During the first keynote session, my Chrome was on the fritz, and I was freaking out. Anyone who knows me would confirm my anxiety was high, and when my technology breaks I get super stressed, but here’s what ended up happening…
I walked into the new Hackathon event with two completely different mindsets, I was thinking about my “go to” extension toolbox as well as the “old school” sites and more advanced Boolean tricks.
Hour One: Sourcing Jedi Tables
It was a packed house, not an empty seat in the room (that was filled with round tables and power strips to keep our computers charged). My table was a mix of healthcare and IT recruiters. Our first challenge was to discuss our toughest requisitions and brainstorm on solutions outside of LinkedIn. We talked about searching Facebook, using Twitter, and using directories and databases like fec.gov to find candidates. I remember talking specifically to Renown Health about similar challenges in finding administrative assistants with ridiculously complex requirements. We even talked about hiring manager relationships and ways to drive the process forward.
We all worked together to find solutions, which was amazing since we had never met prior to this event. This is why the Sourcing Community is outstanding, because of moments like these when people come together to solve problems.
Hour Two: This is Where the Fun Begins
The second hour consisted of a sourcing competition. The floor was open for all to compete to find a group of candidates for a hard fill reqs. Those who found the best-matched candidates the quickest (as well as their emails), were moved to the next round and split into four teams. The teams competed survivor style through additional “purple squirrel” objectives until there was only one left standing. Some of the challenges included looking for positions that do not actually exist, like a Debug/Scripting Engineer.
The remaining team was split and pitted against one another to find the one lone Master Hacker. Kevin Brinkman from Gitty in Austin, TX rose as the victor. Brinkman found four active candidate emails with only being given their Twitter handles. Using extensions like Prophet, Mailtester as well as Boolean strings (including xraying Github), he found the emails in a matter of minutes.
Note: When you hear a Sourcer say “xray” it means to tell Google to search a specific site. For example, if I want to search ZoomInfo for an engineer, Google this:
site:zoominfo.com engineer
The Source is Strong with this One
In the end, whether or not you have a defined tool set, a specific industry based resource list, of if you prefer to ask a teammate, there are multiple solutions to the solving the problem. This was best realized when Mark Tortorici showed us how he tackled the challenge and then how the winner (Kevin Brinkman) found the answer using a different set of tools and Boolean.
It gave us all perspective as to what the gurus use so we can best define our own searches. And it was great to see the teams work and the varying examples. Even though my Chrome broke, it helped me see that there’s always another answer out there!
