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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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Leadership, Metrics

Looking at Sourcing Through the Lens of Moneyball

by on Dec. 12, 2011

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Moneyball

In the middle of Moneyball, the movie, I thought to myself, the challenge that Brad Pitt’s character (Billy Beane) was facing reminded me of what we face in sourcing and recruiting. Brad Pitt (channeling Billy Beane) was expressing a sense of frustration that his scouts and team just didn’t get it — gut feelings about talent did not produce a winning organization. It was a new era — a new era dominated by data and analytics. Isn’t that where we are in sourcing and recruiting — a new era dominated by data, analytics, and metrics?

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Industry News, Metrics

Mid-Size Companies Choosing Tech Over Talent

by on Oct. 27, 2011

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Deloitte-mid-market-trends-report1

“Technology — rather than hiring — is on the minds of most executives of mid-market companies.”

So says Mid-Market Perspectives: America‘s Economic Engine – Competing in Uncertain Times, a Deloitte survey of almost 700 executives at companies with revenue of $50 million to $1 billion.

A majority of the executives expect both revenue (61.2 percent) and profitability (52.6 percent) to increase next year, despite limited faith in any significant improvement in the national economy. What drives their optimism is a continued focus on cost controls and increased productivity.

Of the 70 percent of executives reporting an increase in productivity, the average saw a 6.1 percent improvement since the beginning of the recession. The majority of executives credit the rise to improvements in business processes (62.2 percent) and technology (50.3 percent), especially the automation of business operations and increased use of data analytics for business intelligence.

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Leadership, Metrics, Social Media

10 Common Mistakes of Sourcing

by on Oct. 26, 2011

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JHascheRIS11

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!

Keep reading »

Metrics, The Sourcing Function

High Volume Sourcing Trends: Creating a Pool, Not Sinking

by on Oct. 14, 2011

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DSCF0130

Think you have a stressful sourcing job? What if you had two weeks to fill 20 positions, and then were asked to repeat that demand over and over again? These are the tasks that many high volume sourcers tackle on a daily, rigorous schedule. It’s a constant uphill battle to fill positions, meet tight deadlines, fill classes and satisfy hiring managers.

Carl Kutsmode’s presentation on High Volume Sourcing Trends at the SourceCon conference yesterday addressed those key issues and offered insightful tips on how to effectively manage your time and resources and create an attractive pool of talent to more efficiently and effectively fill your high volume positions.

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Metrics, SourceCon, Technology & Resources

Sourcing and CRMs — An Interview with Carl Kutsmode

by on Sep. 22, 2011

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Carl Kutsmode photo

Carl Kutsmode, one of the speakers for the upcoming SourceCon conference, has quietly influenced the sourcing profession since the mid ‘90s, when he founded the Tiburon Group, an RPO firm with a reputation for developing creative sourcing strategies. Since then, Carl has continued to consult with Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries. Carl contributes to the sourcing and recruiting community as a volunteer board member of the Staffing Management Association of Greater Chicago and a non-profit organization that helps skilled immigrants find opportunities, Upwardly Global. Oh, and he writes a blog, and is working on a book for jobseekers. Where does he find the time?

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Editor's Corner, Metrics, Technology & Resources

The Sourcing Bull’s-Eye – Are You Using Your Resources or Wasting Money?

by on Apr. 28, 2011

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bullseye Jake Sutton

Whether or not you want to admit it, we all use some paid resources for our recruiting efforts. This could include any of the following products: job boards, resume databases, information gathering resources (like Jigsaw or Zoom Info), ATS’s, the list goes on and on. Yes – I am talking to you! I know you post jobs on Monster and CareerBuilder. I know you have purchased an applicant tracking system (that most likely is simply used as a repository for resumes with very little, if any, data organization). If we are spending money on these resources, why, then, do we so adamantly preach and train against using them when conducting candidate searches? If we’re paying for them, then why not justify the cost of using them by actually using them? And if we are not using them, then why continue to pay for them???

I learned great “Target Sourcing” in my early days of working in the world of recruiting. The idea of the candidate sourcing bull’s-eye is to guide sourcers as well as recruiters in the process of using resources effectively to find candidates.

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Industry News, Metrics

Referrals Lead; Social Media Thrives; Job Boards Survive as Hiring Source

by on Mar. 18, 2011

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SOH-2011

Job boards are far from dead. For the second consecutive year, internal transfers and promotions were the primary source of hire. A quarter of the companies that have a contingent workforce have no idea how big it is. More than half the companies use social media exclusively or as a significant part of their direct sourcing programs.

And finally, and least surprising of all, referrals continue to be the leading source of external hires.

These are among the highlights of the 10th annual Source of Hire study by CareerXroads. Released this week, the study reports the results of a survey of 36 large, “well-branded” but anonymous U.S. companies who cumulatively employ 1.32 million workers and hired not quite 133,000 employees in 2010.

This is the 10th year that Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler have conducted the survey to see where companies source their hires. As has been the case from the beginning in 2001, referrals from employees, vendors, alumni, customers, and other sources was the leading source of external hires. Last year, the surveyed companies reported 27.5 percent of their external hires came from referrals. The percentage has fluctuated only modestly over the years.

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Metrics, Social Media, Technology & Resources

HootSuite’s New Social Analytics

by on Mar. 10, 2011

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hs-social-analytics-header

Those of you who attended SourceCon NYC last month got a sneak peek from HootSuite CEO, Ryan Holmes, of what HootSuite just announced yesterday regarding their new Social Analytics. If you have struggled to really show ROI on time spent “playing” on various social networks for sourcing and recruiting, these new tools will really help you to prove that you aren’t wasting your time (unless of course you’re really just playing FarmVille on company time).

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Leadership, Metrics, Social Media

Metrics: Creating Efficiencies in Sourcing Through Media Spend Tracking

by on Jan. 27, 2011

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Metric

Company Q is a leader in the athletic apparel space, using digital sources to their advantage, generating millions in revenue online per year. Did you know Company Q also uses the same consumer advertising technology to source and track quality hires? How do they do it while keeping a lean budget? How do recruiters report efficiencies in sourcing spend to their VPs?

The answer? Metrics! 

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