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Articles tagged 'sourcing'

The Sourcing Function

Some Thoughts on Sourcing Skills vs. Tools

by on Feb. 15, 2012

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brain-cogs

I talk to a lot of sourcers –I ask them about their work and which tools they use. You might say as a marketer, blogger, and speaker within the industry, I’m a keen observer of sourcers and recruiters.

One of my favorite questions to ask is this: What sourcing tools do you use?

A popular answer is LinkedIn Recruiter. Now, I am not a sourcer myself — but as a sourcer, does that make you upset? Does it make you worried?

It probably should. LinkedIn Recruiter is an effective (albeit expensive) tool that, for all intents and purposes allows people to call themselves sourcers. No research background necessary, no Boolean strings, no X-Raying Google or Bing, no geolocation tricks. And certainly, no need for telephone sourcing.

Is this how sourcers are trained now?

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Leadership, SourceCon

Sourcing Through Adversity

by on Feb. 9, 2012

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LaChaux2012ATL

Life isn’t always rainbows and roses. And neither is sourcing, as attendees and livestream viewers learned today from Yahoo!’s Senior Manager, Talent Attraction, Aida La Chaux.

In case you’ve lived under a rock for the last couple of years, you know that Yahoo!’s been going through some tumultuous times. Between management changes and whisperings a couple years ago of buyouts, in addition to other search engines coming on strong into the search space, Yahoo! has had its share of challenges with both attracting and retaining talent.

The biggest lessons learned from La Chaux’s presentation is this: no company is immune from tough times — and it’s good management, a unique and personal approach to sourcing, and positive attitudes that will power your sourcing efforts through these inevitable road blocks.

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Metrics, The Sourcing Function

Sourcing Salary Survey: Results

by on Feb. 6, 2012

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Screen shot 2012-02-04 at 6.01.25 PM

The topic of sourcing compensation is a hotly contested one. It always has been, and I suspect that it always will be. There are some who feel that sourcers are glorified administrative assistants and thus should be making right at minimum wage levels (if not less). There are others who feel that sourcing is an integral part of the hiring process as well as a valuable asset to other parts of an organization, and thus should be rewarded with six-figure incomes.

The purpose in conducting this sourcing salary survey was to take a look at sourcer compensation levels using a variety of different filters. Some results were expected, such as the fact that corporate sourcers make significantly more annually than their agency counterparts. Others were a little surprising, as you’ll see below in the infographic.

Perhaps most surprising was this: by taking your responses and breaking down, approximating, and averaging comp ranges, we discover that the average annual compensation for a sourcer is $73,000. That’s more than what most would have predicted.

Below we present the findings of the 2011 Sourcing Salary Survey.

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The Sourcing Function

Show Your Sourcer the Love (and by Love, I mean Money!)

by on Feb. 1, 2012

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show-me-the-money

Sourcers are highly specialized, experienced, and on-demand professionals — yet compensation doesn’t seem to follow along.

Here’s something I don’t get: take a look at the average sourcer job description, and what do you see? The average sourcer is expected to have:

  • 3 to 5 years of prior experience in recruiting and/or sourcing
  • Specialized knowledge of a specific Industry (software, healthcare, financial, etc), combined with the knowledge of how resources of those industries are located across different geographies.
  • Deep and continuously updated knowledge of searching techniques (online and offline)
  • Innate ability to develop strategic approaches to develop candidate pipelines
  • Working knowledge of Applicant Tracking systems and collaboration tools in use by other areas of HR and business at large
  • Wonderful written and verbal communication skills
  • An uncanny ability to apply all of this at lightning speed, as it is typical that sourcing is a timing game and the first to find and submit a candidate is the one that wins.
  • Costly certifications that give an official stamp of approval to all of the above.

And the demand the profession is commanding: it is not about two or three openings out there. A quick search across aggregators throws back 300+ openings for sourcers across the nation (at least as of mid-January 2012).

So, as the subtitle of this article clearly states:

Sourcers are highly specialized, experienced, and on-demand professionals…

If that is the case, can someone explain to me why would it be justified to expect to pay a professional of this caliber who is in such a high demand $20-30 dollars an hour? Or even worse, $6.25 an hour with offshore resources in countries with much different labor conditions than ours?

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Leadership

Managing a Virtual Workforce: Setting Social Goals Are the Key

by on Jan. 31, 2012

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virtual employee

The virtual workplace is different.

The setting is different; cubicles don’t divide the virtual space. Neither do city lines, time zones, or continents, for that matter.

The employees are different; without that immediate group feel, employees have no other option than to be more independent and self-starting than their on-site counterparts.

And, above all else, management is different. When dealing with such an unconventional and independent staff, it becomes abundantly clear that “traditional” workplace motivation and efficiency strategies simply aren’t going to be effective.

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Social Media, The Sourcing Function

The Strategic Role of Sourcers in the Social-driven Economy

by on Jan. 25, 2012

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puzzlepiece-world

The role of sourcers is changing as quickly as the role of marketers and in very similar fashions.

The times when marketers assumed that customers would buy a product because they needed it (or be brainwashed by advertising into believing they did) are rapidly vanishing. Today, as consumers, we expect to build a relationship with a company. We expect an experience – a positive experience, not the “bad” experience that makes us return products and try competitors – as well as vent our disappointment on social networks or other public venues such as Groubal.

In today’s competitive business environment, consumers demand personalized attention before and after any transaction. So do job seekers. They don’t want to be treated as interchangeable pawns, even for lower positions. People are not job-fillers… They are people first – and if they are unhappy, they’ll just look for another opportunity. Let’s keep in mind that the vast majority of people who look for or are open to a new job already have one!

It’s time to start looking at things a little differently. 

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Leadership

Becoming a Sourcing Advisor

by on Jan. 16, 2012

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trusted-advisor

Where do you add value in the recruiting process? Do your customers see you as a recruiting consultant/advisor? Do your peers see you as an expert in sourcing? Do you mentor others? What do you do to set the strategy for sourcing? Is there something special in the screening that you do? Is there something different in the techniques you use to find candidates? Is there something different in the overall work that you can do?

I just asked a lot of questions I’ll bet you’ve asked yourself at some point in time…

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Leadership, Metrics, Social Media

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

by on Dec. 29, 2011

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JHascheRIS11

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

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

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

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The Sourcing Function

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

by on Dec. 28, 2011

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brain-cogs

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

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

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

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Corporate Sourcing, Technology & Resources

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

by on Dec. 26, 2011

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Boolean Rx

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

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

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

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

HR

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

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

 

How cool would that be?

Keep reading…I’ll show you.

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