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I Wanna Go to SourceCon! How To Persuade Your Boss

by 3 weeks ago

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Last fall, one of the attendees at the conference in Santa Clara told me that a document we posted to provide some tangible evidence of the benefit of attending SourceCon had worked for her: she printed up the document and gave it to her manager, who read it and said, “Looks like something you should go to!”

I was recently asked by someone interested in sending a small team of recruiters to SourceCon in Atlanta to share some further information about the conference and answer some questions. While responding, I really started getting excited about the event and all it represents, and my response ended up being quite long-winded.

The answers I provided, however, are truly a reflection of why I feel this event is singularly the most important event for sourcers and those who desire to learn more about sourcing to attend this year. Below are the questions as well as my responses — I hope these will help you make a decision to come to SourceCon or give you the tools you need to ask your manager to send you!

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SourceCon

Are You Ready for SourceCon Atlanta?

by 4 weeks ago

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We are all SUPER jazzed about SourceCon Atlanta coming up next month — February 9-10. We hope that this short video will help you feel the same — register today and join us next month!

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Challenges, SourceCon, Technology & Resources

Inside the Head of the SourceCon Grand Master Sourcing Challenge Champion

by on Nov. 8, 2011

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Jim Schnyder2

I was lucky enough to finish a SourceCon preliminary challenge that some said was one of the toughest in recent years. With that qualifying challenge, I was able to take time, make mistakes, try new things, and go at my pace without a lot of pressure. The preliminary challenge overview and the steps involved are available for you to read about, if you would like to know more.

On the Thursday night of SourceCon, located in a conference room at Yahoo’s URL building, I sat at a table as the third and final qualifier for the SourceCon GrandMaster Challenge. I was sipping on a beer to keep the nerves at bay waiting for the unknown challenge. Opening every sourcing tool and website that I had available, I practiced for a few minutes with each. I also wanted to be sure all passwords and ID’s were correct, plus to see if there were any changes or updates. I sat down at the table and had ALL tools ready to go so I could flip to whatever was necessary if needed finding people. I had heard that we would be getting zip drives for the challenge which hinted that we would be sitting at the computers and not going on a physical running scavenger hunt type challenge. Why I had thoughts of the scene from “Social Network” with shots of liquor and the crowd around us in a hack-fest, I will never know, but it was sort of quiet in the room. The music from the SourceCon After Dark reception was in the next room and we were all ready to have a source-off.

Amybeth Hale came around and handed out zip drives. We all inserted them into our computers at the same time. Amybeth said, “Start the challenge. You each have 45 minutes.”

Suddenly everything started to go into a sort of surreal slow-motion… There were two items on the zip drive – a file with instructions and an Excel spreadsheet. 

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SourceCon

Recap of the SourceCon Conference

by on Nov. 7, 2011

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Remember how much fun SourceCon was? We just wanted to remind you! :) We hope you enjoy this video and that you’ll join us in February for SourceCon 2012 Atlanta!

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SourceCon, The Sourcing Function

How I Am Implementing New Skills Learned at the SourceCon Conference

by on Nov. 2, 2011

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Teresa Colquitt SCN

If you had told me five years ago that I would be in a role where I get to geek out by using mathematically based principals to do my job, stalk people online, and then convene with others who love to do the same, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But here I am, loving every day of what I get to do.

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend SourceCon (thanks to the downloadable document on How to Get Your Boss to Let You Come to SourceCon) where I was able to meet some of the legends in our industry.

I took about twelve pages of notes in Word throughout SourceCon, hoping to learn tons of knowledge to bring back and implement. One of the wisest things that was said was during Michael Notaro’s presentation on Automation. He said that the most important thing you could do after leaving SourceCon is to pick 3-5 things you learned from SourceCon and immediately implement them into your organization.

I think the tendency when we come back from conferences is to be pumped up about what we learned and want to implement it all, but in reality, it is impossible. We can’t implement everything we learn, so it is important to hone in on a few key takeaways, disseminate the information, and put it into practice as soon as possible.

In following this sage advice, a few main themes that resonated with me were: How to Implement Sourcing into Your Organization and Gathering/Organizing/Analyzing Information.

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SourceCon

The Nike Talent Acquisition Team SourceCon Experience

by on Oct. 28, 2011

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Tanja and Arati

We (Tanja and Arati) recently attended the SourceCon conference in Santa Clara, CA. Having written previously about the collaborative styles we have when working together, to  fill Nike’s job openings, we definitely wanted to experience this event as a team as well. When we approached our manager about attending the conference who was supportive and said go for it!

Here are our experiences from attending SourceCon as a team. 

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Corporate Sourcing, Leadership, SourceCon

PNC Case Study at SourceCon: Four Steps to Developing a Successful Sourcing Team

by on Oct. 17, 2011

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Jillian Snavley SC 2011

Jillian Snavley has built a phenomenal sourcing function at PNC Financial Services. And she has the data to prove it, as she very effectively demonstrated during her keynote presentation at SourceCon on Friday morning. This is something that sourcing leaders, practitioners, and corporate executives alike need in order to justify the very existence of a sourcing function within a company. Conference attendees were treated to a stream of useful knowledge to bring back to their individual companies to help build a case for both developing a new sourcing function as well as investing into existing ones, based on the successes shared by Snavley during her presentation.

Snavley appropriately divided her presentation, titled “Revving Up Your Sourcing Function,” into four “laps”: Building, Developing, Strategy, and Refining. Each “lap” of building PNC’s sourcing function (which was non-existent at the beginning of the process) presented challenges which were overcome by providing business cases, data and metrics, and examples of success from other areas that have led to a highly successful and very unique group of sourcers, who have earned the designation of “in-house agency” partners for various business units.

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SourceCon

SourceCon in Silicon Valley is LIVE

by on Oct. 13, 2011

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For those of you who were unable to make it to our 2011 fall SourceCon conference, we have ya’ covered today. We are livestreaming the conference throughout the 2-day event so that those at home can get a small taste of what’s going on here live. Click  on the “SourceCon 2011 Is Streaming Live Right Now… ” link above to view the livestream..

Of course, a lot of the experience of the conference is the networking that goes on in between sessions and after-hours (*cough cough AFTER DARK**) but we definitely want to share what we can with the community! We hope you’ll be able to tune in during the next couple of days to learn from some of the industry movers and shakers!

 

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SourceCon

Pulling Boolean Strings: An Interview with Irina Shamaeva

by on Oct. 4, 2011

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Irina Shamaeva mosaic

Should SourceCon become the site of a British murder mystery, never fear. We have our own Hercule Poirot or Inspector Morse to solve the case. Irina Shamaeva, Partner and Chief Sourcer of Brain Gain Recruiting, is as persistent as a detective. We’ll get more evidence of Irina’s expertise during the paid resource panel discussion at the SourceCon conference on October 14.

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Challenges, SourceCon

How I Solved the Second SourceCon Challenge for 2011

by on Oct. 3, 2011

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Jim Schnyder

I began my pursuit of solving the second SourceCon Challenge when I saw this Facebook posting on the SourceCon page on September 7:

As I had started late (the contest began on September 1), I missed out on some of the preliminary clues, including a mouse-over title for the countdown clock on the SourceCon page that said “CiteULike.org,” which was where I would have found clues leading to the Diigo group ( “similar source” and “sourcecon2011_challenge2”). Thankfully, though, no one had discovered these clues, and I sent an email to the SourceCon editor to ask if it was too late to join in. I guess I was under the impression that if you had not participated in the first SourceCon Challenge on building Google Custom Searches that you were not able to get in the hunt. I was delighted to learn that it was not too late. I clicked on the link from the Facebook posting which led to a Diigo.com site where you were invited to join a group. Little did I know that this would begin a 12-day journey (evenings and weekends) of hunting and gathering information to solve this quest!

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