The Source Newsletter

Are you attending or thinking about attending SourceCon 2010? Glen Cathey is going to be the keynote speaker for the event, and he will be presenting on Artificial Intelligence vs. Human Cognition when it comes to sourcing and matching. Even our regular contributors are eager to hear what Glen has to share. Here’s what our own Marvin Smith had to say:

“A person that I want to meet is Glen Cathey. I read his blog and know him from the point of view as an author, but want to learn more about his story in recruiting and sourcing. Glen is the type of writer that shares the secrets of our craft, yet is a man of mystery with respect to himself.

“As an alumnus of the previous two SourceCons, I have found that the venue and the agenda foster conversations and sharing. It provides opportunities to make new friends with thought leaders like Glen.”

We asked Glen to give us a teaser of what he’ll be presenting…

---

If you’re curious to know what kinds of things I’ll be addressing during the session, here is a sneak peek:

1. The intrinsic and often overlooked challenges associated with sourcing resumes
2. What artificially intelligent semantic search and match applications claim to do and how they actually work
3. The limits of artificial intelligence
4. What people can do that semantic search applications cannot
5. The 5 levels of semantic search
6. The 4 levels of secondary/e-sourcing
7. What I think is the ideal candidate sourcing solution

If you’ve ever wondered about the fantastic claims that some of the semantic search application vendors on the market make as to how their solution can mimic a senior recruiter when finding candidates, then you will be very interested in hearing what I have to say about the reality of what they can do.

If you’re a sourcer and you’re concerned that your role/position might eventually be replaced by sourcing software, you will be encouraged by my analysis and supporting arguments that explain why the abilities of creative and investigative sourcers will always be in demand – tomorrow and 50 years from now.

I hope you will be able to attend SourceCon 2010 – I know I’m looking forward to it!

---

About our guest author:

Glen Cathey started out as a technical recruiter in January 1997 and has accumulated 13 years of experience in the recruiting and staffing industry. He currently serves as the Vice President of Recruiting for a billion dollar staffing firm. His experience spans full life cycle recruiting “at the desk” to hiring, training, and managing large recruiting and delivery teams, as well as training hundreds of Technology, Defense, Finance and Accounting, and Healthcare recruiters who are responsible for nearly 10,000 hires nationally on an annual basis.

There is no shortage of ways to source effectively outside the confines of an office cubicle. Whether you have a smart phone such as an iPhone or Blackberry, or use a laptop or netbook, there are countless sites, networks and tools to tap into for sourcing. By now, nearly every sourcer on the planet is either a member or active user of social sites, knows what RSS is and how to use it, understands bookmarking and tagging, and lives in the Blogosphere. If you’re by chance still caught in the stone age using only job boards and your career website, the following may seem “advanced.” Let’s explore a few areas you should consider for sourcing while on the move:

Use Search Sites and Tools
Google is a must have regardless of your mobile device. They’re the undisputed king of search, but also offer a wide range of other products you can access on the go. Take Google Reader for example. Try setting up RSS feeds of resumes from sites such as VisualCV, eMurse and other career or resume sites using FeedBeater. This way you can get notifications of fresh resumes hitting those sites on your mobile device. AutoSearch is a great “catch-all” search tool that scours search engines, LinkedIn, Twitter, ZoomInfo and Jobster for profiles and resumes based on key words. The real-value to sourcers with this tool is in the search strings it automatically sets up for you on the fly. If you’re an email junkie, try reMail for the iPhone which offers fast full-text email search in your pocket.

Tap into Social and Business Networks
Over 100 million people currently use the Facebook application from their iPhones compared to total membership of 400 million people on the site. That’s 1 in 4 Facebook members that are mobilized. The Facebook iPhone application is very robust and offers nearly every feature of the main site. This means you can search, chat and manage your pages from almost anywhere. The same goes for LinkedIn’s iPhone application. For Twitter, try using TweetDeck which offers the ability to form groups of those you follow to stay organized and set-up searches for active and passive job seekers based on key words. Also check into mobile social networks such as Mocospace.

Take Advantage of Utility Tools
Want to stay connected to all things on your work PC? Start embracing the cloud, as in cloud computing, or cloud recruiting in our case. There are a plethora of tools such as Diigo, which allow you to clip pieces or entire pages of websites and tag them for later viewing. Build a library of names, profiles and resumes, and access them anywhere using Diigo. Think of it like a portable information warehouse or a bare bones ATS while you are mobile. Take a good look at Evernote as well which offers similar features. If you need a backup plan for all your documents, try SugarSync. Need to manage your blog while at a client meeting or on the subway, platforms such as WordPress offer mobile applications to get your work done.

Use Mobile Specific Applications
Smart phones in particular were born to be workhorses for people as they go about their busy work days. Sourcers in particular will find a number of great applications that were made specifically for iPhones, Blackberrys and the like.

Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt are three in particular to pay attention to. These social network related applications revolve around the new “location-based” craze. All offer ways to find and connect with new people. Siri is a newer application that acts as a “virtual personal assistant” running searches for you based on voice commands and even performs tasks such as emailing you reminders. TweetMic is a tool worth investigating. It allows voice recordings that tie into Twitter. If you consider mobilizing your website, careersite or blog, Movitas is a solid platform to get it done right as it has many popular social network plug-ins and features for Twitter and YouTube in particular.

---

About our guest author:

Geoff Peterson is the owner/founder of General Lead. He has 10+ years experience in recruiting, sourcing, Internet research and social media and has held successful engagements with IBM, ADP, UnitedHealth Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, GEICO and other Fortune 500 clients, mid-size organizations and small businesses.

Regular Contributor post from Marvin Smith

---

Technological advances are unprecedented. In fact, thinking about technological changes is mind numbing. In recruiting and sourcing, our current technology is so sophisticated that most of our process can be automated. Think about it–we automate how candidates find jobs on the web (Search Engine Optimization—SEO); we automate the application process and much of the interview process (Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS); and we would automate the actual interviews if we could. As sourcers and recruiters our goal has been to use technology to guard our time and only speak to people that are qualified for a position. We hide behind this wall of technology in our corporations so that we can operate anonymously to everyone except the chosen few that are candidates for a job.

There is a downside to our anonymity. I invite you to step into the experience of a person that stumbles over one of our jobs.

Imagine you are at work. You are researching a special project. You put your keywords in your favorite search engine; as you skim the results in Bing you notice a job advertisement from a competitor. There staring you in the face is the seemingly perfect job. You press the link and read the job description. Many questions come to mind. You press the link that says “apply” to see if your questions can be answered and to further investigate the opportunity. You are directed to an electronic form and offers you the opportunity apply for the job. You think to yourself—do I have time to apply for this job? What if my boss walks by? You wonder how long can an application process take—you conclude that this is the 21st century and it should only take a few minutes. 30 minutes later, you are still being asked questions about your life history. You are feeling uneasy since you are at work. A colleague walks by and you quickly close the window on the screen in order to protect your privacy. You have just wasted 30 minutes of your life. And your competitor has just lost a great opportunity to meet you.

The above scenario is played out daily. This is one of the byproducts of the amazing technology age—prospects for our opportunities become frustrated with our process and drop out of our application process. Before you dismiss this as isolated, Gerry & Mark at CareerXroads have some research that suggests that not completing the application process can occur over 60% of the time. If you think about it, it is not the active job seeker that drops out of the application process, but a more passive person who is just sort of kicking tires. And if you are like me, it is that passive prospect that I need because the number of active candidates do not meet my numerical or quality requirements need to fulfill my hiring objectives.

I believe we can use technology to reverse this trend of passive prospects dropping out of an application process. The solution isn’t just shortening the application process (although, I am in favor or that); we can use technology to engage is conversations with these passive prospects. I believe that we can and should use technology to rehumanize sourcing and recruiting.

At Microsoft, we are Employing Talent Communities to Rehumanize the Recruiting Process. I will discuss our approach at Sourcecon 2010. I invite you to be part of the presentation and conversation. I am the last speaker on Monday, so as you plan your departure from SourceCon, take a later flight and please join me.

Regular Contributor post from Kristen Fife

---

I recently had a phone conversation with someone I’ve crossed paths with in the local Seattle recruiting community but  have never met personally.

This is a question a good sourcer gets asked fairly frequently. My skill set, which like any good recruiter includes agency/corporate full lifecycle recruiting, has a strong Sourcing component. And by sourcing, I’m not talking about a junior recruiter doing a keyword search based on a profile or generic job description.

A good Sourcer enjoys research, marketing, and building long-term relationships with people. As I said in my conversation earlier this week, Sourcing as a separate specialty in Recruiting is a fairly recent “job title” as a senior recruiting role. Before the advent of major Applicant Tracking Systems, almost *all* recruiters had to be strong in both sourcing and account management. My Mom was a nurse recruiter back in the 80’s and her eyes glaze over when I talk about Boolean search strings and the various ATS’s I’ve mastered over the years. It’s only when I talk about posting a job or attending a live networking event that she actually has a frame of reference. For her it was about picking up the phone, reaching out to her professional colleagues for referrals and recommendations, and meeting with both campus and industry candidates.

In the 90’s, technology took much of the human element *out* of recruiting, while streamlining the recruiting process and allowing recruiters to handle much higher requisition loads in the process. I believe that search technology (thank you Google) has brought about the advent of “Sourcing”. Now that we can run targeted searches on large numbers of candidates, “sourcing” has become even more valued as a skill.

But Sourcing is more than just being able to run a Boolean search query. Much, much more. Sourcing is also about employment branding. As the first line in a *proactive* recruiting process, we are the initial representative of our organization. A large part of our success depends on creating long-term relationships, keeping them warm, and building trust and reliability. On top of that, we need to know the state of the industry both locally and nationally so we are aware of employment trends. Strong research and analytic skills are key to our profession.

And of course there is the very real human element. Like any good recruiter, we must be comfortable picking up the phone and talking to people. One of the best parts about being a senior sourcing professional, for me, is the luxury of forming strong professional relationships and gaining a reputation as someone to “send” trusted friends and colleagues to.

And last but not least, as the forerunner of the recruiting arm of an organization, candidates and potential candidates are almost *always* happy to hear from me.  I am calling them to talk to them about their professional expertise. To get to know them, what motivates them, and to make them feel valuable and to be interested in their careers. Who doesn’t like that?

The Arbita Recruitment Genome Project research in early 2009 demonstrated that most companies’ sourcing functions are not taking advantage of the shift in candidate behavior. In the third quarter of 2009 we conducted a new survey and once again, thousands participated. We then compared the results to our baseline data and noticed some improvement. Here is what we found:

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) continues to be the least utilized lead generation tactic. About 37% of respondents felt they had a good strategy for marketing their employment opportunities using pay-per-click, direct ads and other SEM techniques. This is up 19% from survey results in early 2009.

However, Google’s Keyword Tool shows that each month at least 775 million searches are conducted on Google, about 226 million of them job-related. That means that just under a third (and quite possibly more) of the questions being asked on Google are related to job search. Are your sourcing efforts taking advantage of this passive candidate traffic goldmine?

Among the thousands of respondents, we found an amazing 16% increase in confidence around having adequate training on Internet research and sourcing, now 63%! That still leaves over a third of the population with unsatisfactory sourcing skills. But even the strongest sourcers need to stay up to date. Learning and improvement is a continuous process.  So how should your team keep up with best practices and changes in sourcing technologies like data mining techniques, sourcing automation, semantic search, social and emerging media sourcing, etc.?

Other survey results indicated that of the respondents:

• 43% feel they have a good strategy for SEO, up 17%.
• 52% are happy with their career web sites, up 5%.
• 53% were satisfied with job boards, identical to our survey earlier in the year.
• 53% feel they have a good plan for finding candidates using search engines like Google and Bing.com, up 6%.
• 56% feel they have a good strategy for finding candidates on social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, up 9%.

The future is very near, and as economic recovery turns the corner employers need to prepare for the coming rise in demand. Proliferation of social and emerging media brings with it the promise of convergence, integration and portability. Soon more true contact management features will integrate social and emerging media into your ATS/HRIS systems, rich media analytics will track any of your sources ad-hoc, career microsites will bring online social networks together into dashboards and integrate them with your CRM.

Join us at Sourcecon on Sunday, March 14^th to experience more of the above learnings from your peers and our industry leaders. We’ll also discuss how certain sourcing techniques can build or erode your employment brand. Transparency in the social Internet increases both positive and negative exposure, and with the obliteration of privacy, brings to light how sourcers can quickly build or ruin an employment brand. See you in March!

---

About our guest author:

Shally Steckerl is the Executive Vice President of Arbita. He is a talent acquisition consultant, strategist, speaker, and also the Founder and Chief CyberSleuth of JobMachine, Inc., the premier provider of sourcing consulting services and workforce development. A pioneer in recruitment Internet research, accomplished author and celebrated speaker, he is a regular contributor to many industry publications. Shally is frequently requested to present at leading domestic and international recruiting conferences and conduct private workshops. He now spends his time consulting with organization interested in building passive candidate pipeline generation and recruitment teams, and developing their advanced sourcing skills.

guest post by Maureen Sharib…

---

Last week someone forwarded me an email for a company that was looking for a phone sourcer.  I contacted the solicitor and offered to put it out to the network of 1600 members in the MagicMethod Phone Sourcing group and I received a grateful reply that included:

I’m really looking for a seasoned pro with 2+ years who needs minimal mentoring but can take project direction on a continuous basis – multiple times a day…for a full-time manufacturing and a part-time DoD position. Pay depends on experience – of course.

I asked what the pay was for an “old, salty sourcer” and it sounded reasonable.

I laughed ‘cause I’m an old sourcer but salty?  Yeah, I s’pose that, too.

Anyway, I put the missive out and he began to get some inquiries.  He had a pretty straightforward “test” he was sending to the applicants: identify the VP of Product & Process Development and the Director reports at a company and find the e-mail address of a person at another company.

He gave the info in an Excel spread sheet and it included the telephone numbers of the two specific companies he wanted penetrated.  At the top of the Excel spread sheet it said:

Product Marketing Sample
Looking for the VP Product Development and of his/her direct reports.
They should all have the title Director Product Development

I thought it looked like it might be an interesting “challenge” and being as rusty as I am these days with so little phone sourcing work to do on a daily basis I took a stab at it.  I wanted to know the answers anyway in case any of my MagicMethod network asked me about the challenge so I could “help” them with advice on how to proceed.  Besides that, it looked like fun.

Not being accustomed to working in Excel (I find it too “jumpy” for fast phone sourcing work), I eyeballed the document and picked up the phone.  Knowing what titles are used at a specific company is a huge leg-in on any search, Internet included.  But this was a phone search – he wanted phone sourcers specifically.

“XYZ Corporation.  Melinda speaking.”

“Hi Melinda, this is Maureen Sharib.  Can you give me the e-mail address of so-and-so?”

Piece of cake – she recited it easily to me.  I repeated it back to her – slowly – to make sure I had it right.  It took about half-a-minute.  That part of the challenge was finished – on to the next.  This is where I got into trouble.  I think I was feeling haughty.

“ABC Corporation.  Delores speaking.  May I help you?”

“Hi Delores, this is Maureen Sharib.  Can you please transfer me to product development?”

“Which division?  We have many different divisions.”

Blowback.  I didn’t expect that after the ease of my first call.

Glancing at the Excel document I noted it was asking for “Interiors & Exteriors” so I blurted that out.

“Which?” she pressed.

“Interiors,” I grabbed, thinking I would start somewhere.

“One moment, please,” and before I could collect my composure Delores had me on hold in a transfer process.  The phone rang and rang and finally a VoiceMail answered.  “Amanda” informed me that she was gone for the day and would be returning tomorrow and in the event I was trying to reach so-and-so (I had no idea who so-and-so was) I should call Sheila at x4567.  Eyeballing the original telephone number of the company on the Excel sheet I dialed 1 (this was long distance) and the first six numbers – the area code and the prefix – and then Sheila’s four digit extension.  It rang through and another Voicemail answered, identifying herself as “Sheila, the Coordinator in Engineering” and informing me she was on the telephone and would be happy to return my call shortly.

I hung up.

Feeling giddy as I so often do on these chases I pushed back in my chair and noted Sheila’s extension.  Thinking that maybe, just maybe as they sometimes do, if I dialed x4568 directly (now that I knew the easy internal dial key to the company’s employees) I might hit someone else in Engineering so that’s what I did.  It rang and rang and another VoiceMail answered.  I hung up.  I then dialed x4569.  Another VoiceMail.  I hung up and redialed x4570.  A male voice answered.

“Hello.”

“This is Maureen Sharib.  I am trying to reach so-and-so and Amanda is out for the day.  Can you give me his number?”

“Huh?”

“So-and-so.  I am trying to reach the Engineering department.  Is this Engineering?”

“Yeah, this is Engineering but you have the wrong number.”

“I am sorry to disturb you.  Can you give me so-and-so’s number?

“Uhhh – sure.  Wait a minute.”

I waited while he fumbled with some paper.  He then told me so-and-so was at x4561.  Huh.  Close enough in the phone tree to think this wasn’t a fluke – the fact that Engineering was close together in the phone tree.  I wasn’t finished.  I asked, “So-and-so – he’s the VP of Product Development – right?”

“Uh.  Yeah.  We do product development here.” I wasn’t listening.  My heart filled with glee that I had discovered:

…product development
…the internal dial system
…the fact that “engineering” (product development) was closely aligned in the company’s phone tree
… that I had the VP of “Product Development”

I was so happy that I was hearing all that I was hearing I wasn’t listening.

I pressed on.  “Can you tell me, in case I can’t reach so-and-so now that Amanda is gone for the day, can you tell me who else I can try?  Does he have a Director reporting to him that I might try?”

With this last I had pressed too far and he went south on me, curtly telling me he was busy and he had helped me as much as he could.  I thanked him and hung up and dialed the next extension 4571.

Another male voice answered.

“Matthews here.”

“Yes, this is Maureen Sharib.  I was trying to reach so-and-so and Amanda is out for the day” (as if that matters) “so I would like to reach one of his directors.  Do you know who that might be?”

“You mean Charlie? He’s not in today either.”

“Is there anyone else that reports to so-and-so I might try?”

“Well, Brian reports to him too but I don’t know Brian that well – he’s new.”

“Do you know Brian’s extension?” I asked.

“No, I don’t know his last name, either.  You might try Alfonzo though – I think he reports to Brian.  Alfonzo’s extension is 4582.”

“Is Brian one of the Product Development Managers?” I queried.

“He’s one of the Engineering Managers – yeah, we do product development here.”

I still wasn’t listening.  Or maybe better, I wasn’t hearing.

Sensing that this was going to take some time and needing some encouragement I emailed the Challenger and told him I had the email address requested and so-and-so’s name (I gave the initials JT) and he was the VP of Engineering and was I on the right track and did he know the size of the group I was after?

This came back: “No idea – where did that come from?”

My balloon deflated.

Another missive, as if he had an afterthought:

“Engineering is not the department we’re looking for.  The title on the sheet is a specific title at the company handling PD.  PD is a department that combines engineering and marketing and is responsible for product planning as opposed to brand and channel (traditional marketing).  I’m sure JT is a great guy, but the wrong branch for this project.  What’s the email address you found?”

My temper flared at this point and I had the thought that he could have told me this in the beginning.  I flashed off an irritated response that included the email address first before I started the willful lambasting:

Hint:  That piece of info below would help the sourcers who are working on this – Engineering keeps telling me THEY handle product development.

“…combines engineering and marketing…” —> that’s important!

Someone in Engineering told me Process Development is handled by each of their manufacturing divisions.  You sure the title is VP Product & Process Development?

He gently answered:

The important thing is that YOU asked and others have not.  Most of my job as project manager is fielding questions from researchers to tighten the results and show folks the right path for client success.   We don’t always have that info going in.  The questions should be asked early on.  Most of the time it depends on the company where that function lives.  The leg work is done in this instance because the Title has been found.  The group size has been determined.

Once I had regained my composure I looked again at the Excel document.  You know what?  He had told me and I wasn’t listening from the get-go!  Clearly, at the top of the Excel document, as I have indicated previously, were the words:    Product Marketing Sample

I wasn’t listening because I had ignored my own NUMBER ONE CARDINAL RULE in phone sourcing – set up your document the same way each and every time you do a search.  I had rushed head-long into this thing without reading the particulars because I was working with a document I was not accustomed to working with.  I always do my research in a Word doc into which I enter all the particulars of a search:

Search Number/Name
Job Description
Notes from customer
Target Companies

I had not done this in this case because, being filled with hubris as the queen of phone sourcing I’d thought getting a VP and Director reports at one company would be a one or two call mission – a slam dunk wam/bam affair.  I over-confidently thought I could plug the procured names into the Excel doc and email it back in a few minutes and impress someone.

I was wrong.  This had turned into an ordeal.

To my credit, once I realized my stupidity, I answered:

Of course, it DOES say: Product Marketing Sample – That’s what I get for NOT paying attention!

Back to the drawing board; I called back into the main number.  Delores answered once again.

“Hi Delores, it’s me again – Maureen Sharib.  Product marketing, please.”

And once again she transferred me.  But before she did I quickly asked who she was transferring me to and what the person’s capacity was.  The administrative assistant for the marketing group answered and identified herself as Nichole.  I said to her, “Hi Nichole, this is Maureen Sharib.  Delores transferred me to you.  Can you tell me who the VP of Product and Process Development is?”

She did and then I stabbed at her.  “I understand he has six reports.  Can you tell me who they are?”

And she did.  And it was just that simple.

Can anyone tell me why they think it was so simple after all that I had been through?  I’d like to hear why you think Nichole was so helpful.

---

About our guest author:

Maureen Sharib is a telephone names sourcer, names sourcing since 1997. She and her husband Bob own the names-sourcing firm TechTrak.com, Inc. , which helps companies fill their hard-to-place positions at a fraction of the cost of traditional recruiting venues. Maureen is the moderator for the MagicMethod business networking site, a professional site for sourcers with an emphasis on telephone sourcing. She is also the author of the only of its kind and very popular Magic In the Method telephone names sourcing training course and a continuous contributor to many online recruiting-related sites. You can connect with Maureen and TechTrak via Twitter.

It began with a conversation.  Perhaps more aptly, it began with two veteran recruiters dreaming about what might be possible.  We wondered—is it possible to leverage technology to put more of the human element back into the recruiting process.  We chose the Chinese word “Guanxi ([guan-shee]” as the metaphor for what we believed needed to be added back into recruiting—personal relationships.  So if you have been following the talent community development narrative about our work at Microsoft Entertainment & Devices, we have shared how these dreams are becoming reality.  And as we conclude the annual update to the recruiting and sourcing industry, I will describe how Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Painful (Pun Intended).

To recap, we are discussing Microsoft’s approach building pipelines and talent communities in a three articles series.  The articles are entitled:

1. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Rewarding
2. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Challenging
3. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Painful

In the first article of this “Being on the Cutting Edge” series, I discussed our success (rewards) from the standpoint of the recruiting industry accolades, but also from success enjoyed by Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing Platform within our division at Microsoft (which is the most important).   And we identified an “SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Gap”—the inherit tendency of SEO Platforms to primarily attract active prospects because it uses search engine key word searches to put jobs in front of the target audience (and miss 75-80% of the potential target audience).

In the second article of the “Being on the Cutting Edge” series, I discussed some of the challenges our talent community development and social recruiting initiative experienced.   The article examined “the challenges”—from the process, the technology and finally, the human perspective.

In this article, the final installment—“Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Painful”-I will explore what one Microsoft staffing leader called—creating under the corporate microscope.  A second area of pain is the introduction of “another change” into change-ridden staffing environment.

Creating Under the Corporate Microscope

The first years of this talent community development pilot project went unnoticed from a Microsoft perspective.  The initiative was funded by a business group at a divisional level with a handful of stakeholders.  Then we were discovered and our world changed.  (It wasn’t like we were really “in hiding” as I chronicled our story in Sourcecon and presented at Sourcecon 2008).  But somehow we were below the corporate radar.  And with discovery came visibility.   And with visibility came additional stakeholders.  And then the questions began.  Microsoft is successful because of a diversity of thought and perspective.  One tends to lose sight of that during periods of scrutiny, vetting, and review.  Let’s just say, the work on the pilot program slowed while internal conversations transpired.

On a personal note, it was difficult to share the work with others.  Intellectually, I understood that this was not “my project,” but releasing the workstream to people that did not have the same emotional investment was challenging. It is said, “What isn’t fatal, makes one stronger;” in that context, I am still standing.

The upshot of the “corporate microscope” was very positive.  My boss was promoted as a reward for his great work.  I have a new boss who is engaged and passionate about the social recruiting and talent communities.  I have a new teammate, who will focus on managing our target audiences for the communities we are building.  Our recruitment marketing platform vendor was selected to roll out the platform Microsoft-wide.  Some great minds at Microsoft will add valuable input to the workstream and the final version of the platform will reflect their influence.

“Another Change”

One of the initial concerns for the talent community workstream was the introduction of personal relationships into a recruiting process comprised of a series of transactions.  And Microsoft Staffing is very effective at those transactions.  I need to add that we reward recruiters on the basis of the quantity and the quality of those transactions.  But the obstacles to introducing a change doesn’t stop with transactional process, there are other significant barriers.

Microsoft Staffing is already in a state of change.  First, it was OFCCP (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs) and a goal to be “best in class” of that process.  Second, Microsoft was migrating to a new ATS (applicant tracking systems) platform and rolling out a global solution.  And with the ATS came to a multitude of process changes.   Third, Microsoft downsizing was impacting the staffing organization, as we became a “do much more with a lot less” environment.   So you can imagine how welcoming any suggestion of a new process that enhanced personal relationships was in this bandwidth constrained atmosphere.  Our initiative was just seen as another change.

What is interesting about resistance to change is that it shifts from the analytical to the emotional very quickly.  Even the most well documented facts are discounted and we revert to the way things have always been done.  Please let me explain.

There are two major changes that impact talent identification and the success of a recruiting program.  The first change is that there is a trend for job seekers to use search engines (key word searches) to find new jobs and move away from job boards.  And the second is a shortage of top talent that is actively seeking a new job.  Simply from a qualitative and quantitative standpoint, there are not enough prospects to meet Microsoft’s demand.

Armed with this new paradigm shift, I can show numerically the trend over the past few years is that job seekers have moved from job boards to search engines to conduct their job searches.  Further, 95% of our jobs are on the first page of Google (the Holy Grail in SEO), so they are being seen by prospects.  In spite of the imperial evidence and persuasive research, a recruiter under pressure to fill a job will still request permission to use a job board posting instead of trying something new.

In the instance of the shortage of talent, I note the trend of the past 3 years of the millions of people flocking to online social networking sites and congregating in communities.  Based on the available research, the target audiences that we covet have congregated into online communities.  Seems simple and compelling-engage the target audience online and find the additional talent that is needed to meet Microsoft’s demand.  Again, a recruiter under pressure will revert back to a comfort zone of running ads (aka “posting and praying) and waiting for someone to appear.

Perhaps, there is a more complex underlying issue.  Dan Pink in Drive writes:

“Behavioral scientists often divide what we do on the job….into two categories: “algorithmic and heuristic.” An algorithmic task is one in which you follow a set of establish instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion.  That is, there’s an algorithm for solving it.   A heuristic task is just the opposite.  Precisely because no algorithm exists for it, you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution.”

So in Pink’s thinking, the algorithmic solution of a job board outweighs the more heuristic solution presented by a recruitment marketing platform where options are numerous and creativity is rewarded.  We are still working on a heuristic solution that appears algorithmic (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Perhaps, there is a third method of dealing with change the 21^st Century—we just need to let go of the banana. The moral of the well know story of the monkey trap fits well into the dilemma that we face when accepting change.

It is said that when you want to catch a monkey one effective method is to anchor a bottle on the ground.  The neck of the bottle needs to be just large enough to a monkey’s hand to fit through.  Then, all you need is to put a small banana in the bottle and wait for a monkey to pass by.

When a passing monkey sees the banana reaches his hand into the bottle, and grabs the banana.  But then the monkey discovers that she cannot get her hand out of the bottle while holding the banana.

The person that set the monkey trap can walk up to the monkey, put a burlap sack over her head and capture the monkey.

Before getting caught, the monkey could release the banana and escape.  But most monkeys hang onto the banana until the sack goes over their heads.  Why?  It is because the banana has value to the monkeys and the monkey is unwilling to let go of that value.  Basically the banana is worth more than their freedom or their life.

I think people do the same thing.  People are much the same – we hold many “bananas” that keep us trapped – because we just won’t let go.  While the job boards held value in the past, their usefulness in attracting active job seekers has passed.  Instead of the banana, it appears engaging prospects in online communities would hold more value.

As we enter the third year of this talent community pilot, I am still more convinced than ever that our original thesis that a “technology touch” needed to be augmented by a “human touch” that is so valued by the target audiences has proved accurate.  Our recruitment marketing platform is doing its job—managing the distribution of jobs to a web of social networking and micro-segmented talent pools.  The final phase of the talent community rollout will focus on the “human touch.” The “human touch” will allow us to maintain contact and cultivate ambient relationships that will allow Microsoft to be part of a target prospect’s employment conversation when the time is right for them.

The “human touch” involves integrating talent community workstream into the lives of the recruiters that I support. At Sourcecon 2010, I am going to discuss how Microsoft is  Employing Talent Communities to Rehumanize the Recruiting Process. I hope to see you in San Diego.

Author: Marvin Smith

This is the second of a series of three articles discussing Microsoft’s approach building pipelines and talent communities.  The articles are entitled:

1. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Rewarding
2. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Challenging
3. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Painful

In the first article of this “Being on the Cutting Edge” series, I discussed our Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing Platform how we achieved success both from the solution we implemented from acknowledgement from the recruiting industry.  But the greatest barometer of success was how we performed for our business clients.  The article pointed out that by using Search Engine Optimization (SEO), over 95% of our jobs were on the first page of Google (the holy grail of SEO).  We saw how SEO reached a significant portion of the target audience that was actively looking for work.  In addition the talent that was demonstrating online behaviors that mirror active candidates (i.e. looking at jobs) could also be reached with our outreach.  But, even with the efficiency of SEO, we were not reaching the remaining 75-80% of the talent supply.  To put that article in the context of this discussion, SEO is a tactic that we employ as part of our talent engagement process (figure 2 below).

In this article we are going to look at our process at a high level and discuss the challenges that this type of initiative must overcome.  The challenges segment nicely into three buckets—designing a process that incorporates Web 2.0; the technological challenges of finding a solution; and the human challenges.  This article will also illustrate how we reach into the 75-80% of the prospect talent pool that is not demonstrating the online behaviors of an active job seeker.

Process Challenges

Designing a process that incorporates Web 2.0 proved to be very challenging; the process needed to connect to social media as well as incorporate a diverse target audience that represented the ten different business talent pipelines (micro-segments) that we were building.  The micro-segments of talent required a method of identifying and engaging them in a manner that incorporated the uniqueness of each segment.  And speaking of challenges—creating and implementing a solution at Microsoft and its complicated environment proved daunting at best.  The challenges of our process development can be summarized in terms of four considerations:

• Microsoft Staffing Goals
• Segments of Talent Supply
• Talent Acquisition Strategy
• Talent Engagement Model

Microsoft Staffing Goals

The reoccurring themes of Microsoft staffing goals—to source|recruit the best prospects|candidates in the world and to enhance the candidate experience were a part of the DNA of our approach.  Identifying the best prospect versus the best available candidate required that we incorporate great competitive and talent supply intelligence into our thinking.  The improvement to the candidate experience is not targeted at the people who go through the Microsoft interview process (which post interview surveys’ reveal is a great experience), but rather to the ones that got away.  They got away by not being ready to interview for a new job; or not seeing the right job; or by being screened out (and not knowing it); or a host of other reasons.

Segments of Talent Supply

A reoccurring element of the conversation about challenges is illustrated in the graphic below—the segments of the talent supply.  Rather than just active and passive, the governments suggests there are four segments of the talent supply—active, casual, passive and  those not looking.  The fact that our respective target audience is in a state of flux adds to the challenges as different parts of our audience are in different places at any one time.  I like to think of this as the “job search cycle.”

Figure 1: Segments of Talent Supply

Talent Acquisition Strategy

Our talent acquisition strategy is highlighted in the graphic below.  To have our “recruiting house” in order, we need to think about talent identification and talent engagement.

A significant challenge to “talent identification” is that we must pipeline talent that is segmented into target audiences that map to our respective businesses.  Our approach to talent identification and mapping to each business is unusual.  It is not the mapping that makes it unusual, it is the volume of the information harvested that sets us apart.  If you asked me one difference between what we do and the majority of the sourcing community is that we pipeline thousands of targets for each of our businesses.  While the prospects are vetted for general quality and education, it is the quantity of prospects that allows us that we can reach deeper in the pools of prospective talent.  We are getting the “gettable” talent, but also, we are engaging the typically “ungettable” prospects.

The talent engagement tactics are outlined in each of the pillars.  The list of tactics is not exhaustive, but provides an overview as to our thinking about the challenges of a comprehensive Talent Acquisition Strategy.  Our approach to talent engagement is amplified in the process flow chart in the next section.

Figure 2: Talent Acquisition Strategy

Talent Engagement Model

One of the greatest challenges to engaging prospective talent is not just the just the sheer volume of prospects, but also honoring the unique gifts and abilities of each individual.  To improve the candidate experience, you must treat your worst prospect as your best friend.  We must do this because the Microsoft brand is perceived is not what we say it is, but what our respective target audiences say it is.  While we can influence our brand (discussed in greater detail in the final article of this series) we do not control it—our audience does.

Back to the talent engagement!  In a recent article, I discussed our “talent engagement model” (see figure 3) in greater detail.  The essence of our thinking was to find a way to break the “apply or goodbye” nature of much of our relationships we forge with prospective talent.  By staying in a transaction model, we miss the opportunity to deepen the relationship with the prospects that we worked hard to develop.  It is similar to a sales force that develops new prospects as opposed to making additional sales with their existing customers.  We think it is not an “either|or” proposition, but rather a both|and opportunity.

Figure 3: Talent Engagement Model

Are We Really Reaching The Passive Prospects?

I realize that most recruiters approach passive prospects–but are they really reaching the potential of the passive market?  I think most often we reach passive prospects that have behaviors that mirror an active prospect.  The true passive audience can only be reached by mirroring the actual web activities that the passive prospects are engaging—that is usually related to their profession, additional training, etc.  This outreach can be automated such as a Recruitment Marketing Platform that aggregates information on the target audience and iteratively reaches out to that audience with different messages that address their interests.

While we look at the talent supply (see figure 4) in terms of active, causal, passive and the non job seekers, it is useful explore the subject a little more deeply.  If we looked at the talent supply in the context of the methods that are used to reach our target audiences it is easy to see the challenges of working with a job search cycle that is nuanced.  The Recruiting Roundtable illustrates this point with the cleaver labels.  This graphic also points out another important point—much of the sourcing of passive prospects is aimed at the very difficult to recruit prospects.  To reach this audience, it takes the best research and highly impactful headhunting tactics.  While effective, it is difficult to leverage this approach to any scale that makes economic sense (particularly in a high volume, high bar type environment).  In short, it takes more than a simple human touch—it takes a “high touch” to engage these prospects.   A conclusion arrived at is that we tend to work at both ends of the spectrum—to engage the very easy to source and the very difficult to source.  And, I believe, we tend to miss a casual and passive audience that falls in the “easy to source” and “difficult to source” categories.

Figure 4: Job Search Cycle

Another layer to the discussion is “touch”—technology and human.  In my previous article, I made the case that SEO was the “technology touch” in our discussion.  And indeed, a technology outreach could capture some of the “causal” audience that was demonstrating web behaviors that mirrored an active job seeker.  This part of the audience was described as “SEO Gettables. “  But, we still have that opportunity in the middle.  We estimate that 30-40% of the available causal and passive audience is not reached with normal sourcing efforts.

It is the Talent Engagement Model that facilitates a human touch.  Just as a high touch is key sourcing and recruiting executives and key contributors, we leverage technology and a human touch to engage a more skeptical and the less active prospects.

Figure 5: Reaching Target Audience

Our experience with community has convinced us that we can scale a human touch using social networking sites.  We think about building relationships with prospects as Guanxi—capturing the spirit of the well-know Chinese core value.  Our goal is to place a significant premium on the relationship that we have with causal and passive prospects (something that is lacking in our world of transactions).

We created community on the existing communities (LinkedIn, Twitter, & Facebook) and used the respective platforms to engage the appropriate segments of their membership.  Research indicates that people are flocking to social networking sites to meet people, entertain themselves, learn something new or to influence others (Complete, Inc survey).  Forrester’s Technographics research indicated the majority of adults in our society (especially the best educated, highest paid professions as well as the new entrants to the job market) have joined social networking sites.  So when you consider that Facebook (in the near future) will have as many members as the population of the USA; that LinkedIn has over 41 million members representing many of the professions recruiters seek; and Twitter with its explosive growth, has a high quality (“early adopters” and ”persuaders”) membership that is also attractive as a target audience.

Figure 6:Community of Communities

Joining Existing Communities

While we have created talent communities (Jobster & Job2Web), we strategically decided to create community where communities already exist.  .  One way to think about forming community in existing communities is that we are organizing an existing community in a way that could enhance the functioning of that community as long as it aligns with the interests of its members.

An important “ah-ha” of the last two years is that only about 10% of a target audience will join a new community (those numbers held true in multiple situations).  We quickly understood that a community of communities would be the best approach.  The Recruiting Marketing platform facilitates the distribution of information to the respective communities.  The graphic below illustrates the distributive nature of our approach.

Figure 7:Connecting The Moving Parts

Technology Challenges

Matching a process that will work for Microsoft with a vendor solution is quite challenging.  Add the dimension of allowing for community and conversation and we have just doubled or tripled the challenge.  Most technology solutions that we looked at did not allow for web 2.0 community.  While they are great at processing a transaction, the available solutions are not designed for how candidates want to interact with potential employees.  In general terms, most of the solutions we reviewed were a web 1.0 solution in a web 2.0 world.

We discovered our vendor partner Jobs2Web about one year ago.  While their solution was the best and most affordable, we made the selection on their ability to migrate their existing platform to match the processes we designed.  While the rollout has been challenging, I believe we have made each other better.

As we have worked through the technology challenges with our vendor partner, Jobs2Web, we are still left with the human challenges of adopting this model.  The SEO piece is easy as it doesn’t require any real change in recruiter behavior.  But the “human touch” aspects of community building are the remaining challenge.

The Greatest Challenge of the Cutting Edge– “The Year of Guanxi”

Early in this work stream, we realized that it was going to be extremely difficult and challenging to introduce this approach into a recruiting process that was basically comprised of a series of transactions.  And, to make things even more interesting, we reward recruiters on the basis of executing those transactions at a very high level.  Talk about strangers in a foreign land!

So, at the end of our second year, the one last hurdle to greater success comes down to people.  It comes down to our ability to engage our recruiting colleagues and their hiring managers in the process.  The Recruitment Marketing Platform is in place; all the moving parts are connected; the activities can be metrixed—but internal engagement is required to move success to the next level.  We will report on our progress towards meeting this challenge in the future.

In the final installment—Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Painful-we will explore what my boss calls—creating under the corporate microscope.  Also, we will discuss other pain points that this type of initiative.

This is the first of a series of three articles discussing Microsoft’s approach to building pipelines and talent communities.  The articles are entitled:

1. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Rewarding
2. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Challenging
3. Being on the Cutting Edge Can Be Painful

One year ago, I began a discussion of our work at Microsoft by suggesting that “Building a 21^st century talent community requires using the right mix of recruiting art and science. “  I felt “we needed to dip back into the prehistoric art of developing relationship with prospects.”   I noted that while a “21st century recruiting technology” optimized a “technology touch” it is the “human touch” that is so valued by the potential prospect pool. I concluded “the challenge with ‘human touch’ is that it doesn’t fit well into our transaction based recruiting model. “

As we end the second year of this talent community pilot program, the tension between the “technology touch” and the “human touch” has become increasingly evident.  In fact, I believe the third year of this pilot rollout should be coined “The Year of Guanxi.” ([guan-shee] the basic dynamic in personalized networks of influence in Chinese society. As I reflect on our work for past year, it is evident that we have reached our goal of creating a platform that exhibits a very thorough approach to “technology touch” by creating a job distribution network that reaches deeply into active and passive talent pools.

Venues|Platforms for Evangelism

From the beginning, we have shared the work on this talent community pilot effort with the recruiting industry as a method of inviting feedback and fostering sharing of best practices with similar projects that are ongoing in the recruiting industry.  It has been quite a year of evangelizing our work.  We have enjoyed positive feedback from our initial presentation at Sourcecon 2008 to Human Capital Institute webinars to CareerXroads and Corporate Sourcing Leadership Council; SMA Event, HR Executive Forum, and other related venues.

Another purpose of these articles is a preview of our presentation for the Fall 2009 ERE Event, where our talent community pilot will be discussed in the broader context of Web 2.0 Beyond the Social Recruiting Hype: Microsoft’s Approach to Building Talent Pipelines and Communities.

Accolades

The accolades for our pilot have been very re-enforcing and flattering.  ERE acknowledged our work with a “Most Strategic Use of Technology Award ” and industry thought leaders like Dr. John Sullivan called our work “pioneering.”

Microsoft Goals

Internally, at Microsoft, two of our corporate staffing goals are sourcing|recruiting the best candidates in the world and enhancing the candidate experience at Microsoft.   While external acknowledgement is very complementary, how we perform alongside Microsoft goals and commitments are all that matters.  In this talent community pilot, we see an opportunity to fulfill those goals.

Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing Platform

At a high level we are creating a Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing platform for our jobs that will be distributed to search engines, social networking sites, blogs and other relevant sites.  In this manner, we will reach deep into talent pools with a “technology touch.”  We will enhance the candidate experience by direct outreaches to micro-segments of our target audience and by establishing talent communities that will enhance the “human touch.”  It is at the intersection of art and science that success is realized.

The “technology touch” of the Web 2.0 Recruitment Marketing sits on the Jobs2Web platform.  Not only do we employ their unique dynamic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technology, but we take advantage of total power of this platform to connect jobs and social networking sites as well as a CRM-orchestrated targeted outreach.  We not only reach the active job seeker, but we capture passive seekers who visit the site and sign up for our email alerts, RSS feeds or any of our talent communities which allows us to maintain contact and cultivate ambient relationships with these prospects until they are ready to go deep with an employment conversation with Microsoft.

And best of all, we can measure every aspect all the moving parts using Jobs2Web Recruiting Dashboard which gives us visibility to all activity and exact sources of all candidates that come to our talent community (without asking the prospects) which helps us to know what sources are providing the best quality and quantity of candidates in the highly fragmented Web 2.0 World.

How We Measure Success

For the active (and a percentage of passive) prospects, success is measured by our jobs “being seen” or “being found” in the keyword search results.  The chief reason to “optimize” our jobs is because job seekers primarily use search engines to look for a job (as opposed to job boards).  The highlight outlined below illustrates the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of our jobs on Google (which enjoys 70% of the market for job searches).  As the graph demonstrates-97% of our targeted recruiting keywords (i.e. Seattle Developer Jobs, Washington .Net Jobs, Washington Tech Jobs, etc.) show up in the first page of Google search results.

To reach our ultimate goal of sourcing|recruiting the best talent in the world, we must use this “technology touch” to reach into talent pools that can be described as causal, passive or non-looking job seekers.  When you think about active vs. the more passive job seeker, we have to remember that only a small percentage of the job market is actively searching for a new job at any point in time.  The graph below illustrates this point.  This graph was created using 2006 Bureau of Labor Statistics (the last official year), so we could conclude that the active job seeker market must be greater today given the high unemployment rate.  So let’s say it is 20% today.  Even at that level, that means that 80% of the available talent is not actively looking for work.

If we view the Job Search Cycle from a slightly different angle, we are able to see a more discreet method of classifying active vs. passive job seeking. The Recruiting Roundtable suggests we add the filter of” difficultly to source” as we move from left (easiest to source) to right (the most difficult to source) on the graph below.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Source: Recruiting Roundtable

The degree of difficulty to source adds a deeper dimension to our thinking.  So rather than just active or passive, we think about “gettables” and the “ungettables.”  Most recruiters have antidotes about convincing a person not seeking a job to take a look at their opportunities.  So I think that it makes sense that we can convince someone to look at a job.  In fact the Recruiting Roundtable recently published a study that 83% (I have no idea why it is not 100%) of active job seekers would consider other jobs, while 42% of passive job seekers will consider other jobs.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Source: Recruiting Roundtable

It is difficult to project how many people will respond to “technology touch” vs. the “human touch.”  Research tells us that even passive prospects engage in active prospect behavior.  To that extent, we are able to connect with the “gettables” that may be casually or passively looking, the reach of technology touch will be far greater than just optimizing our jobs for the active job seeker.  The “gettables” that can be reached by our SEO activities are highlighted in red below.  The overall reach of our technology touch is depicted in green.  How we reach the prospects in the green shaded area will be discussed next month.

To achieve the Microsoft goal of sourcing|recruiting the best candidates in the world, we must reach deep into targeted talent pools.  Using the technology touch of our Recruitment Marketing platform, we are able to reach out to a greater targeted audience.  The first step in how we measure success is with search engine optimization of our jobs that will be viewed by gettable talent.  At the same time, we need to remember our second goal of enhancing the prospect|candidate experience.  Next month, we will look at our second step, which examines how our Recruitment Marketing Platform connects social media as well as targets micro-segments of the target talent audience.

About the author:

Having been in the recruiting world for over two decades, Marvin Smith currently works for Microsoft. He provides the Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division staffing team with mission critical talent by identifying and cultivating relationships with target talent community. His talent community development strategies include competitive intelligence, e-sourcing/recruiting,online recruiting, social networking, and talent database acquisition.

What is the most effective way to train people in the art and science of sourcing?

One of the most common forms of group training in the sourcing community is the webinar. Some are free, others cost money. Some are internal corporate trainings, and others are delivered by 3^rd party trainers. Although web based training is relatively easy to deliver and it offers the ability to train large numbers of people across multiple locations – the question must be asked – how effective is it as a training method?

The ultimate measure of any training method’s effectiveness is the extent to which trainees can reliably and properly execute the techniques, tactics, and strategies that they were exposed to during the training.  The reality is that most people do not absorb and retain information effectively by watching and listening to a trainer – this applies to web-based training as well as live classroom training.

Research in occupational training shows that people retain about:

• 10% of what they read
• 20% of what they hear
• 30% of what they see
• 50% of what they hear and use
• 70% of that they say
• 90% of what they say and do

That means that any training that only involves reading, listening, and watching has about a 30% retention rate. Would you say that’s a good return on investment?

I’ve delivered many web-based trainings myself out of simple necessity – it isn’t always practical or even possible to perform live training for large groups of people who are geographically dispersed – and I’ve been amazed at how little people actually retain from 1 to 2 hour web-based training sessions. No matter how knowledgeable the trainer is, the simple fact of the matter is that people retain only about 30% of what they see and hear.

Retention might improve somewhat (research would suggest 50%) if people would leave a training session and immediately go try everything they were just exposed to, but in my experience most people don’t. Even if they did, without the benefit of an on-site expert/trainer to observe what they’re doing and provide the appropriate guidance, most people aren’t able to self-evaluate, particularly with newly gained skills.

The Missing Link

What’s missing from most training – web-based or live – is having the trainees actually use what they’ve been exposed to during training and while they’re doing so, explain what they’re doing and why. This is where the magic happens – the trainer/mentor can actually verify the trainee’s level of understanding by observing and evaluating the techniques, strategies, and thought process they apply when faced with a practical (“real world”) challenge. Only when a trainee can solve multiple challenges by properly applying the techniques they’ve been taught and they are able to explain WHY they used the technique/approach they did can the trainer have confidence that there has been true knowledge transfer.

The What vs. the How and Why

Most sourcing and recruiting training that I have been exposed to focuses heavily, if not exclusively, on the “what.” The “what” is domain knowledge – such as “here are a bunch of Twitter search apps,” “this is LinkedIn’s search interface,” and “here are Google’s search operators.” While this can be very good information, it’s not very different than reading an instruction manual, and instruction manuals don’t typically produce experts.

The “how” goes beyond simply how to use with something such as LinkedIn, Twitter, or Google to search for people  (e.g., syntax, fields, etc) and into exactly how to find the right people using such tools. This is process knowledge and can be quite valuable.

The “why” is perhaps the most critical aspect of training and knowledge transfer. Being able to go through the motions and copy what a trainer has shown you isn’t real learning in my opinion. If you are able to explain precisely WHY you’re using a particular site, syntax, or search strategy, then as a trainer I can truly assess whether or not you really understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

If you recall the occupational research statistics, people tend to retain approximately 50% of what they hear and use, 70% of what they say, and 90% of what they say and do. What’s missing from most sourcing training is incorporating hands-on use of the training by the trainees into the training program/session, along with having them explain what they’re doing and precisely why. That’s exactly how a training session can go from 30% retention of material to 90% retention.

It’s no secret that the vast majority of people learn by doing, so for maximum knowledge transfer, it’s critical for training programs to allow for attendees to use and apply what they’ve been exposed to in the training. This enables the trainer to assess each attendee’s level of understanding and provide appropriate guidance to those who do not fully understand the training and techniques. While it may not be practical to incorporate this level of two-way interaction in some web-based training scenarios – especially with very large groups – it’s not impossible.

In Conclusion

For consumers of sourcing training, demand more of the how and the why, and whenever possible, choose training programs that allow you to use the techniques you’re being trained in under the guidance and evaluation of the trainer.  For sourcing trainers, be sure to incorporate some form of assessment into your training programs whenever practical.

Expecting to master sourcing techniques and strategies from web-based or live training that doesn’t involve interactive assessment and evaluation of your understanding of the content is like expecting to master golf by watching a golf video or by taking golf lessons where the instructor doesn’t let you actually swing the club in their presence and offer guidance and advice.

Expect more from your training!

About the author:

Glen Cathey is the author of www.booleanblackbelt.com, a blog about sharing best practices for leveraging the Internet, job boards, resume databases, and social networks for sourcing and recruiting. With over 12 years of experience in the recruiting and staffing industry, he currently serves as the V.P. of Recruitment for a large staffing firm and trains hundreds of recruiters every year in the art and science of leveraging technology for talent identification and acquisition.

Connect with Glen:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter