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Articles tagged 'candidates'

Editor's Corner, The Sourcing Function

The Candidate Experience And Sourcing: It Matters And Here’s Why

by on Mar. 27, 2012

2 Comments

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Last week, I was able to sit in on a presentation that Gerry Crispin gave about the candidate experience and the awards that he helps run called The Candidate Experience Awards. Crispin has spoken extensively about the subject and is on the agenda of many of the industry’s key events (including this week’s ERE Expo put on by SourceCon’s parent company, ERE Media).

I always assumed that candidate experience had more to do with downstream activity in the hiring process (mainly how candidates were communicated with and how interviewing progressed). As I read through their recently released report about the state of the candidate experience, it is obvious that sourcers and researchers have a major role in the process.

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Industry News, Social Media

Which Industries Are LinkedIn Users In? Majority Are In Higher Ed, IT, Financial Services, & Retail

by on Feb. 28, 2012

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LinkedIn is still a major player when it comes to finding and sourcing potential employees. But among those 150 million users, who is highly represented on LinkedIn and who still lags behind?

The question is an important one as you look at where you should spend time as a sourcer or recruiter. 150 million members is a lot of people but it’s not close to everyone. If you know you’ll have a better chance finding a particular person in an industry, you might focus more or less time on that particular source.

So who exactly is on LinkedIn?

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Social Media

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!

Keep reading »

Social Media

Digging For Gold: Three Layers of Candidate Sourcing

by on Dec. 21, 2011

7 Comments

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:

Keep reading »

Phone Sourcing, The Sourcing Function

How To Find Contact Details, Part 2: The Pros and Cons of Contact Search

by on Nov. 22, 2011

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contact bullseye

When we talk about finding someone’s contact details, what we are normally trying to achieve is a way to directly communicate with the candidate. The surest way of connecting with a candidate is to speak with them directly.  Failing that, we can send them an email or be connected with them through a third party. Paradoxically when we are finding someone’s contact details it is usually easier to work from the edges towards the centre (see image).

For a sourcer the preferential order for contacting a person is:

  1. Mobile number or direct number
  2. Personal or company email address
  3. Switchboard or Mainline (third-party)

But for finding contact details it is easier to move from:

  1. Third party connections
  2. Emails
  3. Mobiles and direct numbers

This week, we will approach the pros and cons of each of these methods starting from the outside and working our way in.

Keep reading »

Industry News, Social Media

LinkedIn’s Talent Connect Event Kicks Off Amid a Changing Social World

by on Oct. 18, 2011

2 Comments

LITalentConnect

As LinkedIn’s annual user conference got underway in Las Vegas today, it took on an import that goes well beyond the quality of the agenda. This is its first conference since becoming a public company and the first since its dominance as the Internet’s leading business network was challenged — directly or otherwise — by such powerful brands as Google, Facebook, and Monster.

The sessions the company has planned for the three-day event are heavy on the training with a strong mix of sessions devoted to recruiting strategies and social media. The speaker lineup is first rate and the agenda promised enough variety and practicums that it should be easy enough to answer the boss’s “What did you learn?” questions.

On another level, though, the conference is spectacle, a physical manifestation of the reach LinkedIn has achieved into the recruiting world in just a few years. Founded as a sales and marketing leads business, LinkedIn has morphed into a jobs-focused social network. Today half its revenue — approaching $500 million — comes from recruiters.

But in just the five months since LinkedIn went public in May the world has changed.

Google launched a social network, Monster launched BeKnown, a careers network, BranchOut, a startup careers network, announced a partnership with CareerBuilder, and, perhaps most significant of all, Facebook detailed sweeping changes to its 800-million-user social network that could trump the need for a separate business network altogether.

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Corporate Sourcing, Leadership

Making Hiring Hits Out of Near Sourcing Misses: Running an Internal “Open House”

by on Jul. 29, 2011

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open-house

A frequently recurring frustration of a good sourcing recruiter is the ‘laissez-faire’ attitude of many hiring managers. We dedicate ourselves to finding and attracting well-qualified candidates on a timely basis only to receive, in turn, a non-specific “not quite what I‘m looking for” response, or no response at all.

My remedy for this persistent corporate malady is the periodic invitational open house. Every two to three months, I reserve our conference center for half of a day and invite all hiring departments to participate in an in-house job fair. My recruiters and I then invite some of the highly qualified candidates we have sourced and recruited or received via employee referral over the past several months who have yet to be interviewed by any of our managers.

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Social Media

How I Made 3 Hires In 6 Weeks With Twitter

by on Jul. 7, 2011

12 Comments

meganhopkins

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!

Keep reading »

The Sourcing Function

What’s the Difference Between a ‘Good’ vs. a ‘Great’ Sourcing Recruiter?

by on Jun. 23, 2011

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bigger picture

You know what one of the differences is between a recruiter that is “good” versus “great” at sourcing? It’s not what you think.

It’s being able to see the “big picture” when it comes to finding quality talent. 

Keep reading »