pros outweigh the cons because it's still a relatively small percentage of their potential audience who knows how to hack this way!

cybersleuthing, internet recruiting, sourcing

Top 10 List: How to Create A Recruiting Research Function

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:55:39 GMT

Top 10 List: How to Create A Recruiting Research Function

by Glenn Gutmacher

Q: I have read your blog before and come across your name on recruiting industry-related communications. I would be very interested to hear about your experience in recruiting research and your thoughts on how to set up such a function in a corporate recruiting department. Is this a conversation you would be willing to have? Do you have the time available for it? I would very much appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. Thanks!

A: The short answer is (not in any particular order):

1. Make sure everyone’s properly trained (FYI, it’s an ongoing process, but some things can – and should -- be taught by internal subject matter experts) and give them the tools/resources to succeed. (FYI, there are very comprehensive and far less expensive ways to learn advanced online recruiting techniques than AIRS.)

2. Make sure the systems are flexible but rock solid. For example, an ATS that can’t act like a CRM doesn’t help sourcers much. And sourcers shouldn’t have to spend hours trying to track what happened to their submitted leads in order to compile reports. Ideally, status can be gauged quickly in real-time, because you can’t improve what you can’t capture.

3. Since you’re starting a new team, make sure you hire to fill the gaps (e.g., they have industry/function knowledge that map to where you expect the priority hiring needs / sourcing pipeline challenges will be).

4. This also applies to skillsets: Some companies even separate Internet sourcers from phone sourcers. Play to the strengths of the sourcers.

5. It’s best if your sourcers are part of the initial recruiter meetings with hiring managers; if not, make sure they have the opportunity to get their questions answered by the end-customer.

6. Don’t be afraid to say no: some customers/internal partners’ needs may not make sense for your team to take on, or at least need to be thought out a bit more.

7. On that note, have a service level agreement (SLA) that specifies what you do by when, and what you require from the customer, which both sides review and sign before each project. If they fail to deliver on their end at any point along the way, your work stops until rectified.

8. Make sure everyone with the same role has consistent, clear metrics (e.g., though sourcers can’t directly impact hires, many companies still measure # of hires; but if you want to offer extra incentives for filling higher comp and/or limited talent supply roles, make sure the formulas are clear).

9. If you have ongoing volume hiring needs that relate to fairly available skillsets, compartmentalize that to more junior people (a lot of that can be automated, and the rest handled with well-documented processes) or even consider a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) vendor for the initial pipelining

10. You’re obviously doing this, but many others don’t: Don’t hesitate to ask around (internally and externally), among employers, recruiting vendors, posts to the recruiting industry boards, etc., for suggestions of who’s doing it well. You’ll start hearing the same names repeated; begin with them, even if it’s not the same industry or size as your company. Many sourcing best practices are not money-dependent and, even when they are, can be adapted to different budgets (e.g., scale it by trying phase 1 or a pilot, then you have ammo to justify expanding the program later).

I’d love to answer this in more depth, but I don’t have time and it might extend into territory that my employer would prefer I not discuss. But it’s really something an experienced recruiting consultant should work with you on. Talk to the experts whose teachings you respect. If you need to find some, read articles about sourcing on industry portals like ERE and see which authors’/consultants’ viewpoints make sense to you (e.g., Shally’s article dealt with this question directly). Seek out the practitioners invited to speak at industry conferences who regularly deal with this kind of question (e.g., click the Speaker Bios link at SourceCon). You can also try benchmarking with peer organizations. You’d be surprised how many companies are willing to discuss at least some aspects of this – also check out the relevant best practice studies conducted by RecruitingRoundtable, APQC, etc., if you can get access.

A gentle way to introduce yourself to the sourcing industry's power tools suite

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:22:39 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

Those who know of my sourcing methods also know that Broadlook Technologies' product suite is among my often-used tools. The problem, however, is that most recruiters don't have the time to deal with the learning curve associated with using these powerful products properly. Broadlook's own team will readily admit most of their products can be complex to master.

Fortunately, they recently came out with Broadlook Diver, a "lite" version of their spidering tools that works on several major search engines. So you can run the same kinds of targeted searches you normally would, but Diver parses lots of active and passive prospect results quickly, which can be exported into Excel just like all their other tools. But (like most of Broadlook's other tools), Diver isn't cheap, so they need to prove it's useful.

So my fellow sourcing guru, Shally Steckerl, has taken on the task of explaining how to use Diver in a webinar on October 25. Though it's not free, I'd say this is a win-win worth a look. Diver's got a lot in common with ResumeGrabber from eGrabber, so it would be worth comparing.

Attendees get a:

free copy (full version, not trial) of Contact Capture (worth $209), which is like Anagram except it can parse multiple contacts at once. FYI, Broadlook added a new demo for Contact Capture showing real data you can grab.
free 14-day full trial of Diver (double the time you can normally get off Broadlook's website)
discount of $150 off Diver after the trial
set of custom search strings created by Shally that you can import directly into Diver. (Jim Stroud kindly gave Broadlook some strings for the initial product launch, but Shally has added many more.)

And no, I don't earn anything from this. When I hear of something good in sourcing, I tell you.

Bookmark Management Tools and Social Bookmarking for productivity and/or search purposes

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:29:35 GMT

Q: I have a lot of websites stored in my browser that I'd like to be able to access them from other computers, share them with colleagues, and maybe even see what they're bookmarking. Are there any free tools that store all or some of your bookmarks / favorites online?

A: Yes, there are many. It's important to view this topic both from a productivity perspective as well as a search perspective.

1) As a productivity tool:

All the major search engines offer this, by the way:

Google Bookmarks - http://www.google.com/bookmarks
Windows Live Favorites - http://get.live.com/favorites/overview
Yahoo! Bookmarks - http://bookmarks.yahoo.com/

But there are many independent ones (e.g., www.myvmarks.com). For a comprehensive list of these bookmark management tools, see http://www.allyourfavorites.com/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Web_Applications/Bookmark_Managers/directory.htm

In addition to using the default folder-based system built into traditional web browsers to get to your favorites/bookmarks, the advantage of some of these online tools is that you can find certain saved website links more quickly later by tagging them (assigning category keywords/phrases to each site that are logical groupings for you) initially when you add or import them.

2) As a search tool:

If you'd like to SHARE your bookmarks with others, and review their favorites? This category -- bookmarking tools with social networking capability -- is expanding rapidly, with hundreds of choices.

You may choose to use some of these not as bookmarking tools for yourself, but as search tools to see what sites others are bookmarking based on desired keyword tags, etc. This can help lead you to narrow niche portals, hot blogs from insiders or other experts, directories and other useful sites. Start with these:

Huge, annotated list - http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com/f7/over-500-social-networking-sites-can-3548.html
Not quite as large, but logically grouped to help you choose the kind you want - http://3spots.blogspot.com/2006/01/all-social-that-can-bookmark.html

To learn more about the concept, see http://www.allyourfavorites.com/Bookmark_%28computers%29/encyclopedia.htm (or http://www.allyourfavorites.com/Bookmark_manager/encyclopedia.htm - I think these two URLs are the same content).

Experience.com provides information on internships and entry level jobs.

How to convert a vertical list of source prospect data for mass-email

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:53:32 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

Q: I have a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with thousands of names of potential candidates. I don't intend to blind e-mail them, but I do want to process them all over time. The entries are all in a single column, and look like this:

name1

company1

e-mail address1

ID number1

name2

company2

e-mail address2

ID number2

etc.

I can't find anyone who can tell me how to "rotate" this spreadsheet so that I'll end up with 4 columns that look like this:

name1 company1 e-mail address1 ID number1

name2 company2 e-mail address2 ID number2

A: I'm glad you don't plan to mass-email that many, which can get you in trouble with the US federal CAN-SPAM Act. But I do agree you need to change the vertical orientation to horizontal as you indicated in order to send even small batches of messages in any email processing program.

Fortunately, lists like this are easily fixable. The key to doing this simply is the INDIRECT function, which didn't exist with earlier versions of Excel. (If you have Microsoft Office 2007, then you're all set.)

Assuming your list is in column A, with the first name in cell A1, first company in cell A2, etc., put the following in the cells indicated (values beginning with an equals sign are formulas):

cell b1: =INDIRECT("A"&F1)

cell c1: =INDIRECT("A"&F1+1)

cell d1: =INDIRECT("A"&F1+2)

cell e1: =INDIRECT("A"&F1+3)

cell f1: 1

cell b2: =INDIRECT("A"&F2)

cell c2: =INDIRECT("A"&F2+1)

cell d2: =INDIRECT("A"&F2+2)

cell e2: =INDIRECT("A"&F2+3)

cell f2: =F1+4

The cells in B2 through F2 can be copied in one move all the way down (starting with corresponding columns in row 3 down thousands of rows as desired). This will instantly "rotate" (display) the data from column A as you desired.

If you don't want the (now) extraneous data in column A and F, don't delete them or everything in columns B-E will be messed up! Instead, click column headings B-E to highlight the content all the way down, and copy (Ctrl+C). Launch a new blank worksheet in the same file (or a completely new spreadsheet file) and press Paste --> Paste special (not the regular Ctrl+V paste). Select the radio button preceding Values and click OK.

You now have all the records in rows, with the formulas replaced by plain values, and won't be messed up if you sort, move them around, etc.!

Thanks for the question, which was different than the usual sourcing inquiries I receive! If you have an e-sourcing challenge, feel free to send it to me (blog [at} recruiting-online {dot] com for possible inclusion.

E-Sourcing 201: Make the Google Filter work for you, not against, plus Bookmarklets tips

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:40:57 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

Q: Why does this simple string get no results on Google?
site:www.ecrm-online.com online

A: Two things are going on in this great example, which is instructive for search methods in general. Thanks, Shally, for showing me these two things a few years back:

1) When you do a site: command search, it's usually better to use the root domain (i.e., without the leading www.). So the string site:ecrm-online.com online should yield more results. Curiously, it does not in this case, so...

2) You have to remember to click the link at the bottom of the search results (or for searches that yield multiple pages of results, at the bottom of the last page of search results page) that says "In order to show you the most relevant results...you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

When you click that, you'll see lots of results (49 for the site:www.ecrm... string and 71 for the site:ecrm... version)! Another way to see these "omitted results" is to add the parameter &filter=0 to the end of your search URL (the default is for the filter to be ON, or &filter=1, not usually displayed in Google strings). In fact, while you're at it, you might as well append the parameter &num=100 to the string, too. This shows 100 results per page, vs. the default 10, making it faster to scan your results. Here's the result.

Of course, people who have taken my online course or one of my sourcing seminars over the last few years already know you can create a bookmarklet to embed one or both of these parameters automatically!

Now before people start piling onto me, let me clarify:

A) You CAN set your Google results to show 100/page by clicking the small "preferences" link next to the search box. However, as with most cookie-based things, those preferences sometimes get unset or if someone sends you a search results URL, preferences won't carry over.

B) Many times you DON'T want filter=0 because Google uses the filter to eliminate duplicates. On searches other than the types described in this blogpost, you will find filter=0 generates many results of the same exact content posted to different websites. So it can save you time to keep the filter on (&filter=1).

Another place you see filter=0 make a big difference in search results is on the Google search hack for LinkedIn profiles. If you have Shally's LinkedIn Cheatsheet for Recruiters, you know what I'm talking about, but don't ask me to show that one here (it's copyrighted material).

Last but not least, remember to run your search on other major search engines that support the site: command (Live, Yahoo, etc.) because the results are often quite different, overlapping surprisingly little, as I've demonstrated (see Thumbshots reference in previous blog posts like this one).

And yes, there are bookmarklets to run your search string on any or all of the other engines automatically. Or if you have Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 as your web browser, then you have that capability built-in and expandable for free.

Jigsaw vs LinkedIn vs Spoke vs ZoomInfo, part 2

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:58:08 GMT

Let me quickly add thoughts about the last three, since they have been covered in depth on various industry lists, and all of them were discussed in another post on this very blog two years ago, but then move to more detail about Jigsaw. Spoke does not have the informational depth or quality of LinkedIn, because it's web-spidered data, whereas LinkedIn's are profiles created by actual people. ZoomInfo uses spidering, but its depth is stronger than Spoke thanks to their data-processing algorithms. Each of these sites have their value, but it depends in part on the types of passive prospects you seek. The more publicly-visible someone is (think executives and marketing roles), the more likely you will find a critical mass of info on the spidering-based services. Otherwise, LinkedIn or Jigsaw will probably work better.

What may not be clear from the two posts about Jigsaw.com below is that you can also use its functionality for free. It's called the
"PLAY" (rather than "PAY") option when you first register. The catches are:

- you need to input your credit card as insurance against possible future charges, should you convert to PAY status (though I can verify I've never been charged on it for 2+ years)

- you must add the professional contact info of 25 contacts each month to the system (who are not already in there) or you can add more (e.g., 75 would cover you for 3 months).

- again, it must be professional contact info -- if you try to add the contact's AOL or Comcast home email, the entry will be rejected.

You can then retrieve the contact info of as many contacts as you put in. And you don't actually give up the corresponding points from your account until you have run your search, clicked on the blinded version of the business card (it shows company, job title and location, but not name, phone or email) and then agreed to redeem points.

As Jigsaw puts it, "Most members add contacts that are correct but have little business value to them. They then get contacts of extreme value for their business purposes. The contacts that they add to Jigsaw can then give great value to another user and their purpose."

Here are two of many methods used by recruiters on Jigsaw. Your ethics will determine which ones you feel comfortable employing:

1. Whenever you receive a resume from a candidate that you don't have an immediate need for, ask if you can share their information with others who may have opportunities. If they say yes, many recruiters say you have the mandate to post them on Jigsaw.

2. If you're generally ok with #1, but don't feel comfortable inputting their primary work contact info, realize that many people now have web domains for their freelance, etc., pursuits (e.g., a personal website at www.joesmith.com) and you could list joseph@joesmith.com and whatever phone # is on the website as an acceptable Jigsaw record.

Yes, occasionally you will come across some obsolete contact info when you redeem points for someone, but then you can report it to Jigsaw, and once your challenge is validated, you get your points back. All in all, it's a pretty good system!

P.S. Jigsaw had an incentive program where you could actually sell your extra points to others for cash, but that was terminated last month. The site reports a new incentive program will be introduced soon.

Hey recruiting sourcers, I'm ready to give you a million

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:43:06 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

No, this isn't another one of those sourcing challenge contests, but my happy announcement that I've exceeded 1 million contacts at 2nd degree in my LinkedIn network. Why am I not touting the 6 million in my total network, instead? Because 2nd degree means that when you connect with me directly, they instantly become part of your viewable/searchable 3rd degree network. And in this business, I find both sides do better with more sharing.

So if you haven't already (or if you are, feel free to tell a friend), use

www.linkedin.com/inviteMany (so you can invite some other highly-networked folks into your network at the same time -- see below) and type my email in the format firstname.lastname@microsoft.com (yes, that's Glenn.Gutmacher, but I'm trying to avoid the spambots). Now you should have more people showing up under the "Your Network" tab in your search results, and hopefully fewer "blinded" profiles under the "LinkedIn network" tab.

I was close to the 2nd degree million figure last week but easily jumped it over the weekend thanks to Paul DeBettignies (a/k/a MN Headhunter) who made me "Person of the Day" on Friday, a feature of his "Recruiters On LinkedIn" network on RecruitingBlogs.com. I also want to give props to a few people in particular who have generously shared their advice on LinkedIn to utilize it more effectively (some directly, some indirectly) which has also helped me to dramatically grow my network in the process, though I continue to pick up tips about LinkedIn every day from the voluminous (and growing) range of resources available:

- Dave Mendoza (known for the SixDegreesFromDave blog and as the LinkedIn meganetworker, whose fame in that regard even helped secure him work as a contract sourcer FOR them)

- Shally Steckerl (my former boss at Microsoft, now training and consulting more than full-time as JobMachine Inc., who helps people in more ways than he'll ever know, and with whom I was happy to collaborate on creating a popular LinkedIn cheatsheet last year)

- Vincent Wright (the guru of LinkedIn networking groups - you'd probably learn almost all you need to know just by looking over his shoulder for a day)

- Joe Bartling and Chris Mayaud (author of the first e-book and blog about LinkedIn, respectively, that I found truly useful),

- Ray van den Bel (has been very active lately, e.g., see his Open Networkers group)

- the Broadlook team (who will share a lot if you buy at least one of their products)

This is not to snub other gurus I've learned from in other aspects of sourcing, but in terms of LinkedIn, the above are my standouts. However, Otis Collier's free LinkedIn how-to video is worth a look, too!

Find physician jobs on The Recruiter.com.

Passive Sourcing 201: How do I find Process Improvement business ops prospects?

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:11:54 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

Send your sourcing questions to me [questions at recruiting-online dot com] for possible inclusion in future blog posts. All personally-identifying information will be removed. Answers are free to selected questioners.

Q: I'm looking for business operations people who are experts in process improvement, preferably from consulting firms in the San Francisco Bay area. How can I find them?

A: Start by looking for synonyms around your key terms. Review your company's information on what's expected in the job, search online directories like Wikipedia, and review job descriptions by your target competitors. This will likely pull up synonyms to "process improvement" like "performance measurement", "planning process", etc. All of those can become part of a boolean OR clause in any search strings for resumes, bios, or directory/conference/association name lists you wish to run.

Speaking of associations, there may be some niche ones related to process improvement and/or business operations. Try variants of this string on your favorite major search engines (results overlap between engines is surprisingly low, so use more than one!):

"process improvement" association

The above finds associations, which will have conference presenters, member lists, local chapter boards of directors, etc., on their sites -- a great start for names!

Continuing in this vein, there may be some niche job boards for business operations/process improvement, and you can post your job there. Try this search on any major search engine to find them:

"process improvement" "job board"

The other nice thing about the above is it will also pull up individual companies' own job listing pages, so you add to your competitor target list, too! Speaking of competitors, realize that the major consulting firms have long histories, so if you're willing to hire corporate alumni of major consulting firms, realize that Accenture used to be "Arthur Andersen" and BearingPoint was KPMG, so that gives you a few more company name keywords for your searches. PriceWaterhouse also goes by the "PWC Global" moniker. Some people spell the newfangled company names as one word, while other use two. Therefore, try CapGemini as well as "Cap Gemini" and BearingPoint as well as "Bearing Point".

If you search for your keywords on a job posting aggregator like Indeed or SimplyHired, you will find the original job boards where the relevant openings were posted, and discover more niche boards that way. You'll also find individual competitor names, too.

Last but not least, since you said you prefer the Bay Area, you can add geographic elements to your search strings (e.g., "Bay Area" OR "San Francisco") to find the local associations and chapters of (inter)national ones, which also help narrow the total size of your results to a more scanable number.

There are more ways to pull up names, of course -- we haven't even touched the social networks, user groups or blog search -- but I suspect the above will give you enough of a call down list to generate the candidate pipeline flow you need.

Search for Austin jobs at itzbig.

Getting to Resume Search Nirvana: Use the Positive Find Elimination test

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:36:47 GMT

Getting to Resume Search Nirvana: Use the Positive Find Elimination test

by Glenn Gutmacher

In a blog post almost two years ago, Tim O'Connor (now a leading sourcer at CapGemini) lamented the irrelevant results mixed in when searching for resumes by area code, using this example:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) java (maine OR me) 207

He opined whether using the following template (for Google) would improve things by getting rid of resumes with street addresses led by 207, etc.:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) java c (maine OR me) *207*-*-*

The search algorithms change over time, of course, and so while that template may have helped then, it doesn't now. Thus his question is worth revisiting.

You want to eliminate not only apartment/suite numbers matching your area code, but things like house numbers, sites that blind resumes (e.g., just show "Area Code: 207"), etc.

The way to test if your work-around is a solution is to do a narrow test search for the positive case, i.e., try to find the thing you want to eliminate with other narrow criteria so you only get a few results. This way, you can quickly scan to see if your fix is successful. I call this the Positive Find Elimination test.

For example, I would try

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) java 207.*.street

then

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) java 207.*.st

and see if/how the results differ. This usually reveals a way you can tweak your search (e.g., additional boolean NOT criteria) to just get to the results you want.

Since 207.*.street yields different results than 207.*.st , you must account for both in searches (hardly anybody uses Av for Avenue, so Ave is the only alternative needed). Similarly, very few resumes include the Ste abbreviation for Suite, so 1 James Rd., Suite 207 is sufficient for that NOT-type search. Ditto for Cir as an unnecessary abbreviation for Circle.

Again, before I receive complaint emails, let me clarify: I know the word "Ste" appears on web pages. But if you're searching for individual RESUMES, the number of appearances of Ste (or even Suite, for that matter) is insignificant. The context of your search matters, so when you run the Positive Find Elimination test, make sure to run the same kind of search as your desired search.

Unfortunately, Google doesn't let you eliminate the number in a list (e.g., 207 208 ...) with -207.208, nor does it distinguish between #207 and 207 (see for yourself), so there's no point in trying to eliminate results with content formatted in those ways. Ditto for the unability to rid of 207 results where it's the local phone prefix (e.g., 339-207-5555).

Also, using Dr as an abbreviation for Drive is problematic, because it also tends to include people whose resumes have your desired area code number in it, but used in a different way, and within a few words is Dr., as in the Doctor abbreviation (yes, Dr is the same as Dr. in Google). You might actually eliminate good results using that, so just stick with Drive, to be safe (the number of extraneous results added is trivial).

Another common thing you may encounter is page number references, so we'll eliminate those as well. This yields the following template (substitute your desired state/province name, abbreviation and area code for those values below, as well as any skill terms):

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) java (maine OR me) 207 -area.code.207 -page.207 -pp.207 -207.*.st -207.*.street -207.*.rd -207.*.road -207.*.ave -207.*.avenue -207.*.drive -207.*.circle -site:free-for-recruiters.com

The last NOT term is to eliminate results from free-for-recruiters.com, which blinds resume results. But after using the above template to eliminate all the other false results, that will be relatively few to sift through!

If you encounter other extraneous terms in your results (e.g., highway/hwy, another blinded job board, etc.), you can similarly use the Positive Find Elimination test to figure out how to eliminate them.

Using Google Alerts, you can set multiple searches for each state/area code combination you want. You may need to create additional strings if you're adding more than a few skill and/or job title keywords, anyway, since this template is close to Google's 32 keyword/string limit.

Remember, this search string template is geared to Google, in keeping with Tim's original post. Obviously, it is not the only way to find resumes on Google, nor is Google the only place you should search for resumes, so adapt this template accordingly. As I've said before (here, here and here), the results overlap between the search engines is surprisingly and extremely low. In other words, the same search on different search engines pulls up entirely different candidates! You are shooting yourself in the foot to only search one engine.

Even if you search PageBites for resumes, which pulls resumes off the web using Google (PageBites created a Google API), it yields completely different results than the above Google template. For example, try my string template versus java struts (keywords) and Dallas, TX 75201 USA (default searches 50 mi. radius) on PageBites. Unfortunately, some of PageBites' resumes are not in the Dallas area (e.g., it pulls a French postal code, a past employer location, etc.) and it includes some blinded-type results (e.g., Rent-A-Coder.com) which you can't eliminate. You would think, since my template only used the intitle: OR inurl: resume search method, that PageBites would find all of my results, plus quite a few others...but not so!

P.S. I'll have more to say on things like this during my sessions at SourceCon and Kennedy this fall. Are you going?

Finally, who's behind SourceCon, part 1

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 19:11:33 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

Like many of you, I've been curious about who's really behind this upcoming Global Sourcing Conference at which I and a number of my esteemed peers have been invited to present. Finally, some cooperative sources have led me to some insights: none other than Shally Steckerl is a core "technical advisor" to the project. Among other duties to help insure high quality for the debut of this (hopefully) annual event, Shally probably vetted or even suggested you if you were/are to be chosen as a speaker.

Another intel source has indicated the key to discovering the remaining players is to remember the old adage: "follow the money." I have thoughts on that, too, but I'm going to refrain until I have more conclusive evidence. If you can offer more than random speculation, I encourage you to comment below. FYI, Jeremy Langhans offers to give you his take on the SourceCon question if you email him.

P.S. Speaking of following the money, check out this intriguing analysis which attempts to explain how the super-rich preserve the societal status quo by advocating reform over revolution (skip the first "DEFINING TERMS" section and go straight to "PHILANTHROPISTS AND THEIR AGENTS").

Does this make your sourcing blood boil?

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:03:22 GMT

Maureen Sharib recently shared the following job board posting for a "Recruiting Sourcer/Receptionist" on the Sourcers Guild discussion list and asked what people think about it, knowing full well it would piss off a number of us.

This kind of things sets back the progress of recruiting researcher career evolution to nearly the stone age. First of all, it appears only two words are related to Sourcer duties: "retrieve" and "qualify", and the remaining 99.5% of the job description sounds like a receptionist. So why does "Sourcer" get top billing in the job title? Their stated ideal is someone with pharma recruiting office experience, but their minimum qualifications are pure receptionist skills.

So are they willing to train the person who's perfect per the specs, except s/he has no idea what "sourcing" is? Unfortunately, nothing related to training is mentioned. Nor is "Internet" mentioned anywhere, so are the sourcing duties purely phone?

As Maureen implied, this job description severely reduces salary expectations and adversely impacts the kind of inbound candidates the company will receive. So they're probably going to have to source to find the person. Unfortunately, it appears they don't have any sourcers to devote to this search, and if they do, perceive them to be receptionists, anyway, so how good can they be?

The only good thing about this job posting, IMHO, is that they posted it on ERE's job board, so the audience is self-selected to be relevant. However, I can't imagine anybody who'd read it there would have any interest -- unless they have an unemployed relative who has shown a little interest around the family reunion dinner table about what the "recruiter" in the family does.

This pharma recruiting firm needs to re-examine what they're looking for, and where they're looking for it.

As a Sourcer/Receptionist, you will:
Be responsible for providing support to the team as a whole
Act as liaison between clients, candidates and recruiting personnel
Support inquiries on numerous issues; i.e. contracts, resumes, etc.
Retrieve, qualify and enter staffing requirements into our systems
Implement and continue the communication flow within the office and
with clients
Prepare office documents: i.e. job descriptions, etc.
Schedule interviews
Data entry and filing
Answer phones with utmost professionalism and direct callers to
appropriate divisions

Minimum qualifications:
0-3 years of FULL-TIME experience in an office setting
Knowledge of Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel
Knowledge of receptionist duties; i.e. maintaining a clean
environment, answering phones, making copies, etc.
Strong problem solving and decision making skills
Strong attention to detail
Strong communication skills - both oral and written
With strong attention to detail
Proven ability to multi-task
Do whatever it takes attitude

Preferred qualifications:
Pharmaceutical industry experience
Some college experience
Any prior Recruiting experience
Within this position you can earn incentives based on individual
performance and client growth.
This is a great opportunity to take your career to the next level. To
be qualified you must have a strong job history, good references, and
a desire to make a great company even better.

Great San Francisco jobs await you at San Fran Jobs.

LinkedIn rescue: Find the maintenance contract administrators

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:21:51 GMT

Q: I'm assisting a Massachusetts client and have posted the following job on Monster with minimal success. Anyone have other recommendations on where I could post with better success. Job pays in the mid 50 range: This position will drive the maximization of maintenance contract revenue by facilitating the uptake and renewal of maintenance contracts for both new and existing customers. The role will be responsible for the processing of contract renewals via phone and email.

A: Why are you focused on job posting and hoping the right people respond? This discussion list and other recruiter lists repeatedly discuss how job posting will get you only a limited number of active candidates, who are unlikely to be what you want.

A proactive resume search is a little better. I assume you or your client have already done this on the job boards to which you have database access, as well as the open web via at least 3 major search engines (since results are mostly non-duplicative across those). In this case, I agree there are relatively few resumes (unless you have access to the really large resume databases, but these are expensive, and from your question, it appears you only have job posting access to Monster).

So the good people doing this work are likely already employed at other companies. You or your client needs to reach out to them:

Search for job postings on an aggregator like Indeed.com with those keywords: maintenance contract renewal revenue. This reveals the most common job titles for people in those roles contain the terms: "Maintenance renewal", "Contract administrator", "Contracts administrator", "Account Executive" and "Account Manager", along with "Service Account", "Business Service", etc.

This gives you fodder for a LinkedIn search. Use those values in indicated fields on LinkedIn Advanced Search form as follows:

Keywords: maintenance OR contract

Only one keyword match is required by my using OR above. In general, try to minimize, if not completely eliminate, use of the keywords field because many people have sparse profiles and don't list anything beyond their current job. Remember, these are not resumes.

(current job) title: "Maintenance renewal" OR "Contract administrator" OR "Contracts administrator" OR "Account Executive" OR "Account Manager" OR "Service Account" OR "Business Service"

Note how I put AS MANY distinct job title fragments as possible with OR in between, so profiles with any one of them will return a match.

Location: change "anywhere" to "Located in or near", put 02110 under "US Zip"

Since this level of position typically excludes relocation, I assume you would prefer to limit your results to the greater Boston area. LinkedIn allows this (any zipcode in greater Boston would do).

This exact search yielded 196 people, thanks to my large 3-degree network! (If your results are less, connect networks to me directly and your count should rise dramatically.)

While results don't include phone numbers or emails, you do have their name, title and company info, so it's a pretty straightforward exercise to figure out their email address (almost every company follows a pattern like firstname.lastname@ or FirstInitialLastName@, which you can detect from their website) or just call the main office number -- the gatekeeper, if any, should pass you right through since you have a name!

How to source niche engineers who don’t put their resumes online

Wed, 30 May 2007 22:41:13 GMT

By Glenn Gutmacher

Q: Hi Glenn. Wondering if you could give me a few pointers on searching. I have been trying a few search strings to source Transmission Line Design Engineers with PLSCADD, PLSTOWER, or PLSPOLE software skills. Have not been having much luck. Would you be able to suggest a few strings that we could use to target resumes/CV's?

A: I will assume you have determined various synonyms that people may use for your keywords (e.g., try Acronyma on your acronyms, or Wikipedia for other terminology) and turned those into Boolean OR clauses to expand your strings, e.g., on Google:

~cv (Transmission OR Power OR DPL OR relatedkeyword3 OR relatedkeyword4) (Engineer OR jobtitle2) (PLSCADD OR PLSTOWER OR PLSPOLE OR "Power Line System" OR keyword5) -you

You will get some job postings mixed in with the resumes, but that's not bad, either, especially for a low-yield resume niche like this. Use that information to target the specific competitors that posted them. When you call into the company, now you know the exact job titles of the people who hold those roles! You can get more job titles/descriptions by searching against your keywords on a job aggregator like Indeed or SimplyHired.

Another reason for the lack of resumes is that these folks are in such demand that they don't need their resumes posted. That doesn't mean you can't find them online, however. Look in the virtual communities where they hang out online (e.g., industry-specific discussion lists, forums, trade association member profiles). You can even search alumni directories or the web in general for pages where people list their new jobs. Some basic template strings for that, to which you can add geographic/location terms, company names, job titles, or other narrowing keywords, are:

(he OR she) engineer "transmission line design"

intitle:alumni (he OR she) engineer (transmission OR power)

Note that the above syntax works on most major search engines – and you will get different results depending on which you use -- so run these on Exalead, Google, Live, Yahoo, etc., for more comprehensive results!

Though these online traces will lack resumes (a bio is the most you'll find; a name + email is the least), you can be fairly certain of their qualifications/relevance. Do an outreach campaign (phone and/or email) and you will get a decent number of resumes. Even better, ask them to name the top people they've ever worked with, and focus on them!

Advice on Becoming a Great Sourcer

Wed, 30 May 2007 12:25:06 GMT

by Glenn Gutmacher

Q: I'm writing an article on how to improve one's recruiting research / sourcing skills. What do you recommend?

A: This probably deserves to be a book, not an article! I think fundamental, wide-ranging, basic sourcing training is useful if you've never taken it. There are plenty of vendors on the Internet sourcing side, and phone sourcing side, and some offering both. (Note to those who haven't researched alternatives to the heavily-marketed vendors -- it doesn't have to cost four figures to get robust training.)

Training is an ongoing process. You may get the best info in snippets, both on-the-job and from outside learning. The key for my learning is to absorb and process the info in such a way that I could teach it to someone else. For me, that is a formal process: I take detailed notes at every meeting, synthesize what I learn, and usually find something worthwhile to post on my employer's staffing intranet. It may even end up in an internal group training. If it's not proprietary, I often find a way to work it into my presentations at industry conferences to share at a broader level. Strong sourcers should be secure enough about their ability to learn and keep their skills sharp – and eager to raise the knowledge level of their profession overall -- to blog and otherwise share their latest favorite tools and tricks. I think I'm altruistic by nature, but I find that the more I share, the more I get, too.

But it's whatever works for you. You could just try applying one thing you learn to a current open requisition to see if it "sticks." Not every sourcing method or resource applies to every req, of course, but it's good to add to your bag of tricks! Simply by trying the technique, regardless of the quality of results, you'll probably learn it well enough to know how and where to use it in the future. If you don't seem to be making enough headway on a particular sourcing project (or even if you are, but have a nagging feeling there might be a better way to do what you're doing), outline what you've tried to some respected peers and ask them what else they'd recommend.

If you see sourcing as a career path (or a key component of it), then it makes sense to enlist multiple mentors, though they need not be formal ones. I like the personal "board of directors" approach that an increasing number of career coaches recommend, where you seek out people who each fill different expertise niche gaps that complement you. Remember that recruiting research skills are applicable to different fields, including journalism, competitive intelligence, marketing research, library science, etc., so don't hesitate to pull from people working in those arenas.

I think Jason Davis's recent "best recruiting tip" contest had some great suggestions that are easily adaptable to research. For example, to really understand your business: The better you know the subject matter of the prospects you're sourcing, the better you can understand their motivations, where they're likely to hang out online, how to carry on an intelligent conversation when you get them on the phone, how to determine which new trends, tools, competitors and other things you hear about are relevant to your searches and which aren't, etc. That ultimately results in more targeted time-efficiency and higher-quality finds than using broad, blitzkrieg mass-email campaigns that piss off far more people than they turn up… and you will need to back to those wells again, so don't piss in them.

Last but not least, don't be afraid to acknowledge your limitations: If you don't have time to do task X from project Y, tell your (internal) customer and offer to help find someone else who can do the work (even if it need be an outside vendor). Much sourcing work is time-sensitive (e.g., a pending competitor layoff or merger), and late could be worse than never if they're waiting and expecting it from you. As another example, if your strength is online research, don't take on the majority of the phone sourcing. Do what's going to yield the most efficient results. But use the opportunity to learn from what you outsource – maybe you can do a post-mortem with the suppliers to find out how they got what they got, and you can more confidently take on more of that work next time. When you under-promise and over-deliver, you can't help but garner more satisfied customers.

Sourcing Report: Tools of the (Recruiting) Trade 2007

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:36:23 GMT

review by Glenn Gutmacher

Bullhorn just released the results of a "Tools of the Trade" survey that has some very intriguing nuggets. It lists the favorites of third party and corporate recruiters in several sourcing categories. More interesting than the stats themselves, for me, were the selected comments (good and bad) about the tools. The anecdotal sidebars about MySpace and what makes a strong recruiting blog, as well as decent analysis by Bullhorn that didn't overreach, are also good reads.

I won't spill all the beans, but the report is free to download. Here are worthwhile highlights:

Online social networks:

No surprise that LinkedIn is the most frequently-used site by far, but what's interesting are the ones that barely registered -- Facebook and MySpace are the faves of only 2% of respondents. Bullhorn concludes that this maps to usage preferences of younger staffing personnel. It makes you wonder, if you're targeting younger talent but you're older, maybe you need to break out of your comfort zone and try the tools that skew younger!

Informational or Professional Development sites:

That's what Bullhorn calls sites like ERE, SHRM and even Monster, which has bulked up its recruiter editorial content over the last few years. People like these, but also complain about the time/volume of info to sift through in order to find what they need, the number of self-proclaimed experts who aren't, and those "know-it-alls who don't know when to stick a sock in it." (You know who you are! ;-)

Recruiting blogs:

According to the survey, blogs suffer all of the aforementioned problems as the Info/Pro Dev sites, as well as "irrelevant and/or repetitive content" and "the quality of thought and caliber of individuals is all over the place." However, people like finding new, useful tips and tricks, news on trends, and expert advice on blogs not found elsewhere. Only 29 percent reported using blogs to find candidates.

The most frequently-used blogs by recruiting pros are the ERE Blog Network (my former boss Shally Steckerl writes one of their most popular blogs), dropping off significantly to a virtual tie for second place between the blogs of Barb Bruno, Jim Durbin (see this and that, etc.) and my Microsoft colleague Jim Stroud. Kudos to all!

The category of top job boards is reviewed similarly.

Though only 721 respondents gave full answers out of the near-50,000 who received an email about the survey, Bullhorn claims a sampling error variation of 4.75% against the universe. Based on the logical results, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. All in all, a worthwhile read.

P.S. For the follow-up report, Bullhorn should review the tools of the trade that good sourcers really use, as opposed to what the general recruiter population does! Hey, wait, I presented a well-attended webinar on this very topic over a year ago sponsored by HR.com. Maybe I should approach them or Bullhorn to do an updated version?

Jigsaw vs. ZoomInfo vs. LeadershipDirectories

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:01:59 GMT

Q: I'm looking for an accurate fast source of names of Partners in Charge of Audit for the offices of Big 4 firms, and for the names of the heads of H.R. in those offices. Which would be the better way to go...Jigsaw or Zoom?

A: The above question was actually submitted in a recent thread on the ERE Sourcing Techniques and Methodologies group which prompted me to reply. I have amplified my answer a bit more below and think it's worth sharing with you, in case you aren't subscribed (free and worth joining for the relevant discussions, sharing of tips/resources, etc.). Other people answered, so you might want to view their answers as well.

1) ZoomInfo - the more publicly-visible the person, the more likely you'll find them here (VP and up in any area, all PR/marketing personnel, etc.). If VP/CxO is your focus, you should also consider LeadershipDirectories which does full validation of every contact every year and is priced comparably. They also have government staffers in their searchable database.

2) Jigsaw - In contrast to Mary's point, you don't have to buy anything to benefit. Just input 25 contacts per month (who aren't already in their system, not hard) and it's free. This also gives you the right to do unlimited searching and pull out full contact info for 25 other contacts per month that you don't have & need (could actually be >25 if you submit more).

Before I get flamed, let me anticipate and answer the question of how you can legitimately add 25 contacts/month without pissing off somebody who doesn't want to be added to a database of this type: As you are dealing with candidates (regardless of whether you might be able to place them), ask if they would like their info put in a database used by many other recruiters. Since you've already engaged them by this point, they most likely want to be contacted by other recruiters and will almost always say yes without further discussion. I think this is sufficient authorization to add them to Jigsaw. If they want more detail or balk, drop it. But any decent sourcer/recruiter should have no problem getting 25 people/month this way. And you've created goodwill for yourself and your company, regardless of what happens with their candidacy at your employer/client, which is helpful for referrals down the road.

Last but not least, consider alumni of these companies who held the roles you mentioned. They have the skills and did the job, after all. Big4Alumni is one place, and LinkedIn will let you search by past as well as current employer, along with job titles, keywords, etc. (LinkedIn supports booleans, so you can type COMPANY1 OR COMPANY2 ... etc.)