I had that singsong experience again yesterday while (phone) sourcing. What’s the singsong experience? It’s when a Gatekeeper starts offering information, in a continuous pattern, to your request. Don’t misunderstand — I had spent several hours sourcing into a particular entertainment company with very little — almost none — success. Several hours. Admittedly, the customer... [full article »]

Someone called me yesterday in a rush. “I need to find Application Engineers installing medical equipment — x-ray equipment to be exact — and I looked on LinkedIn and there’s not much I can use. Oh, sure, there are some application engineers who list ‘medical equipment’ in their profiles, but I need people from specific companies... [full article »]

Krista Bradford recently wrote a timely and provocative article here on ERE about LinkedIn. One of ERE’s long-time members, Ted Moore, in a comment to that article, stated, “If you rely heavily on LinkedIn and similar tools to connect with those your clients can easily find and recruit on their own, at least as they perceive... [full article »]

I was talking to a dear friend this morning who told me all the rain we had recently washed out the rear of her house and caused substantial damage to her foundation and the low-lying rooms on that level of her home. “Insurance doesn’t cover this. I need a second job,” she said, matter-of factly... [full article »]

When I first started names sourcing I used to think to myself, “I wish there was a database of names with titles.” In fact, I used to do wistful dogpile and altavista searches that looked something like this: “Hewlett Packard” “employee list” or this: “Hewlett Packard” employees You get the idea. That was back in... [full article »]

(In this article @ before a name denotes a person’s Twitter name.) @ValentinoBenito guested on the Recruiting @Animal Radio Show on Wednesday, June 15 and he was regaling the crowd with tales of his past recruiting successes. Early in the interview he made the broad statement that “Recruiting is pretty straight-forward.” “Uh-oh,” I thought. “He’s... [full article »]

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. –Wallace Stevens Penelope Trunk wrote a recent piece about how to find satisfying work. She made the important point that in order to find work you love, experimentation is required. You might have to try your hand at 50 to 100 jobs! I know that... [full article »]

In this last and final installment of this series we’re going to talk about how to use low and high technology appropriately to tailor your message to your audience. One of the ideas behind technology is that it empowers us to work creatively. By blending different technologies we can democratize communication in new and surprising ways.... [full article »]

We often ignore the basic elements we use in both our personal and business communications. In truth there’s not a lot of difference in the two. In both, you want to engage people naturally. Talking with a business associate should be not much different from talking with a friend. Talking with a friend employs many of... [full article »]

…after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England. Mr. Disraeli’s supper companion’s remark demonstrates to us how the prime minister made the young woman feel after their engagement over supper. I say the word “engagement” knowing that nowadays we all hear a lot about how we can become... [full article »]

I’d like to offer early in this series an anecdote told about Benjamin Disraeli, one of Great Britain’s more flamboyant parliamentary members and conservative prime minister during Queen Victoria’s reign. His main political rival was the renowned orator William Gladstone and four-times Liberal prime minister. A young lady was taken to dinner one evening by... [full article »]

At the constant urging of my gunslinger husband I recently took a concealed carry class. It was fun. Chapter 6 of the National Rifle Association’s guide to the basics of personal protection in the home published in 2000, says that, “…encounters occur at very close range, often in reduced-light conditions, and are over in a... [full article »]

Lately I’ve been reading about how the telephone is so (19th and 20th Century) over. The outcry goes that social media has reinvented the wheel and any of us left in that old telephone wheelhouse better come out into the light and get with it. Despite all the naysaying snickering that goes on in the... [full article »]

“I don’t know who I’m calling,” Marianne said. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” I answered, while thinking to myself that none of us ever really do. She nodded unhappily. “Did you read One Lesson Lois?” I asked. She nodded that she had. “Did any of that resonate with you?” I asked again. “Well, sort of,”... [full article »]

Last week I told you we were going to continue Marianne’s story by exploring the opportunities LinkedIn did offer, and I promised that’d we build on those results and a few others using Hoover’s and brief search engine visits to create a robust search that would surprise you. One of our readers, Ben Ness, SOSed... [full article »]

She sat quietly adjacent to me at the oblong table we used on the first day of training. Her six coworkers all seemed to like her. Her name was Marianne and she was a pretty 20-something and this was her second job after graduating from college. She mostly didn’t say anything but she did answer... [full article »]

The class question from last week asked what things are at work that would cause Lisa our Gatekeeper to drop her defenses in the statement below. “Lisa?  Hi, this is Maureen Sharib. Can you transfer me to Sheila McKinney?  Before you do, though, can you tell me: is Sheila one of the pipeline engineers there?... [full article »]

I have a sense that a real yearning is emerging for information about how to communicate. I mean about how to communicate face to face or over the phone and not about “communicating” on someone’s “Wall” on Facebook or sending an InMail through LinkedIn. I’m talking about what you should say on the phone. [full article »]

First off, I’d like to hand out the “extra credit” to last week’s Sourcing Test. The extra credit goes to nobody because nobody answered the specific question: “Tell me why knowing Lisa’s name is listed as one of the six important pieces of information.” And this is one of the basic problems in sourcing —... [full article »]

So how do we find the other members in a person’s group when we know that group contains what we’re looking for? As you recall, that was the last question posed to me by my student sourcer on the second day of our MagicMethod training. For those of you just now tuning in, MagicMethod is... [full article »]