This article is the second installment of a four-part follow-up to Talent Sourcing in the Digital Era: Talent Sourcing is So Much More Than Boolean. In the original article, I proposed a contemporary model for Talent Sourcing.
The second pillar focuses our attention on the tools that help us discover the target talent that will map to our client’s (internal or external) workforce plan. This has been the traditional hunting ground for talent sourcing. And discovering talent is no less important today. The only difference is that with the tools, technology, and social media, identifying target talent is easier today.
At the dawn of the digital era, I enrolled in my first AIRS training. I remember sitting in the audience and watching with amazement as the trainer showed how to find an internal list of employees by XRay a site and performing a domain search. Then, we were shown how to find the profiles and resumes of people linked to a domain by conducting a FlipSearch. Finally, we were shown the first aspects of what became known as the PowerSearch using Boolean operators and keywords. I just could not believe the power to discover information. At that time I worked in the executive recruiting world and imagined how the Internet could disruptive to talent sourcing. I just could not wait to get my office and try it for myself.
Have you ever experienced energized incompetence? That was my story the next day after my training. Upon returning to my office (and my dial-up Internet connection), I attempted to replicate what I had observed in the AIRS training. I wanted to tap into this new source of information. I wanted to access the power of this new tool. But it just did not work the same way the trainer demonstrated it just the day before. I was very frustrated, disappointed and a little angry. Unfulfilled, but not undaunted, I continued to pursue the mastery of this new tool. The next AIRS training, I sat behind a computer and found the experience much more fulfilling. I discovered that I could gain competence in digital talent sourcing by trying out those things for myself.
Caution: You can become addicted to tools. We euphemistically call it chasing bright shiny objects, but it can become disruptive to your career. My pursuit of tools continued with abandon. The Internet era produced new and exciting solutions. There was always something new, and it needed to be tested. At some point, I realized that I was spending too much time trying to be more efficient at talent sourcing and forgot to do the work itself. The side effect of my interest in tools is that I lost sight of the real function of the tools which was to make me a better talent sourcer. I determined that I needed certain tools in my talent sourcing technology stack; a tool that would scrape and parse data, a tool that would aggregate the data discovered and a tool that would allow for email and keep me organized (aka CRM). As technology has evolved, I have added some additional tools (discussed below) to my technology stack, but in many cases, I have used the same tools for years.
The tool that no one uses. One of the simplest and most valuable tools for me is a talent sourcing checklist/roadmap. This talent sourcing list identifies the websites that must be visited, the tools to employ and the resources utilized in a talent sourcing initiative. I use it to instill rigor and discipline in the talent sourcing approach. In other words, this tool allows me to create a repeatable process.
Talent Sourcing Checklist/Roadmap — a map to where the talent resides based on the talent supply data and the competitive intelligence information, and the knowledge base of talent sourcing activities. No bright shiny objects, but a list of tactics that will make up your talent sourcing strategy on a project.
The ideal talent sourcing technology stack is user and budget dependent. I have segmented the tools into functional areas. Jim Durbin recently remarked that recruiters and talent sourcers “worship at the altar of free.” Most of the tools described are free or have free (albeit tuned down) versions of their products. Special thanks to my friend and colleague, Dean Da Costa who added his input and perspective to the tool selection. I must confess that I did not know so many chrome extensions existed. Now when I view a LinkedIn profile, six tools pop-up and offer to find the email address of the person. I feel an addiction coming back.
Data Segmentation and Aggregation — bringing together all possible pieces to complete the puzzle picture for the target talent. The tools of the talent sourcing trade fall into several categories. Tools that a talent sourcers may want to include in their technology stack are:
- Search Productivity Tools: a new group of tools has emerged that save time by making an individual who was selecting the right information or improves the process of processing data. The tools are search-preview, AutoPagernize, docs online viewer, multiple-file downloader, and Google when?
- Web Searching Tools: since the early days of the internet, search engines have evolved. Also, the tools to assist talent sourcers have developed as well. If the busy talent sourcer doesn’t have time to remember Boolean commands, there are Boolean generators such as SourceHub, TalentSonar, Recruit’em, Bool, Hiretual, IntelligentSearch, SourcingLab.io, SimpleSeek, and PropelIQ, In addition to those mentioned, Wayback Machine, Million Short, Sales Search, and SocialGeek can be of great assistance depending on the searches that are untaken.
- Find Contact Information: data tells us the best results for an email campaign is about 40% when we use the personal email of the target talent. That is followed by work emails at about 20-25%, and LinkedIn InMails at 15-20%. Some of the tools that help discover personal emails are Hunter, Hiretual, Prophet, Email Catcher, Nymeria, findthatemail, ContactOut, Lusha, and etoggler.
- Social Search Tools: An essential part of aggregating data is to use the social profiles of the target talent to obtain a complete picture of them. Fortunately, many of the social sites have tools that assist us in uncovering information.
- Github; hikido, gitDiscovered, GitHub emails finder
- Twitter; riffle, twitteradvancedsearch
- Google+: search extension for G+
- Facebook: Intelligent Search, search is back, Facebook names
- LinkedIn: Linkedin Names, CopyLead, LinkedIn storage, Alumni Data Buddy, and Find Any Email on LinkedIn.
- Scraping & Parsing Tools: one of the most critical workstreams that a talent sourcer is to be able to parse through and scrub significant amounts of data. This where scarper and parsing tools come in, like Data Scraper, Outwit, eGrabber. Hurry Scrap, JustClipIt, CopyLead, and Skrapp.
- Contact & People Aggregation Tools: The marketing thought-leaders tell us that we are entering an era of personalization. Tools that assist us greatly with identifying each while being able to segment them into broader functional areas are Prophet, SwoopTalent, Entelo, Hiretual, 360 Social, Aeby, RocketReach, Connectifier, Hound (jobjet), AmazingHiring, email qualifier, and RestlessBandit.
- Talent Databases: there several paid databases that are available to augment your talent sourcing efforts; they include Monster, LinkedIn Recruiter, The Ladders, Indeed, CareerBuilder, and Dice.
- Content & Messaging Tools: the scope of talent sourcing role has changed to include content marketing and email messaging. To craft the quality of messages required to get the attention of target talent many of these tools are very useful. Crystal, mosaic track ai, joblint, Textio, readability-score.com, Grammarly, melon.com.au/melon-stork, Grammarly, FeedDemon, and dlver.it.
- Engagement Tools: I mentioned that we are in an era of personalization. Thought leader, Ed Newman calls this era Web 3.0. In a presentation to the NorthWest, Recruiters Association noted that that one tool, Inside Connector, is ready for Web 3.0 right now.
- Competitive Talent Intelligence: In the first article in this series, I revealed some of the digital alerts that are treasured in tracking the competition (Owler, Google Alerts, Yahoo! Alerts, Mention, BuzzSumo, MozBar, Social Searcher and Talkwalker.com). In addition to those mentioned, several additional tools assist in gathering competitive talent intelligence; they include Datanyze, fedger, inDoors, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, recap.work, and lead essentials lite.
- Dean’s Favorites: Two of Da Costa’s favorite tools are Blockspring and Googlesheets with add-ons and seem to be in categories all their own. You can check them out on Dean’s YouTube channel and his new The Wonderful World Of Chrome Extensions – Volume 2.
Begin with the end in mind. The late great Stephen Covey had the right idea. The purpose of the Discover pillar is to uncover the talent that will be the target of outreach. So if we follow the Covey principle, we would segment and aggregate the data in a form that we could easily use with the tools of our outreach.
Target Talent List — the prospects that will be the focus of the outreach and engagement. The raw input/data about the target talent and turn it into an accurate list of target talent complete with profiles and contact information. There are free tools like the HubSpot CRM that could offer an excellent solution to managing your engagement of a target audience. Also, there a couple of free Gmail CRM’s-CRM for Gmail and Streak CRM.
Those of us that grew up in talent sourcing during the era of rouse calls, Rolodexes, and rotary-dial phones will tell you that identifying talent is simple today. Those of us that grew up in talent sourcing during the Internet age will tell you that identifying talent is easy today. Those of us that grew up in talent sourcing during the social revelation will inform you that identifying talent is not a difficult task today. The potential for talent sourcing in the digital era has been realized; we have evolved from the early days to a time when the right tools are employed, we can crunch the data, sleuth cyberspace and discover purple needles in haystacks. Talent sourcing has realized the power over information that I saw two decades ago.
The digital era has as hoped, afforded most talent could be found. The social data that is voluntarily provided provides transparency into most areas of the talent market. Unlike previous eras, the real challenge has shifted to engagement, which is the next pillar. Until then, happy hunting!
You can catch Marvin Smith in person and learn more about this series on Talent Sourcing In the Digital Era in our Innovation Labs at the 2017 Spring SourceCon Conference March 13-15 in Anaheim, California.