Ever met anyone who majored in recruiting? Who used to say, “I want to be a recruiter when I grow up.”? How crazy is that, considering when I just searched the word “recruiter” in people on LinkedIn, I had over…
Training, Learning & Development
The Sourcing Mentors; There Are More Than You Think
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people. – John C. Maxwell I will honestly say that I read the SourceCon website every weekday. It’s an excellent source of information…
Use a Mentor to Find Your Next Sourcing Job
When looking for a new position as a new sourcer, eventually the point will come when you need some help and some guidance from someone who has been there and done that. You will seek advice on how to interview,…
How to Effectively Share Your Knowledge
Knowledge sharing is a cornerstone of human civilization. A concept as old as time, passing knowledge from generation to generation allows for stories to be remembered, lessons to be learned, and innovation to be pursued by understanding the successes and…
Slap Some Lipstick on It!
Let me start by saying that for most of us in the recruiting industry we do care about finding the right person for the right role. We don’t want to find a close match; we want to find the perfect…
Your Most Important Thing
Rarely does anyone feel that they are advancing up the ranks of their current company too quickly. If you do feel this way, please let the community know where you work, and someone will happily take that burden off your…
5 Bad Habits Sourcers & Recruiters Should Stop in 2017
Bad habits are unavoidable, quick to form, and slowly creep into our lives without warning. Whether you’re drinking too much coffee in the morning, biting your nails, or spamming candidates, bad habits come in all shapes, sizes, and industries. It…
Invest In Your Best Sourcers
Managing a team of any size, you have a finite amount of time. You keep investing your time and energy to get the new person up and running, or another person out of a performance management plan. While doing so,…
Sourcing from Home Isn’t as Lonely as You Thought
Any extrovert who has just accepted a talent acquisition role that operates remotely will be met with this question: “You’re so social, won’t you miss that aspect of being in an office?” Or, this statement: “I could NEVER do that….
Can You Pass Sourcing Games?
Every true sourcer enjoys a good challenge. At times, our profession can undoubtedly become monotonous. Not every search bewilders our mind and sharpens our sourcing techniques. Crafting personalized emails to candidates was the prevailing trend in 2016. However, this approach was…
Are You Sharing Your Best Advice?
I was fresh out of college and had just started my first recruiting job at a staffing company. There was so much to learn, and the other more tenured recruiters around me looked so busy. The excitement of my first…
How I Learned What I Know About Candidate Sourcing
Editor’s note: There are new readers discovering SourceCon all of the time. With that in mind, we run popular posts from past years on occasion to highlight some of our older (but still great!) content. Enjoy! When it comes to my…
The Sourcing Body
I am not #SourceCon. We all are. As someone who has been in sourcing for nearly a decade now, I’ve watched the function ebb and flow through recessions and boom times. When I first started sourcing back in 2002, it…
Sourcing Education: Philosophy First, Then Training
In 2010 I had the opportunity to put a sourcing workshop together for a group of local recruiters. As I began to formulate a sort of “wire frame” for my presentation, it became obvious to me that I needed to…
2 Top Lessons Sourcers Can Learn From The World Of Mixed Martial Arts
What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War For as long as I can remember, I have been an avid fan of…
Continual Education Is Important, But Sharing What You Learn Is Crucial
Someone once told me that for every day you are at a conference, it takes one week for each day that you are there for the excitement to wear off. I was at SourceCon for two days; it should be…
Acres of Recruiting Diamonds
Several years ago I read a book called Acres of Diamonds, a short book by Russell Conwell, a Baptist minister. The book, which is essentially was a speech he delivered around the world in the late 1800s, was first published…
Sourcing Leaders – Have We Been Our Own Worst Enemy?
As background, I spent the last two years leading the global sourcing team for Hewitt Associates so the finger I am pointing is directly at me. As the economy slowed it was hard not to recognize the industry’s deep, brutal…
How I Learned What I Know About Candidate Sourcing
When it comes to my theories and best practices for leveraging information systems for quickly finding highly qualified candidates, I am often asked, ”So, how did you figure all of this stuff out?” It’s a fantastic question, and I am happy to…
The Importance of Cross-Functional Learning
When you went through school, I’ll bet at some point in time you asked your teacher, “When am I EVER going to need to use this in real life?” And of course, there are some college courses that we have…