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The Best of SourceCon 2011, #1 — How I Made 3 Hires In 6 Weeks With Twitter

by on Dec. 30, 2011

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Twitter logo transparent

Editor’s note: this article by Megan Hopkins was the most popular article on SourceCon in 2011. It originally ran in July.

Confessions of a Twitter Hater…

My relationship with Twitter started out very slowly, and much like my relationship with my ex-husband, I was not a fan. At all. In fact, whenever Twitter was mentioned around me I cringed (much like I do when I hear “Steve Jobs” or “Apple”) and immediately tuned out. You see, not only am I stubborn, I am also all-knowing — just ask my parents…I am NEVER wrong. Okay, so to be fair, “never” is a bit of a stretch… In any event, I associated Twitter with all things stupid that did not catch my fancy (though I’m sure Ashton Kutcher is a very nice person) and I preferred to stick to my tried and true recruiting ways. Experimentation is not my thing.

After what seemed to be the one hundredth Twitter argument (that I won), I was forwarded an article in the Orlando Sentinel about a local girl that got laid off and used Twitter to notify the masses that she was back on the market. Within a week or so, Brittany Ward’s tweets had gained so much attention that an unlikely suitor came calling and wanted to do a featured story on her and her love of Twitter and social media. Apparently the Orlando Sentinel needed to cover something other than Orlando crime (and Ashton Kutcher was unavailable) and Brittany Ward seemed to be just the ticket. This was her defining moment and she was catapulted into Orlando stardom.

I was intrigued (and I was stalling a few recruiting calls…naughty, I know) so I decided to read this fine piece of literary work. I was instantly impressed by Brittany and her creative use of Twitter to get her name out in a challenging economy. After I read the article, I called a friend and mentioned to him that I know a girl that would be great fit for his company. I emailed him Brittany’s resume and within two weeks, he had extended her an offer and she accepted (and she LOVES her now job, thankyouverymuch!).

This got my wheels turning. I thought if Twitter could facilitate a placement with a perfect stranger so easily, there had to be some way I could leverage it to improve the way I recruit.

My little pea-sized brain was on to something!

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Leadership, Metrics, Social Media

The Best of SourceCon 2011, #2 — 10 Common Mistakes of Sourcing

by on Dec. 29, 2011

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JHascheRIS11

Editor’s note: this article derived from Jennifer Hasche’s RIS presentation was the 2nd most popular article on SourceCon in 2011. It originally ran in October.

During her presentation on sourcing strategies that produce results this Monday at the Recruiting Innovation Summit, which took place at Facebook in Palo Alto, CA, Jennifer Hasche, a Senior Sourcer at Intuit, shared her list of top 10 sourcing mistakes that are typically made within a recruitment organization. These mistakes are often the cause of missing the right candidates, taking too long on a search project, not understanding your business, and most frustratingly the misuse of available sourcing talent within an organization.

Read through the following list and make sure you aren’t making these mistakes yourself!

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The Sourcing Function

The Best of SourceCon 2011, #3 — The Unique Mind of a Sourcer

by on Dec. 28, 2011

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brain-cogs

Editor’s note: Sarang Brahme’s article was the 3rd most popular article on SourceCon in 2011. It originally ran in October.

A while back I saw an article on SC about Rob McIntosh’s Brain Is For Sale. Being an inventor of various sourcing contests like Rob’s dog and a true sourcer that he is, this article made me think about a brain of a sourcer. I have a firm opinion that sourcers are a unique breed of recruiting professionals. Not that they belong on a different planet, but that their mindset, focus, and passion put them in a league of their own.

Think about the different characteristics of a mind of a sourcer. Now these may be recruiters who love sourcing and have the right attitude toward sourcing. However, I honestly think that a true sourcer possesses a set of qualities unique from their recruiting counterparts.

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Social Media

The Best of SourceCon 2011, #4 — Five Fatal Social Recruiting Mistakes

by on Dec. 27, 2011

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social media overload

Editor’s note: Shaly Steckerl’s article was the 4th most popular article on SourceCon in 2011. It originally ran in September.

Our Recruitment Genome Project demonstrated that 85% of surveyed staffing leaders utilize Social Recruiting avenues yet 70% of them lack any form of strategy. With all the choices available and potential legal, audit, or regulatory entanglements many recruitment leaders are confused or even paralyzed by fear. Hiring organizations know the recruitment world has made a dramatic shift, and recruiters know they need to meet prospects where they already are, but without a clear strategy many end up jumping blindly into social recruiting and make easily avoidable mistakes.

If you think the best way to recruit with social media is feeding your jobs RSS feed through Twitter but then get distracted with new entries into the social networking space such as Google+, we wrote this series just for you and hope this helps you avoid an epic #fail by falling victim to some of the most common mistakes.

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Corporate Sourcing, Technology & Resources

The Best of SourceCon 2011, #5 — Boolean in Disguise: LinkedIn Recruiter’s Cure for the Common Boolean Blues

by on Dec. 26, 2011

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Boolean Rx

Editor’s note: John Childs’ article was the 5th most popular article on SourceCon in 2011. It originally ran in June.

Boolean in Disguise is a prescription for easing the pain some experience when wrestling with Boolean strings. The Rx consists of a way of formulating and writing Boolean strings without realizing you’re doing it.

The prescription is not a complete cure however, but more like symptomatic relief of the common cold. You feel better, but you’ve still got a cold. We can call it a “semi-cure.”

Example of an easy string that works almost like a longer one — it can be as easy as typing the following one word string:

HR

…into the Key Words field of LinkedIn Recruiter, put a few checks in boxes, and it will give you even better results than you got by entering the longer Boolean search string in the Key Words field as shown below:

(HR) AND (“Information Technology”) AND (Director) AND (“New York”)

 

How cool would that be?

Keep reading…I’ll show you.

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Industry News

Talent Technology Acquires VisualCV

by on Dec. 23, 2011

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Screen shot 2011-12-23 at 8.44.19 AM

Following notification a couple weeks ago that VisualCV.com, an Internet-based resume building and career portfolio management service, would be shutting its doors at the conclusion of 2011, this morning the company announced that it had been acquired by Talent Technology, a leading solutions provider in the recruiting technology market.

With that announcement, VisualCV also noted that Talent Technology would continue to operate the VisualCV.com website and that it will not be shut down as previously announced.

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Editor's Corner

Season’s Greetings from SourceCon

by on Dec. 23, 2011

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Screen shot 2011-12-21 at 8.00.52 PM

Wishing all of you a wonderful holiday! Next week we will count down some of the top articles from 2011. Have a great weekend!

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The Sourcing Function

Breaking Down the Sourcing Function, Part 3: How Do You Interview a Sourcer?

by on Dec. 22, 2011

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interview-cartoon

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been breaking down the sourcing function into some simple, digestible bites of information. Last week, we covered a few things to look for when you are ready to start interviewing sourcers — career and educational backgrounds, personality traits, and so forth. After reading last week’s article, a lot of you may be thinking, “Well this is all great stuff, but how do you find out in an interview if a candidate possesses these skills?” So this week, we want to provide a few suggestions for some good screening techniques.

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Social Media

Digging For Gold: Three Layers of Candidate Sourcing

by on Dec. 21, 2011

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gold-nuggets-

I still remember those days when word “sourcing strategy” was define mainly with the names of job portals we would have an access. Well now, the situation is relatively similar — we have simply replaced job portals with Social Media and LinkedIn. More often than not, these so-called “strategies” appear pretty one-sided, lacking an in-depth understanding of the entire sourcing gamut. For now, it seems we are drifting toward “Social Media” as an entire strategy whereas in reality, it is simply one part of the entire strategy.

We get easily carried away with numbers like 800 million on Facebook and 150 million on LinkedIn. Do you know that 81% of LinkedIn and 76% of Twitter users never visit their account? Facebook, by contrast, has a higher engagement ratio — over 42% of users visit Facebook every day. I’m sure you will agree that the actual target population size is much bigger than just these numbers, which means with Social Media we are only looking at one particular section of candidates – not the whole group. Maureen Sharib has touched on this point very well in her Phone Sourcing discussion.

So – when it comes to Social Media channels, do we expect candidates to fall in our laps for easy pickings? Will this be a holy grail of candidate acquisition?

My answer is NO. If what we call a Social Media “strategy” simply means posting jobs in every corner of the Internet and expecting positions to fill, then we are missing the trick. What we need to look at is where our candidates are — are they all hanging on Social Media channels? Are they all equally active? Wouldn’t we look at candidates who are not using these channels? There are several layers of hidden treasure beyond social channels that remain to be excavated.

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Industry News, Social Media

Facebook Introduces Private Messages For Business Pages and Fans

by on Dec. 20, 2011

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facebook-fan-page

Though the news hasn’t appeared as an update on its official blog, Facebook has has begun introducing a new feature which allows business pages to receive private messages from their fans on the social network.

Right now, the new feature has only been rolled out to Asia-based admins. When it launched on Monday morning, Facebook page admins woke up to the following information box:

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