Along with the homebuyer credit, the package contains another $10 billion tax break that allows companies that suffered during the last two years to use recent losses to reclaim taxes paid in the previous five years, when times were good.

This is huge news and good news for recruiters too.

Your candidates who have been on the fence because of a depressed housing market can now sell their homes (if they’ve owned them for more than five years) to buy another one and reap a $6,500 tax credit. A tax credit is a big deal. It’s money you don’t pay in the form of taxes, so it’s like earning three times that amount and paying no tax on it (if you’re in a 35% tax bracket).

The pre-existing $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers extension is good, too because, believe it or not, the general public is slow on the uptake and people are only now beginning to realize what a big deal that is. It has another several months to become a steady part of realtor marketing plans (it has only really been circulating even on their part for the last two months or so; how many “$8,000 Tax Credit” signs have you seen riding atop their “For Sale” signs in your neighborhood?).

If you haven’t been touting that as one of the “benefits” to your new job offering, now is the time to make it a part of your campaign too.

There’s $10 billion in tax breaks in that package that are big too. It’s supposed to be for small businesses that have shown losses in 2008 and 2009 to be able to recoup some of the taxes they paid in the previous five years. Will your recruiting company be counted in this bunch? I wouldn’t doubt if many of our small businesses qualify for this. 2008 seems kind of early for this, to me, so I’m going to be watching for an expansion/extension of this to include later years — maybe 2010, 2011, and 2012! Wouldn’t that be something?

Now, on a sobering note, and it’s a question I know some of you are thinking:

Where’s this money going to come from?

Read more here.

There was a blog posting by David Lynn recently here on ERE that asked where recruiting belonged: under HR?

I could feel the blood rushing into my fingers as I answered: “I have strong feelings about this. It belongs under finance with a leg into biz dev and mergers & acquisitions as well.”

And it does.

Here’s why:

Recruiting is such a vital function in an organization because it touches every person in that organization. Not every department can be said to do this. We all know a company is as good as its people.

Recruiting belongs under finance because it is basically a competitive intelligence function.

Yes, recruiting involves talking to people in the outside world, and if you’re doing it right you’re gathering intelligence along the way. I suspect applications like salesforce.com could be very useful in these maneuvers, but I am talking out of school because I am not using it (yet). But any application that could capture (and distribute) the notes, thoughts, and facts that any contributor in the company enters regarding a particular candidate would be wildly useful as an “M&A” tool.

“He said money seems tight around his company and he’s worried moving forward about the viability of his position.”

If I was working as an M&A professional (and I have) I would look at that and think, “Hmmm…I wonder if they’re having cash-flow problems.”

I’d then take a look at the company in question (if it was a competitor and I was tasked with finding objects to buy) and do a preliminary inquiry into the company’s possible availability.

“Hello Mrs. CFO. This is Maureen Sharib. I am with XYZ and our desire to grow is why I am calling you. Could we maybe have a conversation around a possible partnership between our two companies?”

Putting it like that belies the fact that I know they’re having cash-flow problems, or at least something is going on inside her company that is making their employees think so. A gentle knock on her door but an opening for discussion, nevertheless.

I’d approach finance first because, after all, this is the drive engine of the company. She’s going to be consulted anyway in an event like this, so why not include her from the get-go and make friends early? Let it be her idea taking it to her boss.

Reporting up through finance makes sense for business development as well.

“He’s frustrated with the technology inside his company. Doesn’t feel they’re keeping up.”

Wow. If I was working in business development and had something I could sell to this company, I’d sit up straight and immediately pull Hoover’s up for contact information, and then I’d call.

“Hello, Purchasing. This is Maureen Sharib and I have a technology product that could change your employees’ attitudes towards their jobs.”

Let Purchasing walk with the glory. You just made a sale.

This isn’t brain surgery and appears to me to be common sense. What does it appear to you as?

You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in. — Heraclitus

There’s a huge controversy that raises itself now and then here in the Recruitosphere and that’s the idea that one type of candidate (passive) is better than the other (active). The thinking goes along the lines of “If they’re looking, there must be a reason they’re looking!” There’s probably something wrong with the guy.

On the other end of the spectrum glistens the shiny new: that person popularly known as the “passive” candidate. The accompanying reasoning goes something like: “If he’s out there and nobody’s talked to him before, I’ll be the first one at the table to get the best (and biggest) portion.”

In reality, both lines of thought are problematic.

I’m reminded of the Clay Walker country song line, “What’cha gonna do, When the new wears off And the old shines through…?”

In defense of the actives, there are good people represented in the mix – and they’re going to turn up in some of our “passive” searches anyway. It happens the more thorough we become in our sourcing skills. I try not to leave anyone “behind” when I’m phone sourcing, unless the customer asks for a specific number out of a certain company.

The reality is, passives aren’t always truly “passive” and actives aren’t always “active.” Some “actives” have gone to ground, so to speak, and are fully engaged in another job that really gives them those desirable “passive” characteristics again that are so highly regarded nowadays. Skipping over them in any job search is a mistake. Keep in mind that anything we put out on the Net is going to stay out on the Net, regardless of our efforts or desire to remove it. So if someone has a resume, say “out there” somewhere, at some time, he or she could turn up in a future search regardless of whether they’re looking at the present time or not.

There are passives who really aren’t passive at all. They know what they’re doing to market themselves. They know how to glisten beneath all that fallen snow that assures they’ll be the first snowflake picked out of the landscape. This is the person who’s active on the net, who does a lot of posting (or a little) that includes a lot of biographical information that, at first glance, appears innocent. It’s not, usually. Those tagline signatures that give us names, titles, addresses and phone numbers should be approached with some hesitation. The question to ask is: “If I found them, who else hasn’t?”

I know it’s exciting when your Boolean search ferrets out that exact title in the exact location that the job is calling for and it appears that all you have to do is dial the number and confirm that the guy’s still there. I know very well that temptation to end there and call it finished.

Don’t! Doing this is short-shifting your customer as well as yourself. This little “gem” you uncovered as a result of your knowledgeable Boolean entry (you did work so hard to learn Boolean, didn’t you?) sometimes is tantamount to someone’s resume being posted out there – it screams, “Hey recruiter, look at me – I’m what you want – call me for your new job opportunity –I’ll make it easy – here’s my office number and my cell!”

No one understands that you have given everything. You must give more. — Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

“Foul!” you cry. “They’re mine to find!”

Yes, they are yours to find if that’s all you’re interested in finding. That “passive-active” usually has a team of coworkers he interacts with everyday. The best way to set that little hard rock into your job setting is to build his organization out around him. And that usually means (actually I don’t know of any other way) that you must get on the telephone and call him, or call his Administrative Assistant, or call his manager, or call the guy in the cube next to him, or call someone in the Mail Room who delivers mail to him and his group everyday, or call the VP of Engineering’s Executive Assistant, or call someone, anyone that will give you the names of the other people in his group!

Chances are they’re the truly passive candidates in the mix!

You must remove (at least one hand, momentarily) from the alphabet portion of your keyboard to dial that number. These days, and it’s going to become ever-more-important moving forward, you must become an active names sourcer vs a passive names sourcer! If you don’t do this your research will suffer the consequences as more and more people are learning (and depending) on Boolean to fill their searches. Set yourself apart by honing your telephone techniques. They’re the ones that are hardest to master and they’re the ones that return the most unique results! They’re the ones that give you the only advantage to finding the truly passive candidate – the guy sitting at his desk doing his thing, 8 to 12 hours a day, too busy to even think about another job. The guy who doesn’t “post” for ulterior reasons or isn’t listed in some fabulous online gathering. He’s the guy who’s gainfully and masterfully employed doing what you need him to do for you – go get him!

Keep in mind the overall quality of the pipeline. Proactively adding both passive and actives into it at the same time is going to give you a healthy mix in the end.

Do you see what I see?
A star, a star
Dancing in the night,
With a tail as big as a kite.

–Do You See What I See, song lyrics

I was watching a movie a while back and I heard a line in it that has stuck with me and I think of often. It’s one of those file-markers I put in my brain at the time to think more about and maybe write about. I’m doing that now.

The movie was “Beyond the Sea,” a biographical film that took its title from the Darin song of the same name and was based on the life of singer/actor Bobby Darin, played by Kevin Spacey. It depicts Darin’s rise to teen idol success in both the music and film industry during the 1950s and 60s, as well as his marriage to Sandra Dee, played by Kate Bosworth.

Near the end of the movie Darin/Spacey is talking to his wife Dee/Bosworth about his career frustrations and what audiences want. It was the late 60s and Darrin’s successful 50s crooning was being made obsolete overnight by changing musical trends. He was confused and lost in his career. His wife casually made the remark, “People hear what they see.” In response, Darin successfully changed his presentation to accommodate a more modern audience.

As phone sourcers we rely on the telephone to deliver our “message.” What is that Gatekeeper “seeing” when you call her? Have you ever considered that what she is “seeing” is impacting what she is hearing and how she is reacting to you? Her reaction to you is informed by her intuition and her experience. It may also be informed by some extensive cross-wiring in her brain regions that represent abstract concepts … and who would have thought, anyway?

True, you’re going to run up against Gatekeepers who are young with not much experience to guide their reactions, but just as often, and more so these days I suspect, your task is going to be challenged by more experienced gatekeepers who are beginning to understand how their intuition guides their own decisions.
I doubt, though, many of them have an inkling about what I’m about to write about. That’s an advantage for you when you’re phone sourcing.

Research at the California Institute of Technology has shown that some people can actually “hear” what they see. It’s called synaesthesia — a genuine perceptual phenomenon where senses intermingle. It’s rare, but a more common form exists where a person is able to perceive numbers or letters as colors. The artist David Hockney is able to see color when listening to music. As the sound of a voice can be likened to music, is it such a far leap to ask yourself what color that receptionist might be “seeing” when she hears the tone of your voice?

Is she seeing red? We all know the association our culture has with the color red. Is a heightened aversion reaction like this impacting your sourcing efforts?

What if she “hears” the color blue and is washed over by the peaceful analogy of sensation that accompanies it? Do you think that would improve your results or lessen them?

Maybe she sees green. We all know what that’s associated with: go! Maybe it’s one reason some gatekeepers seem to cooperate with some people and not others. The question is, though, do all synaesthesia-affected gatekeepers see the same colors in response to certain tones? I suspect they might.

There is wide difference of opinion how common this is. I’ve seen estimates of 1/2000 and 1/20. It is genetic and also established that it’s more prevalent among females and that it runs in families. The chromosomal regions where the genes reside are known to contain genes associated with a variety of disorders, including autism, dyslexia, and epilepsy. My own family is marked by dyslexia.

I’ve always been acutely aware of how a person’s voice (and also many times, a person’s touch) impacted me viscerally. I can’t say that I see color, but I can say that I have a visceral reaction to certain voices (and sounds) that lulled my senses. The sound that comes to my mind right now is the sound of gum “popping” (some call it “smacking”). Most people find it annoying, but if there is someone chewing gum and making that “pop” sound every few chews, I’ll saddle up next to them just to listen. There is no drug in this world like it for me to set me into a catatonic state.

This sound sensitivity may be one reason why as a phone sourcer I am acutely aware of the Gatekeeper’s voice and immediately examine it when she answers (in a flash of a couple seconds) for clues as to her “ability” to help me. I admit, if I get a Gatekeeper on the phone whose voice I “enjoy” listening to, I’ll take more time drawing her out just because I like that visceral sensation she creates for me. I suppose it could be likened to a drug fix: I’m searching for them all day long!

Turning it around, I am often told how “nice” I sound on the phone. I interpret that as meaning that I probably have a good “phone voice” and might also be a contributing factor to why I get names using the telephone on most every call I make. It’s a theory, mind you; nothing scientific, but it’s a strong gut feeling I have. There’s more fire than smoke, I suspect, in this theory.

So, what do people tell you about your voice? Do you think of your voice as an asset, confidently using it in your work? I suspect those who do not like using the phone may not have had the positive experiences I’ve had with it. What do you think?

Silence is golden; speech is silver. ~ American Proverb

My brother-in-law visited the past week from New York City. He comes, usually, every August to stay a week or so with us here in part of the heartland of America, southwestern Ohio. That’s when the corn starts coming in and the tomatoes are ripe on the vine and he times his visits (I suspect) so he can eat like a king at our harvest table. We grow both.

I call it the Midwest; he argues that we’re not far enough west to be called mid-anything. Be that as it may, he is living in that peaceful twilight between the years your kids are grown and out of the nest and the beginning of the tsunami when they have grandchildren and those grandchildren become yours to keep a portion of some of your days. Or all of your days. Or every other day, whatever it may be.

Entering the room and gingerly turning over a naked doll-baby discarded and laying face-down on the floor with the big toe of his right foot, he sardonically declared, “Dead.”

I laughed just as the thing started babbling, googling, and burping, and leaving out sounds that normally are reserved for the nether regions of the body, all thanks to two D batteries in its back that are not yet dead.

“What did that thing cost?” he asked, warily eyeing the lifeless form on the floor that refused to stop emitting sound once prodded.

“Oh that’s a 50-cent Goodwill baby. If you go on Sundays, everything is half off if you’re over 50,” I answered.

Nodding at another smaller doll-baby sitting quietly in a chair across the room, he asked, “And that one?”

“Oh, that one cost about 10 bucks on sale at Kohl’s. That’s a store-bought baby. It doesn’t talk.”

“Doesn’t talk?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s why it cost more,” I answered with a wink.

And it occurred to me that this might be a good lesson for sourcing and recruiting.

How many of us think we have to talk our prey to death to get results? There are still a good number of people out there who think a good salesperson is a good “talker.” A good salesperson, like a good recruiter or sourcer, is a good listener and worth many times their weight in gold over a babbling fool.

Do you feel you have to do a lot of talking when you’re sourcing or recruiting? Why?

“It’s bad. That’s spelled B-A-D,” he moaned.

“No, it’s spelled V-E-R-Y B-A-D,” I corrected, a habit of mine he doesn’t like me for. “Let’s hope the stock market gets back to 10,000. That seems, to me, to be a psychological barrier to hiring,” He interrupted: “I don’t care about the stock market anymore, I don’t care about real estate. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all about jobs,” he said heatedly before addressing the latest impact on his veterinary business — the closing of the overnight-shipping business DHL about 30 miles north of his Southern Ohio practice that employed 8,000 and provided incomes to some of his patients.

“Layoffs started coming by the hundreds.”

Now that those 8,000 have lost their jobs and their unemployment is now running out, those people are not taking their kitties to the vet for neutering; they’re choosing instead to keep their children’s inoculations current. They’re not taking on new dogs to their households that need feeding; they’re putting food on the table. If a decision needs to be made to provide an animal with life-extending medication or treatment that is often-times expensive, it is often made in the negative or delayed. “They’re choosing the bare minimum that keeps the animal alive. Who knows: maybe somewhere they’re thinking they may have to eat them,” he said, half jokingly. The stark and grim reality shone through in the statement.

Things are picking up around here, though, and sourcers are on the front line. I’m seeing the glimmer of recovery in some of the work that’s coming in. But it has a long way to go to reach 2007 levels. A long, long way, I know, but I still believe that 10,000 marker (it closed at 9,370 on Friday, Aug 7) is a psychological barrier to hiring: above it our phones are ringing off the hook; below it all goes quiet. It’s been like that for a long time. I hope, this time back, though, those in the CFO offices all across America aren’t so traumatized by losses that they’ve ratcheted that number up. They well could, taking a lesson from this travesty delivered to us by another SEC oversight. Time, will tell.

But, I ask the question again that brought you here; if so many have gone, who is left? Who is left in our profession that will be able to answer the call back to hiring? WHO has been able to weather this atomic blast to our economy all these many months and who has kept themselves ready to address the recovery after the nuclear winter? You?

How have you done that? I’m curious.

For you who have created social networks, what do you do to drive activity and success on your networks?

I recently asked that question over on LinkedIn. Let’s put the answers I got in groups, and talk a bit about them.

Participate in the conversation; follow up; create momentum; show up
Stay active and have a deep commitment

One respondent remarked, “You can stay ahead of 90% of the people by just showing up.” That’s the truth.

Make no mistake about it: creating and running a “social” network is work. It’s an everyday commitment; of the million or so Ning “social” groups (Ning is an online service that allows anyone to create, customize, and share a social network) that have been created on that network over the last year, about 80% of them are inactive or abandoned. This is partly because about one million of the platform’s 25,000,000 or so members one day got this hare-brained idea to create a network that, for some, was going to make them rich.

When the money didn’t emerge during the first week, they lost interest. Their commitment vaporized as their disappointment ballooned. Instant gratification rarely occurs on these networks and it takes a tremendous amount of blood, sweat, and toil to get these organizations up and running, and then another Herculean push to make them profitable. They’re processes, not events. Many failed because their creators did not understand on the front-end that in order to be profitable you may have to spend startup company hours on the site to make it happen. You have to show up — consistently — every day, and yes, even on weekends.

Be a psychologist
Strike nerves
Listen, a lot

Recruiting Animal says that playing a psychologist is ridiculous and dilutes the class purpose; I say it isn’t so. Phone sourcing is very much about understanding the human nature of the caller and the recipient of the call. These days, as troubled as people are about what’s happening in the world, a forum in which they can express themselves, ask questions, and have them answered (sometimes anonymously) goes a great deal toward helping people.

My followers have told me that there’s a great sense of relief knowing that they’re not alone in this historic downturn. When the economy rebounds, these people will remember and feel some commitment toward the sites and the people who run these sites. So in some sense of the concept, yes, the doctor is in.

Give up control; let others help you
Give back with advice, support, opinion, shared knowledge
Be honest and authentic
Be consistent with tone and messaging

People hear it immediately when you’re sending messages that are nothing but self-serving. Hey, I’m the Queen of Self-Serving, I know. I have to be — I’m self-employed.

But I like to think that I deliver enough value that my readers roll their eyes, chuckle, and pass over my not-so-subtle pleas to buy my stuff for the good center-of-the-plate content. Yet try as I do, I have some trouble with the giving-up-control portion; it’s hard for me, and I have to work on it.

I think I may have a trust issue — as in, I only trust myself to take care of me — but I realize that to be successful in this thing called social/business media, you need to place your trust in others. It is paradoxical then that during this economic downturn, some social media users are in fact placing their blind trust in others but you have to be smart about it. You have to know who and when to believe — including yourself.

Make membership in the community viral; strive for a critical mass for sustainability and autonomy
Reward contributors
Twitter new content
We are engaged but many business people are not

Many of us who run these networks lose sight of the fact that the majority of our target audience doesn’t have the foggiest idea we exist, or that networks like ours exist at all. No kidding. It’s easy to adopt a center-of-the-universe mentality when much of your waking and what could be sleeping hours are consumed with monitoring your sites, tweaking them almost beyond recognition and, all in all, being obsessed with driving your “numbers.”

Numbers are important, but not nearly as important as the “active” numbers who show up and participate on your site. Participation can take a number of forms — they may be “readers” who come for the content, they may be contributors who religiously bring content to share with others, or they may be gadflies who come to look around, land on a subject and then seek to create controversy. Many times gadflies are creating their own brands in the process, and that’s okay. I love these types: they’re the ones who drive traffic, in my opinion, and are fun to watch in action and help to, as my friend Steve Levy reminds me, “make life worth living.” In the future, I believe these last two types are going to be highly rewarded.

Highly focused niches = higher values
E-mail list of members at least once a month
Host a private, invitation-only event in a different city each month
Let other networks know you exist
Create content that is valuable to the target audience

This is interesting to me because I believe as “social” media evolves, tightly focused communities are going to deliver greater and greater values to their members. I think those are the ones to watch. Here on ERE I think the groups are true and reflective subsets of the community and I also think if communities like ERE would allow group moderators access to their own group members, much greater viability could emerge from them. Active group moderators would have more freedom to do many of the things listed above. This kind of hearkens back up to the “Give up control — let others help you” advice, doesn’t it?

The one above that says “Host a private, invitation-only event in a different city each month” is interesting. The transition from online to in-person seems to happen these days, as friendships that started online “evolve” into flesh-and-bone meetings that have the opportunity to evolve further into deeper relationships. This does not rule out the fact that online relationships can remain valuable and meaningful and evolve just like as these in-person meet-ups. It’s a new and emerging phenomenon in our society, but I see nothing wrong with people meeting one-on-one if that’s their cup of tea. But I also see nothing wrong with people keeping things online, especially for business. A handshake can be delivered either way for skillful marketers.

Become an advocate/evangelist
Nurture it like a garden

If you do many of the things listed above, your “brand” will emerge. After all, as we were talking about earlier, isn’t that exactly what you want from all this time you spend on these “social” networks? I love the garden-tending advice. That’s exactly what it is: a network is a garden that must be planted, sprinkled, fertilized, watered, flooded once or so a season, hoed, weeded, sprinkled again, hoed some more, hoed, hoed, and hoed. If you do all those things, your “produce” will be bountiful. But it takes time. A seed doesn’t pop up overnight.

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful.” ~ Alan Alda

What kinds of things can you learn in a company’s telephone directory?

If you have a company you admire (Hey! I’d hire just about anyone from there!) it might profit you immensely to spend some time (especially now — what else have you to do?) doing some voice mail mining by tediously calling through each number of a company’s internal dial system.

Recently I wrote an article here on ERE called “Direct-Dial Directories: How to Research Staff via Phone Numbers” that has become one of the most e-mailed articles on the site.

In it I describe the technique of “farming” a company’s telephone directory — an activity that can be performed on just about every major company in America from the comfort of your own desk and telephone. Toward the end of the article I mention a few things that a directory reveals, these being only a smidgen of the type of information that can be extrapolated from a company’s telephone directory. Following are some other “tidbits” of valuable information that a directory might yield.

Employees who seem anxious to be “reached”: Every once in a while you’ll come across a directory where, it seems, nearly every employee offers up a cell phone to the listener. You have to ask yourself why this is. Is this company policy that the company is encouraging their employees to “stay available” for calls from the outside? What’s it saying? Recently I did a thousand names for a sales drive out of a provider of energy services, and there was a plethora of people offering their cell phones to the caller.

I checked the company’s ”Estimated Fiscal Earnings per Share” for 2009 and it was listed as “very high” and “high” for 2010. I wonder if there’s a connection between what appears to be a pretty high level of employee engagement, at least from the outside, and the financial forecast. Hmmm … I wonder if that company is paying the cell phones bills of those they seem to have on 24/7 “call”?

Employees who sound “engaged”: I have a running disagreement with the Recruiting Animal about being able to “hear” engagement. He says I’m nuts; I insist it’s so. I am at present doing the phone tree of a global medication delivery and specialty pharmaceutical company, and there is very little information offered (beyond the owner’s name) on the individual voice mails at the company, and the messages seem curt and rather official; as in “I’ll call you back when I have the time (if ever…).”

Checking the financials, I see the company has dropped from an astounding P/E ratio of near 60 in late 2007 to a P/E ratio of 12 today. Hmmm … I wonder what happened. That’s a big drop in today’s strong pharma/biotech space, crash or no crash.

Building upon this I am of the opinion that you can many times “hear” the overall health/wellness/attitude of a company by the expression (or non-expression) on the employees’ voice mails, which are the company’s outward facing (vocal) image. One or two calls aren’t going to reveal this but a few hundred certainly will!

What % of the workforce is female/male: If you’re looking to promote equal opportunity in your organization, a good way to do that is to look to the leaders in your industry who successfully challenge the glass ceiling. One thing I found interesting in a recent “survey” of mine in a major consumer goods company was the prevalence of females over males 3:2. I think that’s saying something, and I also suspect (wage differentials being what they are in reality; let’s not kid each other) the savings just might be traveling to the company’s bottom line. Yup, maybe so. I just checked and the Estimated Fiscal Earnings per Share for ‘09 is “very high” and the outlook for 2010 is “high.” Hmmm …

It’s a diversity smorgasbord: A company that is light years ahead of your own in understanding and adapting successful methodologies that create for them a workforce that encourages diversity to better serve a heterogeneous customer base is one in which it just might pay you extra dividends to investigate ts member base.

It can be a watershed: Let’s take one voice mail nugget I retrieved recently out of a major U.S. based consumer products company. Upon dialing the extension “4725″ I heard, to my delight, a British-accented male describing his current work situation:

“Hello, you’ve reached Nigel Mickelson. As of Monday, February 2, I will be relocating to the Paris office, working on the home health care business. I will not be working on toothbrushes anymore. If it’s a toothbrush-related matter now, call Sean Lytle at x3651 or if it’s a brand-related matter please call Shirley Arora at x2111 who will be taking over from me in oral-based. Thank you and have a good day!”

Are you kidding me? You just made my day if I was looking for a brand manager out of one of the major consumer products brands (Arora) or a (probable) marketing manager (Lytle). You also told me the date you were transferring to Paris, along with the day, and checking my handy-dandy calendar that I have taped to the wall in the back of my computer I see that it is from this year. I now know you’ve been in Paris approximately three months total and the information you just relayed to me about the others is probably very near real-time.

In addition, you gave me names and extensions for two other people inside your company, saving me the time it takes to dial each one. (By the way, I’ll dial them anyway just to make sure the info is true and/or I audibly picked the names up correctly, and also that they’re still there, since three months can be a good amount of time for something to have changed!) Not only did you give me all of that, but you created a mini-version of your own resume for me if I was so inclined to pursue you on the merits you mentioned.

The fact that the names you mentioned in oral care all have extensions far removed from one another bolsters my growing suspicion that your company does not place people in the same groups one next to the other in the phone tree. Darn. When people in marketing lie next to each other in the same set of extensions, it becomes a matter of shooting fish in a barrel to find the others. It could be that the way your directory is assembled was done on purpose, though I doubt it. It’s more likely a result of an old phone directory that has morphed itself to spread all over the place over time with departing and new, incoming employees.

Something that sounds dumb but maybe isn’t? Going to that dark place in my character that wants to “judge” people there’s another “telling” event residing on employee voice mail messages and it’s an indicator of how the employee “thinks” on the inside. One such clue is when the employee has occasion to tell the caller that s/he is “away” for a specified time. The manner in the way s/he “reports” the event is telling, I think.

Employees love to enumerate, on their VoiceMail machines, the days they’ll be away from the office by (usually) stating the “start date” and the “end date” of their away times. These dates usually do not include the weekends on either side of the start and end dates, so their away time “sounds” much shorter than they actually are. (By the way, when they leave these messages many times they also leave a name — sometimes several names — of others in their department who can “help you” while they are away. This is why calling around holidays is an especially lucrative “hoe” technique in this particular farming exercise.)

Moving on, and warning you beforehand, you may not agree with what I have to say below. You may, in fact, find it repugnant to your own viewpoints.

“This is Rebecca LovestoSunandDoesItEveryChanceSheGets.”

Wow. Not only do I know that Rebecca is probably of Southeast Asian descent (they’re about the only ones with sixteen syllable names) but she also tells me she’ll be “away” May 11 (a Monday) through April 15 (a Friday) masking (she thinks) the fact that she well may have taken the preceding Thursday and Friday as “sick/personal days” and/or the following Monday/Tuesday as well to pull herself together.

I say this because I’ve heard enough voice mail messages that do not coincide exactly with the dates on the calendar when I am calling. For instance, I might get that message on the preceding Wednesday and/or as late as the following Wednesday, timeframes that don’t really make much sense.

So, in reality, we may have an employee who has a propensity to string “sick/personal” days onto the front and back of vacation times, with five days of paid turning into nearly two weeks.

“You’re pickin’ the doo-doo with the chickens,” you’re thinking.

Think so?

Is it a result of prudent planning on her part? Probably. On that note, it’s likely that she has all her vacations mapped years in advance using calendrical calculations to get her hiatus requests in early.

Is it an untoward absence expense to the company? More and more today I see discussion in the industry about what sick and personal days are costing companies in real time dollars. Back in the days of wine and roses maybe we could afford it. These days, while the world continues to flatten with much of our global competition accustomed to greater working hours and harsher conditions than what we have here in the U.S., these tendencies employees have to cherry-pick on their benefits are going to draw more and more attention from the finance office. Did you know some HR departments report up to the CFO’s office?

Make no mistake about it — employers are watching — and listening, ever on the lookout for advantage. Your attitude is conveyed in your voice and in the things you say (and don’t say). Words are powerful and creative. Be on guard you don’t create the wrong image with yours.

On the down side: Who’s young, who’s not: They wonder how ageism has such a stranglehold on our psyches. I know this is a controversial area, and many don’t want to talk about it, but ageism exists and is thriving in our modern society. If you don’t believe it, just watch Simon’s obnoxious and smarmy reaction to the news that Susan Boyle was 47.

He wasn’t the only one smirking — watch the early audience reaction to her.

You know how the requirement gets masked in the job order: “We want someone “entry level” who can “grow” into a role.” It has occurred to me that culling through a sterling company’s phone tree permits the listener to “hear” and unlawfully select/discriminate for age in the area of employment. It doesn’t make it right (and very well could suffer legal challenge soon) but it’s a fact of life that ageism is prevalent throughout our society and maybe this is one small way, like social networking carrying the danger of biased selection, that ever-so-subtly (or not!) contributes to its accomplishment.

I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my viewpoints as presented above (controversial and picayunish as some may seem) and you may have other observations as well. I am very interested in hearing them. Sure, some of the information gleaning I describe is, admittedly, interpreted by intuition. But if it wasn’t for our intuition, in many instances, where would we be?

Discover a Company’s Phone Number Prefixes

A telephone number’s prefix is the first three numbers after the area code. Often, the phone number for a company’s receptionist will have a different prefix than that of the direct-to-employee phone numbers. For instance, the receptionist might be 703-123-4567 whereas the employee numbers begin with 703-934-xxxx or 703-434-xxxx.

To discover the various prefixes, place the company name and area code in a Google search box and hit “enter.” If you’re lucky, you will come up with more than the main number as employees are often listed in various places with their direct lines.

I was recently researching the phone banks of a company that only used one prefix — the same one for the main number and employees. When this happens, it’s a good bet the “direct dials” are going to lie somewhere “around” the main number. For instance: The main number is 703 456 2000. Dialing 703 456 2001 and then 2002 and then 2003 will, many times, reveal employees seated behind those numbers. Pretty cool, huh?

I could tell looking at the Googled results that the numbers appeared to fall in the 5000, 6000, 7000, and 8000 ranges even though the main number fell in the 6000 range. This told me that I was probably dealing with a location that held 2-3,000 employees.

Call After Hours

The next thing you want to do is dial through a long list of consecutive numbers around the numbers you have found. The goal is to get the name associated with each number.

If someone answers, usually they don’t reveal their names. The best time to get the name is to call after hours and on the weekends when you are more likely to get voicemails.

Program Your Phone to Dial Repeated Numbers Automatically

When I am dialing through a long list of phone numbers that all begin with the same seven digits, I program these first seven numbers into my telephone to allow me to dial them by pressing one button.

What Voicemail Reveals

A few voicemails will contain not only a name but other information as well.

“This is Sheila Jones. I’ve begun my retirement but if you have issues with the WolfCamp project call so-and-so at the site at xxx xxx xxxx or so-and-so here at the main office. Her number is.”

“Hi. This is Mike Peterson. I’m traveling overseas on business and will be back in the office on March 31. The best way to reach me is my email — send me an e-mail at MPeterson@thecompany.sw.com and I’ll get right back to you.”

“Marcus Meters here, HR Manager for the southwest. I’m out of the office until April 6, but if your matter is urgent contact Sandra Morelli at xxx xxx xxxx or Elizabeth Southland at xxx xxx xxxx or Fred Kloppers at xxx xxx xxxx.” Man, is that the whole HR department, or are there more?

“Jim Delaney’s office. If you need to schedule some of his time, contact me, Rachel Evans, at xxx xxx xxxx.”

“I rarely check this location’s voice mail. To reach me, call my cell at xxx xxx xxxx. I’ll get right back to you.” (Oh, by the way, calling the cell number revealed the guy’s name!)

These tiny bits of information give you a feel for what’s going on inside a company. For instance, I found that all those people Marcus counted off fell within 10 numbers of his number. This is a pretty good clue that people who worked in the same departments shared extensions close to each other. This makes it easier to identify people with specific skill sets inside the organization.

Jim Delaney is important enough to have someone answering his phone and scheduling his time, so this is a pretty good indicator he is in upper management or maybe even a C level. Checking an information source like Hoover’s sometimes will reveal that (and the correct spelling of his name!)

By the way, Rachel sat three numbers away on the extension tree so this bolstered my suspicion that whole groups mostly hung together in the phone directory.

Mike Peterson was so gracious as to reveal the company’s email domain and that is of interest many times to the customer. He also told us his job includes oversees travel and is a hint that maybe he is engaged in project management? Sales? Business Development? Could be anything but those come first to my mind.

Cell numbers left on a voicemail often indicate that a person is working in a sales capacity.

If this kind of work is too time-consuming and monotonous for you, there are people out there who are dying to do this work for you. For about a buck a name you can capture a particular company’s telephone directory that includes names, direct-dials, a few titles, and some information that gives you an insider’s feel for a particular company’s location. Imagine what you could do with all that!

You all have seen me write a few times about relying on instinct and your sixth sense when sourcing. But if you don’t have a layered knowledge and experience in the sourcing process, your sixth sense and intuition are going to bring you nothing but a lot of trouble! Using your spidey feelings should only be a part of your expertise.

An unorganized, hit-or miss approach lies at the heart of many sourcing failures. This contributes to an extremely high cost of sourcing in many organizations that is nothing more than inefficiency, laziness, and unnecessary waste. If your sourcing projects begin with a finding of facts rather than a set of guesses your training and instincts while sourcing will serve you best.

Sourcing isn’t a dart game, though the “target” image is used by some in representing it. To hit that bulls-eye you must aim with a deadly accuracy, and that exactitude can only be achieved with a mastery of a certain set of activities. When you’re using the telephone for your sourcing labors, many calls “miss their mark” because they’re not pointed at the right targets. Dartboard sourcing is a good way to fail.

Usually a sourcer isn’t pointed at the right target because the sourcer has failed to ask of the customer what those right target accoutrements might be. “Ask the customer?” you might be thinking with horror. “They’re paying me to know! Why would I do that?” is the knee-jerk reaction of some. These sourcers couldn’t be more wrong. Your customer is paying you to ask the right questions, and most customers understand, and appreciate your curiosity, implicitly. I find that most of my paying suitors are more than willing to spend whatever time is needed to apprise me of the particulars of the sourcing task they’re setting me to.

I wrote a piece on sourcing here on ERE a couple years ago called “Help Me Help You.”

One of the questions I ask my customers in the “Help Me Help You” document that I revealed in that piece is who the person we’re seeking might report to and who that person might report to. This information allows me to skirt around the object of my pursuit on my reconnaissance missions gathering information about the sourcing target(s) I am seeking. Another important question (that is not contained in that 2006 piece) is who reports to the person we seek? Those persons are all conduits of information!

By calling the persons above and below the title strike* I am focused on I become privy to information that I am sure those persons possess. Who doesn’t know who they report to and who doesn’t know who reports to them? Many times it’s not even really those particular persons I talk to — after all, it’s awkward, isn’t it, to call and ask someone, “Who do you report to?” or “Who reports to you?” Those are not questions usually generated in the normal habitat. I talk to administrative assistants many times who support the particular group I’m after. Or I talk to the executive assistant of the C-level person over the group. Or I talk to the receptionist who can look above and below in an org chart for the persons I’m asking after. It’s not hard to ascertain if she can do this. You simply ask her. It’s all good, and I use whatever technique that works.

Another question in my “Help Me Help You” document addresses the actual plea to tell me what I probably do not know — the inside scoop, the dirt, if you will. I couch it in the following term: “Anything else you view as important and that you think I have a need to know.” You’d be surprised how many times this is one of the most filled-out portions of the questionnaire. And you’d be double surprised to know how often the information is of great value, even to an experienced sourcer. There’s a saying about the only dumb question being the unasked question. It couldn’t be more true than in sourcing!

Most of the success you will meet (or not meet) with as a telephone sourcer will be found in the pre-flight workup of each job. I tell my students that phone sourcing is like a plane coming down on the tarmac for a landing — the first thing you do is observe from on-high, and then you descend, straightening your wings as you do, and then you touch down. The success of that first “touch” is mostly contingent on the planning you’ve put into your job. If the landing strip isn’t correctly aligned, if the timing and approach of your touch-down isn’t strictly observed, if your wings aren’t level, you’re going to crash and burn!

Now is the time to hone your phone sourcing knowledge and skills like never before. When recruiting comes roaring back — and it will come roaring back — if you’ve been making assumptions and guesstimating when you make your unprepared sourcing calls and haven’t been doing exactitude plane maintenance and schooling, you’re going to pay a heavy price.

*Title-Strike: Titles vary depending on the size of the company, but in general, the bigger the company, the lower your title-strike should be, and the smaller the company, the higher the title-strike can be. In other words, a manager level in a $10-billion-sale company could be at the same experience level as a director in a $900-million-sale company or a VP in a $100-million-sale company.

Not this time.

One month severance pay plus a couple of weeks unused vacation puts six weeks between him and reduced living. His wife works, and her job looks “pretty secure,” for now.

But he needs to find a job. Immediately interviewing, he’s finding that departments are looking for a new kind of recruiter — one who can do their own sourcing on the front end as well as bringing up the rear in hiring. It seems to me like a lot to ask, and maybe one of management’s forays into “let’s see all we can get” while the “gettin’” appears to be good. It smacks of greed to me but maybe I’m just sensitive on the issue, sensitized as I have been at all the recent media coverage of excess and waste among those with influence.

“Have you thought of doing anything else?” I asked. I could hear him brighten somewhat when he told me, quickly, in a pleasant-sounding stream, of how one of his secondary skill sets at his company was keeping some of its outdated equipment running — he was the go-to person, it seems, for the company’s “Help Desk” requirements.

“Do you enjoy that?” I asked. Quickly, and eagerly, he admitted he did but then added that going there would mean a drop in pay.

“But do you like doing that?” I pressed.

“Yes, I do,” he admitted.

“Then doesn’t that count for something?” I pressed again, trying to be gentle.

“It does, I guess.” I could hear he wasn’t wholly convinced but his mind was starting to ponder the idea.

“I think of this whole thing as a “reset” mode for all of us,” I continued. It’s not like some of us are on the outside and some of us are on the inside. We’re all in this together and whatever happens we’re all of us affected, together.”

“That’s true,” he agreed.

“It doesn’t make it easier, I understand,” I said. “But maybe, just maybe, some of us will be able to go in the direction of our dreams, as that old saying goes,” I continued, referring to Henry David Thoreau’s, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”

We then talked about some proactive things he might also do: posting a “job-wanted” notice in a geographically-local LinkedIn group; attending some in-person networking events; getting active in the “groups” and “discussions” on the social/business networking sites like ERE, RecruitingBlogs.com, and Fordyce; contributing articles, remarks, and advice; and sourcing who was left in staffing at local companies and contacting them directly with his resume. Before we hung up I asked him to stay in touch with me. I told him I was interested in where he goes from here. And I am.

Two in five major firms will cut HR jobs, according to the Acceleration of Globalization report by consultancy Hackett Group. Hackett’s research of 200 global companies in October and November found that 40% were planning HR staff cuts. A further 12% were planning HR recruitment freezes.

As Dr. John Sullivan pointed out in his October column, freezes lead to “a majority” of internal recruiters being laid off and also severely limit the amount of work going to agencies. However, most freezes are and have been hastily and poorly executed, and rather than saving money, often cause serious damage to companies by leaving key revenue-generating roles either unfilled or under-serviced.

These companies have cut off their noses to spite their faces and have crippled themselves moving forward. I understand that many of you will seek employment elsewhere and in other industries. But there is opportunity afoot — opportunity for those who can go the distance. That’s you, isn’t it?

I’m not going to address the metrics of what recruiters do for companies. God knows it’s enormous. What I am going to address is what you, Sourcer, can do for yourself in these times of opportunity.

You and I both know the huge savings we bring to the recruiting process. At least 75% of ordinary recruiting costs can be done away with using a sourcer who understands how to use the Internet as well as the phone (yes, sourcers, you’re going to have to up your game). Think about it — there is nobody left in many recruiting departments to fulfill the needs (and the needs are arising, still, and will always arise unless the company is out of business!) to source and even develop candidate leads. Many staffing departments (if they’re left at all) are down to bare-bones minimum — maybe one or two persons left out of a normal 70 to 100 person workforce. They need your help more than they ever have, and believe it or not, many of those few remaining don’t know you exist or what help you can be to them! Enlighten them.

“How do I find this work?” you’re thinking. Put your sourcing skills to work. Like we’re so fond of telling others, make a job out of finding a job. You have a great advantage because you understand how to find the decision-makers in organizations. Find out which companies have killed off their recruiting departments and go at them. Find that one (or two) person(s) left in the fractured organization who can give you work when the need arises.

Try Tech Crunch’s Total Layoffs Since August 27, 2008 report to start. Find out which have decimated their recruiting departments as well.

Here is the 24/7 Wall St. 2008 Report on the 20 largest layoffs by company as well. It includes:

1. Citigroup
2. The Bank of America buyout of Merrill Lynch
3. General Motors
4. Hewlett-Packard
5. Lehman Brothers
6. AT&T
7. DHL Express
8. The California Department of Education
9. Starbucks
10. Chrysler
11. Wachovia
12. Dow Chemical
13. NASA
14. The State of California
15. Sun Microsystems
16. Bennigan’s
17. Washington Mutual
18. Bear Stearns
19. American Airlines
20. Merck

It’s going to take some digging but hey, isn’t that what we’re good at?

Someone suggested that it might be interesting to read a scenario out of my journal and the specifics of keeping such a journal, and what goes in it. At first surprised, I soon grasped the interest potential in reading a behind-the-scenes synopsis of a phone sourcer’s day. So, to wit:

Writing about your sourcing experiences in a journal gives you the opportunity to read back over your process releasing new ideas along the way. This is how I started communicating my processes — for years and years, when I had a particularly good day (or a particularly bad one!) I’d sit down and write out what happened. I’d do it in a script format. This is where many of the scripts I use as examples in my training came from.

One such day’s entry turned into a script that I used to demonstrate the effectiveness of acquiescence when sourcing. I advise that it’s usually best, when you’re in the early stages of contact with a Gatekeeper, to follow her suggestions until the two of you have established some minor rapport that allows you to “take over” at some point in the exchange and begin to direct her actions to achieve what you want. The following entry is from 2005.

August 6, 2005
Received job for Market Research Director in a.m. Good customer. Wants persons involved in market research at a target list of pharma/biotech companies. Looks like the old eye-dropper with an initial lavish budget of 35 names — told him for this position he’s going to need a lot more. He knows that but said his client is new to the names-sourcing concept and wants to see what it gets him and may come back to us for a second phase of work if he likes what he sees initially. <sigh> Time is of the essence (as it always is). He’s sent a couple dozen companies with the remark:

“It might make some sense to start with some of the smallest companies on the target list, and leave the real biggies for a later phase. They have a LOT of market research people, whereas some of the less-huge companies might have a group small enough to be manageable for us … “

He wants me to start first on the U.S. headquarters as that is where market research people are most likely to be concentrated and then next go out to the divisions. I don’t think time will permit much if any of that, certainly not in this first phase of work. He further instructs:

“He’s trying to fill a position as a Senior Director of Market Research, so his best prospects, and our highest priorities, will be SR. DIRECTORS, DIRECTORS, and ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS … as opportunity permits, he would also like us to flesh out levels below that (MANAGERS, and ANALYSTS).”

If I got all that we’re talking a couple hundred names — easy — out of the majority of these companies. In particular he wants people from any therapeutic area/business group, but has particular interest in people working exclusively, or partially, in the following three therapeutic areas: Oncology, CNS (Central Nervous System? — I hate it when they use abbreviations) and Addiction-Dependent Drugs.

Addiction-Dependent Drugs? That’s new. Ask for better definition …

Client would like e-mail addresses — not gonna happen. He has sent along a packet of names that includes market research people from the target companies with the remark that many are old — this means many will be gone or have moved to other functions higher up on the title level or maybe even now working in other areas. In addition there appears to be some marketing/product management people that either now work or have worked in Oncology or CNS. These people, or their administrative assistants, would know who the market research people are assigned to those therapeutic areas of interest.

Customer has tagged some of the target companies with an asterisk (*) to denote priority companies — many of them are large companies — start with the “smaller” of the “large” companies.

***
Those were my notes before starting the job and the following is the lesson formed from these notes.

A recent search for “Market Research Directors” in pharmaceutical companies demonstrates the power of acquiescence. Pharmaceutical companies have become increasingly difficult to navigate — but there are ways.

In I go, starting with my older research, LinkedIn, Spoke and other Internet results. I found as much (if not more!) elsewhere on the Internet as I did on LinkedIn, and much of my old research (and the customer’s) was outdated. But the Internet and LinkedIn stuff was especially valuable on this search. (By the way, I no longer use Spoke — I find Spoke these days to be nothing more than a repetition of LinkedIn residents.)

I Googled in different variations on the company name, along with the words director, manager, VP, “market research,” oncology, CNS, central nervous system, and addiction, and I looked up the drugs the companies produced in these verticals and Googled their names as well. In addition I added “area code/prefix” of locations I knew to be appropriate for the different locations within each company. I gathered above and below the title strike because some managers will have moved into director positions — after all, Internet research can be notoriously dated.

(Title strike refers to the level you want to “strike in” upon for your open position; in other words if you have a director position open, you’ll probably want to source managers for an upward move. Titles vary depending on the size of the company, but in general, the bigger the company, the lower your title-strike should be, and the smaller the company, the higher the title-strike can be. In other words, a manager-level in a $10-billion-sale company could be at the same experience level as a director in a $900-million-sale company or a VP in a $100-million-sale company.)

VPs will many times have administrative assistants or, better yet, executive assistants supporting them who may be willing to tell you who reports to their boss just to get you out of their hair and into someone else’s!

I generated a broad field of names (probably 300 or so) across 20 companies. Then I began the “drill in” process. One of the big hurdles was wading through all the answering machine nonsense nowadays when you call these companies. Usually I hit zero immediately when I hear that hated, “Stop and listen to this message. .. ” I don’t have time to “stop” for anything. “Zero” usually takes you to a live operator.

The following are a couple exchanges I had within the companies with the receptionists. One demonstrates the technique of acquiesce I have referred to above.

At this first company, I had no relevant names to “get me in.” I called — these pharma companies take a long time to answer nowadays!

“ABC Pharmaceutical Company, Missy speaking.”

“Hi Missy, this is Maureen Sharib, can you please transfer me to your market research department?”

“Which one, we have many?!” she gleefully announces.

“What different ones do you have, Missy?”

“Oh there are so many! I don’t have time to tell you — I’m on the switchboard — what is it you’re trying to accomplish, maybe I can help you that way?”

“I’m trying to reach someone in market research regarding oncology … ” I trail off, hoping she’ll pick up on my need. Notice I just give her one area of interest. To give her any/all of the vertical requests would probably ring her suspicion bell. At this point she does interrupt me:

“Just a moment, please” and before I can object she ejects me into their telephone transfer system, at the end of which I hit someone’s voice mail. Not knowing who it was or what it was, I write down the name of the person (Jeanette Owens) from the message; I also put the questioning remark “Market Research/Oncology?” after the name because you just never know. The line disconnected, not allowing me to “zero out” to the receptionist. Wasting no time, I call back in immediately. Missy answers again.

“Yes Missy, this is Maureen again. Well, that didn’t help, I hit someone’s voice mail — was that oncology market research?”

“Yes, it was — did you leave a message?”

“No, I didn’t leave a message with Jeanette, I didn’t know who she was — is she the Administrative Assistant for the department?” I casually ask. Notice I am repeating names (first) back to her. This is usually one of the first steps in establishing the “rapport” I mentioned earlier.

“Yes she is,” Missy affirms.

I silently replace the “?” with “AA/oncology market research” in my notes while simultaneously taking this bull by the horns.

“Missy, is there anyone else in the department we could try; is there maybe a manager, or even a director, you know, someone who heads the department, you could transfer me to?”

Missy hesitates. I wait, not too expectantly, because many times at this point (in pharma especially) I’m turned away with something to the effect, “If you leave a message with the AA she’ll return your call; that’s all I have,” at which point I usually acquiesce, agreeing to be transferred to the AA again, knowing that my response to her voice mail will be to “zero out” and hopefully get transferred to someone else in the same department or to a different receptionist who might be more helpful. In sourcing, hope springs eternal.

Sometimes it works that way, but again, sometimes it doesn’t. After which, I move onto the next company, vowing to come back to this one using my newfound knowledge about its oncology market research department to my advantage, which usually helps me get in — the different day/different dollar theory. Missy did just as I thought she might when I ended up back at her desk. “You’ll have to leave a message with her,” she informed me in a clipped tone. “All-righty-then,” I think to myself as I move onto the next target.

This job’s first phase concluded with 35 names out of a dozen of the original target companies, many of which were on the “priority” list. I put a note in the job that we had only “scratched the surface.” The end client was well pleased and ordered a second phase of work. I ended up delivering about 100 names out of 17 of the original target companies.
******
This actually happened as I have recounted it above. By the way, anything you see me write about sourcing is taken from my actual experiences, and much of this is material recorded in my journals. As you can see, this particular exercise was time-consuming on the front end but very effective. As you get further into the job, and work with and off your gathered information, it gets smoother and faster. The names become more prolific as the job advances; this rarely happens at the beginning of a job. You need to be organized and tenacious. You have to be gutsy and pick up that telephone and ask for information! There’s no other way — at least I haven’t found it yet. If you have, let me know!

“Call and ask for the breakroom or — is there a cafeteria? Ask for that. Many times there’s a black wall phone hanging over a grimy desk with lots of post-it notes and writing on the wall. If anyone is in there, they might answer! These sites usually have a car wash section too — they wash the cars for these high-end customers here in the states before returning them after service. Ask for the ‘car-wash person.’ When you get him or her on the phone, tell him you’re in the wrong place — you know that — can s/he tell you who one of the technicians is, so you might ask for him by name? Chances are he will tell you. And then when he tells you one, ask for another, and then another. Be gentle with him. Don’t scare him,” I add last, chuckling knowingly to myself.

And then I surprised myself when I told him, “Walk the grid in your mind — think about who works where and what they know — then go directly at them…”

“Walk the grid.” I suppose this is another way of saying, “Become one with your target and imagine yourself inside your target, walking around the place, looking here and snooping there, all the while minding your own very real business.”

And then, as a further surprise in my day, I’m lying in bed that night surfing the channels and what comes up but the movie “Bone Collector.”

Still not putting two and two together, I click on it (it was an entertaining movie!) and the movie is at the scene where Denzel Washington (Rhyme, a crippled cop/teacher ) is telling Angelina Jolie (Amanda Donaghy, rookie cop) to “walk the grid” in order to collect evidence at a grisly crime scene. Rhyme recognizes a natural talent in Donaghy for the work and assumes a mentor position with her. Donaghy (Jolie), struggling with past trauma and an innate calling to obey Rhyme’s instructions, walks her first grid, collecting evidence that helps to ultimately catch the killer.

I’m reminded of the words that popped out of my mouth without thinking earlier in the day and sigh, knowing that on the morrow I will be compelled to obey what I think of as the calling in the cosmos, walking my own kind of grid in the composition of this missive.

‘Walking the grid” is a forensics term; one meaning is to scour a crime scene — to scrutinize it. The terminology is also used in computer and positioning terminology, but before anyone leaps to the conclusion that I will be talking about actual crime scenes — I will not be. I am using fanciful imagery for the purpose of explaining one of my sourcing processes from an observer’s perspective. This is an attempt to wash the reader’s mind of any value and/or value judgment and to recast it with the practice of probing and questioning; in other words, a “learning how to learn” technique.

Donaghy: “I can’t do this.”
Rhyme: “You can do it. Yes you can. Yesterday you stopped a train. You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.”
Donaghy: “Don’t work me, Ryan. Just tell me what to do next.”
Rhyme: “Very slowly, walk the grid. One foot in front of the other. I want you to look around you now. Remember, crime scenes are three-dimensional: floors, walls and ceilings.”
Donaghy: “There’s a small piece of wood and what looks like some hair.”
Rhyme: “Alright, I’m going to walk you through collecting the evidence. You do everything exactly as I say.”

“Walking the grid” inside a target company means to “walk” through the front door of a company and freely investigate the environs in your mind. I always see the puzzled looks on the faces of my students when I say this in class. Not many people think to venture inside a company like this. Crime scenes are three-dimensional: floors, walls and ceilings. So are sourcing jobs.

The idea is that each “target” has similar characteristics. Depending on what’s going on at the site (headquarters will usually be larger and far busier than branch sites) each location will have pretty much the same activities going on. There will be, at headquarter sites for example, many times, marketing (including business development, alliances and corporate marketing), finance (including investor relations), some sales, many times R&D, most of the C-level executives and administrative staffs that it takes to support the various departments, sometimes support, operations (including maintenance), security, and last, but not least in our book, HR!

The one thing that 99% of them have is a receptionist(s) — also known as “gatekeepers” — on staff who meets the public onslaught at the front door. You and I are generally included in that warring horde, and you have seen me many times discuss how to deal with the gatekeeper, including envisioning what she looks like, what her environs look like, and what’s going on around her in the moments you are attempting to get and hold her attention. But what happens when you can’t deal with the gatekeeper? What happens when she won’t let you through?

In addition to the departments listed out above, company locations are also likely to/might have the following physical characteristics:

• brick and mortar exteriors
• doors
• individual offices of all sizes and character
• floors, walls, and ceilings
• levels
• elevators
• stairwells
• bathrooms
• breakrooms
• mailrooms
• conference rooms, large and small
• media rooms
• reception areas
• maintenance facilities
• security gates and guardstons and tons of office equipment
• cafeterias
• gyms
• childcare facilities
• dry cleaners and other services
• vending machines
• hallways
• whole campuses with several buildings
• parking lots
• sidewalks
• landscaping/lakes with ducks on them

Many, many other physical attributes but I think you’re getting the picture with what I’ve listed out above.

The idea here is to encapsulate in your mind what the joint looks like. Did you know you can go to Google Earth and “Explore, Search, and Discover”? That Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, and 3-D buildings for location-specific information? This function was formerly known as “Keyhole” and many a time I use it to get a bird’s eye view of a company location. With a glimpse I can see how many buildings a company has on its campus, where the parking lots are located, if they have a security detail cars must pass through, if the location appears isolated or not, and lots and lots of extraneous information I know you are having a hard time comprehending what this has to do with sourcing.

This visual information, coupled with the statistical information I get from Hoover’s and the location information I get from the company website, allows me to begin the “grid walks” in my searches at my individual targets. If I see that a company has 14,000 total employees (at Hoover’s) and 2,750 of them are at headquarters (yes, Hoovers tells you this!) and I see at Google Earth that the company’s headquarters has six buildings, I can pretty much infer that each building might contain separate (and whole) functions. When I call the front desk this information has many times afforded me just the familiar “ring” I needed in my pursuit.

Let’s say I called my first target company in the first morning of my search. Shirley answered and she wouldn’t let me pass with my normal approach. I note her name in my research document because I know I’m going to be calling back. I call her back the second morning. I do a change-up in my approach. I know that Shirley has answered literally hundreds of calls since last we spoke. She is not likely to remember me.

Hi Shirley. This is Maureen Sharib. I’m trying to reach Operations — they’re not in your building are they?

Oh, no Maureen — they’re in Building 5 — you need that number?

Yes, I could sure use it!

Here you go — Maria should answer — she’s the receptionist in that building.

In case Maria doesn’t answer, Shirley, can you tell me who heads up Operations over there?”

Sure! That’s Bob Jones…

And so it goes more often than not. This is part of what is called “competitive intelligence” and it’s not as hard as it sounds. Sure, it involves a good amount of legwork on the front end. This is the beginning of the work, and things evolve from this point. But, as you can see, it’s a methodical tracing on each and every search and if you do this, if you “walk the grid” at each of your target companies, I promise you results!

Here’s another scenario.

Hi Maria, Shirley gave me your number. I was trying to reach Bob Jones – is he in?

I haven’t seen him come in yet this morning. You want his voice mail?

Well, no, not really — maybe you can tell me — who supports him?

That would be Arleen — she’s not in yet either — it’s early!

I know. Has anyone in Operations come in yet?

Oh, sure, Pete Miller always gets here first — he went up just a few minutes ago — you want him?

That would be great, Maria, — before you transfer me, so I don’t sound so stupid when I get him on the phone, WHAT IS HIS TITLE?

More times than not she’ll fluidly answer after just such an exchange. But look what I gathered in two calls!

• The receptionist’s name at the main number (Shirley)
• Where Operations is located (Building 5)
• The receptionist’s name at Building 5 (Maria)
• The name of the Head of Operations (Bob Jones)
• His Administrative Assistant (Arleen)
• The fact that most people in Operations don’t arrive “early”
• The fact that Operations is probably located on an upper floor
• One Ops report and his title — and one guy who does arrive early (Pete Miller)

Before you think, “Well, that’s not so much” — let me beg your pardon. I didn’t go on in the exchange where I press Maria for more information about the inhabitants of the Operations department and if you’d seen me do it you’d more than probably be amazed. It still amazes me today when these exchanges deliver so much information.

The sourcing “trick” here is really no trick at all — it’s the willingness on the part of the sourcer to set each job up methodically and to “walk the grid” on each and every target in a search. It’s time-consuming and this is the real fly-in-the-ointment for many. It’s another reason why sourcing is a separate and entirely different function from recruiting. I see sourcing as creating a bridge between recruiting and marketing in the sense that so much competitive intelligence is uncovered in any one search that this information deserves its own unique conduit for utilization. Walk that grid when you’re thinking about setting up your own sourcing departments!

Sure, at first she’d rock backwards and plump back down on the floor, ever determined to get back up. When she finally was at the point where she was steady on her hands and knees, the first thing that happened was that she went backwards! Like a train that has to roll a little backwards before it can go forward, she’d push back a couple knee-steps and then she’d lurch forward, falling awkwardly flat sometimes with the momentum. Up though she’d get, rock unsteadily, trace a knee-step or two back, and then off she went like a whirling dervish!

There’s a sourcing reason in this grandparent reporting. Sometimes on a sourcing job we have to trace backwards a few steps before we can move forward. And this is never as true as on a job that is giving us a lot of difficulty. The fact of the matter is, a job that is presenting a lot of difficulty may have been set up wrong. What do I mean?

A sourcing job needs to be set up, each and every time, in an organized manner. I set my jobs up in a Word doc using 10-point sized Times New Roman font. I do it the same way for each and every job.

Beginning at the top, I set the Job Number, the Customer’s info, the Job Description, the customer’s specific instructions, the number of names needed, and the geographic requirement. That’s just for starters. After that I set in the target companies. I use Hoover’s to set the following for each company:

• Company Name
• Location
• Phone
• Fax
• Website
• Financial info that Hoover’s offers — # of employees, percentage change in this, last year’s gross sales, percentage change in this, etc.
• Company Blurb — Hoover’s is very clever at creating a synopsis for a company. Many times this creative wordsmithing they do helps me when I’m on the phone with a Gatekeeper at a particular company. If she asks me what division I want and I haven’t checked beforehand, many times a quick and agile scan through their company bio offers me this information.

Usually I have a dozen or more companies on a search for 50 or more names, but not always. But if I had to say what an average was, that would be it — 12.

So now I have the job “set up” the way I like it. Next I set out to do the research on each and every target that is so critical for me before I start my phoning. This is where many times searches get into trouble. This part gets skipped over. The sourcer doesn’t give each target enough attention to really understand what it is they’re going to be facing on their calls. What I’m talking about here is gathering a grasp for what lies on the other end of the phone.

How large is the location you’re going to be calling into likely to be? Is it the headquarters of a company or is it a branch location? Branches are generally easier to penetrate as they’re smaller and more quickly grasped. If it’s a headquarters, do you know where within the company the organization you’re after is going to lie?

Do you know what C-level the section you need to get into reports up to? Know this C-level’s name? Hoover’s usually offers it — put it into your job! One of the first things I do when I start phoning is ask who this C-level’s executive assistant is!

Do you know what title the company calls the particular person you’re after? Many times titles differ from company to company and a quick visit to the company’s “jobs” page will likely reveal what they’re calling what you need.

Have you done this company before? On some of my searches, the same Fortune companies appear, time after time. Rarely am I sourcing for the same position within a closely related timeframe, but my previous research notes on that company are always helpful and I place them into my job. Things like:

• Receptionist’s (Gatekeeper) name
• Previous names I’ve sourced there
• Direct dials I may have found. Direct dials allow me to skip past the gatekeeper and maneuver directly inside if I need to!
• Any information (including the janitor’s name if he happened to answer the phone on one of my former midnight raids) that might help me on the present search.

Do any of the online sources offer you any names you might use when you start your calling? Put them into the job. Use them to build out their organizations — LinkedIn seems to be the drug of choice these days for this. But don’t stop here. Do some simple Boolean — you’d be surprised what the search engines are still offering that LinkedIn doesn’t have, and will probably never have! Many phone sourcers are leaving this part out — the upfront Internet research piece, relying on the quick hit that LinkedIn many times offers. It’s a mistake. But there’s a caveat here. Don’t get too hung up chasing the Internet stuff — it can consume a lot of time and can become a “safe haven” for a sourcer who is suffering phone fright. Don’t let this part serve as an excuse not to get on the phone or delay getting on the phone. The phone is where you’re going to get far more results and it’s what your customers are really expecting you (and paying you!) to do!

Now that I have much of the above captured, I’m ready to get on the phone. But notice what I’ve done to this point: it’s a considerable body of work and I haven’t made a dime! Do you have the stomach to do that?

There’s another reason searches get mucked up and stall. We misapply the information we’ve been given or that we found on our own. Usually this happens it’s because we haven’t read the job description closely enough and/or asked enough or the right questions. Asking the right questions comes with experience, and is one reason it’s a good idea for newbie sourcers to align themselves with more experienced sourcers who can mentor them/help them get started. The problem is there still aren’t enough experienced phone sourcers out here to feed the hungry horde and the ravening appetites of customers for this service is increasing dramatically. And who has the time?

Asking the right questions: that’s another can of worms. Being thrilled to death that you have a customer willing to pay you to do this work is no reason not to push back when you sense inequities. If the customer is asking you to “peel the onion” four layers deep when the original proposition/offer was that you source names and titles, and suddenly he wants a .NET Engineer who speaks Japanese who has curly red hair and willing to move to Timbuktu and is interested in the position is an example of what I mean “four layers deep.” Those particular problems belong, rightly so, to the customer, and he’s going to have to wade through the batch of names at the target companies that have the title “.NET Engineer” to ferret out his own peculiar preferences. (Unless of course he’s paying you thousands of dollars per name because what he’s really asking you to do is his own recruiting work.)

Don’t get sucked into this trap. Believe me: finding “.NET Engineers” inside target companies these days is hard enough!

There exists still another reason searches stall. It has to do with our own mistaken efforts. Taking all the correct information and applying faulty assumptions is a sure way to get our wheels mired in the muck. When this happens, we usually have a sense of it happening. At this point, usually the best thing to do is throw the baby out with the bathwater and start over. I mean, start completely over, from the beginning, and follow the steps outlined here. Sometimes, especially when we’re learning a new discipline, we have to go backwards before we can move forward!

I hope (and believe) both these excellent groups will give Sam exposure for his phone sourcing business, Longfellow Search. More than that, I know Sam will personally go places he never dreamed he’d go as moderator of these groups! (How are those working for you, Sam?)

Recently I’ve been watching (and thinking about) the changes that are coming over our ERE site.

Being most concerned with my beloved groups here on the site, I’ve watched anxiously with the new design as the buttons for “Groups” and for “Discussions” descend from their former prominent placement at the top of the page to the bottom, bunched under the heading “ERE Network” along with “Feedback & assistance” and “People.”

Encouraged by the recent addition of community conversations on the right side of the Main page near the top, I notice I can watch all the recent activity at the site scroll by as it develops: Group Postings, Group Comments, Articles, Article Comments, etc., and click on any one of them to be whisked to the post. Knowing that ERE has made wise choices in the past regarding their site re-design, I trust in the powers that be and look forward to an ever-brightening future for the forward-thinking and powerful ERE. I feel privileged to be a part of this.

Getting back to the main subject, I know there are over 140 groups on the site broken into three categories:

• Topics & Interests: 46 groups
• Industries & Occupations: 38 groups
• Geographic Regions: 58 groups

The site further earmarks groups by:

• Active groups
• New groups
• Special groups

If you’re interested in getting involved in a community, joining a group and contributing to the daily discussions in that group is a good way to do it!

Beyond that, forming a group as a Group Leader is an option available to any ERE member. Simply click on the “start a new group” button on the Groups page, name it, fill out a Mission Statement for the group, and submit it for approval. The process couldn’t be easier and it is usually approved within 24 hours. Once you have a group you are free to direct its course. This part is not as easy as it sounds!

Creating a group carries a responsibility with it — by volunteering to birth and guide a group you are signaling to the community that you will be here for the long term. You’ll watch over and tend that group and make it an interesting and safe place for community members to “stop by” in their quests for information.

It goes without saying (or maybe it should be said!) that it is mostly up to the group leaders to keep a group on track and interesting. On a daily basis I watch over all my groups and attempt to contribute something to at least half of them (I have several) in an attempt to start discussions, keep discussions going, keep them interesting, and keep them contributing to the community.

It’s not an easy job.

It requires diligence, time, and an eye out for “issues” that might be of interest to members. I peruse the online news for topics and I freely use them, teasers with links to the originals, on my groups. I try to contribute something original from my own experiences at least two to three times a week. Sometimes this gets hard, but I try to discipline myself to this rigorous schedule. I don’t always succeed, but I try.

More than anything, group maintenance takes time. I spend two to three hours each day watching, reading, posting at my groups — it won’t take you nearly this amount of time if you only have one group to start. That’s how I did it — I had ASK Maureen first and stayed that course for a while before I got the bright idea of opening other groups. I start early, usually at 4 a.m. and I work my groups (both here on ERE and off) ‘til the birds start singing around 6.

Throughout the day, I spend another one or two hours between all my groups, so I can say with certainty I spend three hours a day on group maintenance. I like it, and that’s another advantage: it gets my creative side going and I enjoy that immensely. This is why it’s so important that we all understand what makes ourselves tick.

I push my groups hard. In the beginning of my groups (and I know Sam has done this) I invite people here on the network to my groups; you can do that if you’re a Group Leader. It’s not an easy process. In fact, it’s laborious, allowing you to invite maybe two people every minute, one by one. I encourage ERE to consider allowing Group Leaders easier access to the site’s members to make this community-building easier.

I also watch other groups and contribute when I can. There are many fascinating groups here on ERE that have creative and active Group Leaders who place community first and I appreciate them. I would signal out Diane Propsner, Sam Medalie, Barry Geiman, John DePolo, Steve Levy, and Steven Rothberg as outstanding and successful Group Leaders we can all learn from. There are others and I apologize for anyone I left out.

Here’s a trick that goes a long ways toward building community: If you’re the type to visit and contribute at other network sites, it’s a great boon to network (and group) membership if you include a link in your postings back to interesting posts/articles or posts of your own here on ERE. I try to whenever I can and I hope it helps build our membership base. I try to do this democratically, it should be noted; I link to other network sites as well as ERE. I confess to having a preferential fondness for ERE and links back here are probably more prevalent in my online posts.

Creating a group is just the beginning of an exciting and rewarding commitment to community that will return dividends you just can’t imagine. Try it!

Catch and release is a practice within recreational fishing intended as a technique of conservation. After capture, the fish are unhooked and returned to the water before experiencing serious exhaustion or injury. According to the Wikipedia definition, using barbless hooks makes it possible to release the fish without removing it from the water (a slack line is frequently sufficient).

Catch and release has been practiced by some countries for centuries as a management tool to reduce the cost of stocking hatchery-raised trout, and as conservation to prevent target species from disappearing in heavily fished waters or “prized” circumstances.

Reading the Wikipedia explanations for catch and release, I was struck by how it could be applied to names sourcing. Certainly, what we do when we source candidates with specific skill sets is “capture” them. But how effectively are we releasing them back into our companies’ bloodstreams? By “releasing” them into a vigorous pipeline, we can reduce the “cost of stocking”.

Reduce the cost of stocking? Yes, we can reduce the cost of future hiring if we, once having captured them, “release” them with the understanding that they will become part of a “fishery,” or a database that we can pull on in future need. Most potential candidates are amenable to this.

“Do you mind if we keep in touch?”

“Is it ok if I send you opportunities now and then?”

“Let’s get to know each other.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you today? I’d like to if I can.”

Who would say no to this approach? This is often forgotten by recruiters who are afraid of reaching out and touching people. Why they are afraid is a whole subject for another article but as it applies to “capture and release” of possible candidates, it may be said that fewer and fewer people today possess the social skills required to engage others. Very few possess effective “capture” skills, the area of sourcing that requires great technique and long, hard hours of practice, but release skills are much more easily developed.

When your good sourcer gives you a list of names to call and you have the ability to sit down at your desk and call through the list, do just that. Don’t let that list languish or age: most lists lose 20% per year, so it is imperative that you discipline yourself in the process to call through your lists immediately. Even two weeks can see the loss of one or two people off a 50-name list!

As you’re calling through your list, be mindful of the physical circumstances surrounding the people you’re calling. Occasionally, you’ll call someone who may have someone else in the room with them and now is not the best time to talk to you. If you’re attuned to the person on the other end of the line, you’ll hear the discomfort and they’ll appreciate you “releasing” them at that particular point in time.

“It sounds like now might not be a great time to talk. Would it be ok if I called you this evening? What’s your at-home number and I’ll call you at 8!”

This line may be met with relief on the other end!

Sometimes you have to think for the other person and understand their motivations. This will give you an advantage addressing the other reason for practicing catch and release, as conservation to prevent target species from disappearing.

Chances are the people who you’ve hired or charged an in-house sourcer to find are “swimming” in heavily fished waters. Knowing this and appreciating their “rare” status in this ever-more accelerating talent war we’re operating in will give you a leg up on your competition.

“I know you’re busy and I appreciate the time you’re taking with me today,” will go a long way in acknowledging the other person’s status and they will appreciate it. That’s not too hard to say either, is it?

One Fishy Caveat

However, there is research that deep sea fishing catch-and-release doesn’t always work so well. In fact, most deep-sea fish species suffer from the sudden pressure change when wound to the surface from great depths; these species cannot adjust their body’s physiology quickly enough to follow the pressure change.

This is an interesting light to cast upon this subject. Wikipedia suggests, “In light of this research, anglers must show responsibility and restraint when deep sea fishing and, after catching and keeping a reasonable number of deep sea fish, cease fishing for them.”

The same may apply to names sourcing in the sense that there are some people in some industries who are just too deeply embedded in their organizations for you to effectively be able to pull them out. Reasons include lucrative and promising stock options, pay tied to project performance, deep-seated emotional/intellectual attachment to a parent company, restrictive competition covenants in employment contracts, and others.

The defense industry comes first to mind when speaking of this species; our educational system has not produced enough technical talent in the last dozen years and many of these companies are staffed with older and unusually dedicated workers. It’s harder to pry them loose.

Pharma/biotech also is prone to more difficulty as are a few other industries, including high tech, some areas of finance and IT, and many areas of engineering. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it will take effort.

But overall, where “deep sea sourcing” is concerned, maybe we should consider heeding Wikipedia’s warning to “show responsibility and restraint” after catching and keeping a reasonable number of candidates.

I’d forgotten the fun of Internet search.

I had a job come in during January. The position was for a senior-level manager in the R&D software group of a major storage business. The customer told me in the specifications that the person we were looking for was “an uber-geek who has the capacity and the desire to talk business to customers.” Further clarification pointed out that most qualified candidates “have blogs, or they’re named on the Web because they are conference speakers, award winners, or as with ____, have a brief profile of their background.” They were also likely to have been awarded patents.

It was apparent we weren’t looking for the average software engineer; what we needed was someone with many (in the range of 20) years of experience and the ability to be a spokesperson for a company or, in the least, a product line. “Chief Technologist” was one of the titles they were allowed to carry.

An “evangelist” type. We haven’t seen that word much lately. The word “evangelist,” according to many online dictionaries, points to a religious perspective. According to Wikipedia, a “Technical Evangelist” is “a person whose job or role is to promote technologies. This may be, officially or unofficially, on behalf of a company or organization or on a personal basis; for instance, open source evangelism. An evangelist promotes the use of a particular product or technology through talks, articles, blogging, user demonstrations, recorded demonstrations, or the creation of sample projects. The word evangelism is taken from the context of religious evangelism because of the similar recruitment of converts and the spreading of the product information through the ideological or committed.”

I noticed that the definition included the word “blogging” and this reminded me, humorously, that five years ago that concept would probably not have been included. How things change. Recognizing that this was a job that would require a sizable amount of Internet research on the front end, I got to work over the weekend. The following is my experience.

The first thing I did was visit LinkedIn for the low-hanging suspects, knowing that by using keywords found in the job description, I could cut closer to the bone as many of my targets were very large competitors of my customer. I was just as interested in the lower-level engineers I came across who had the specific keywords in their profiles (who says some of these don’t read like resumes?) as in the few titles that surfaced that appeared to be spot-on for what I was looking for. I needed 100 names, knowing that somewhere between this number and 50 would be what would be required for my customer to actually hire someone out of the bunch.

Why am I interested in the lower levels? Because they have bosses, and these bosses also have bosses, and it’s not too much of a challenge for a good telephone-names sourcer to agitatedly state to a harried gatekeeper: “I reached so-and so’s voice mail. Can you tell me, does he have a manager above him? And oh, by the way, in case I hit her voice mail, does she have someone above her?”

And bingo, I have it. But that’s not really what this lesson is about.

The customer had also graciously sent me a list of a hundred or so names that they had identified (some of these, by the way, were the same names I was surfacing on LinkedIn) with their internal notes as to the person’s skill sets. I cannot impress upon you enough how valuable this is. Not only will you, as a name sourcer, not duplicate your customer’s work, but you will also gain vision into the company based on the customer’s work already in place. In most instances, this will help you get in faster and more efficiently. (This is very dependent on how recent the work is. Anything inside of a year is mostly going to be good still.)

Before we go further, I should also confess that as I was doing LinkedIn, I was also doing patent searches on each company, using the refinement option in the patent search field to refine my results. It worked like a charm. I was uncovering and copying out those names (patent filers) at each company as I went along. I was also hatching some of the customer’s names as I did this, revealing to me that it had probably done this patent searching as well. Notice I said “some.” I was coming up with new names as well.

By going directly at those names that appear to fit the customer’s bill, you can pretty much closely identify others in those persons’ hemispheres that will also fill the order. After I finished the LinkedIn and patent capturing, I filtered the results against the customer’s sent work. There were several crossovers. Not a lot, but some. Peering closely at the crossovers, I decided to go at these first. I don’t know why I did this. I just did. Habit, I guess.

Pulling up my Google screen, I typed the person’s name in the box. I chose the patent holders first. If the name was unique enough, I typed it within quotations without the corresponding company that the person worked for. If it was not a unique name (and a surprising amount of them these days are not), I added the company’s name also. Voila.

On many of the results, other names came up. Seizing upon those names, I typed them in, one by one. (Do you see how we’re descending into the ethersphere?) Results on those names began to reveal all sorts of things, including revelatory blogs and titles. Once I had a batch of them assembled, I got on the phone and did my thing. Within a couple days, I had my 100 names, confident that any of them could fill the open requisition.

“But Maureen, we thought you were a phone sourcer?” I am a phone sourcer, silly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the chase, the events leading up to the telephoning. When I first started name-sourcing, I relied heavily on Internet results. It mostly worked back then because not many people were doing it. Knowing that I am technologically challenged and that learning the ins-and-outs of Internet search would tryingly contest my limited abilities, I realized early on that if I was going to survive in this space, I’d better develop, as Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother used to say, a “gimmick.”

Recognizing my deadly propensity for verbally gathering information from people, I adopted, like the famous stripper, a self-mocking attitude that, at times, helps me put on pseudo-sophisticated airs in order to get my work accomplished. It works like a charm, too.

If you routinely call gatekeepers and get lines like, “You need a name to be transferred to anyone,” it could be that you are routinely doing or saying something that is causing that gatekeeper to view you as a threat to her company’s infrastructure.

Effective communication skills allow you easy entrance to most any gatekeeper’s psyche. The first thing you must do to effectively communicate with anyone is put the other person at ease when you call.

This is not accomplished by demand. It is not accomplished by over-enthusiastic and phony-sounding greetings. Nor is it accomplished by over-long explanations of why you’re calling.

Apply a Friendly, Forthright Attitude

Technology will continue to change the way we do things, but technology will never come close to the one simple thing that humans need most from each other, and that is approval.

If that gatekeeper gets just the slightest whiff of falsehood from you, she’s out of there faster than a scared rabbit. If she senses a genuine friendliness from you that signals approval (of your own self as well as of her) she is much more apt to listen and apply herself to your request.

“But I am genuine and friendly!” you’re thinking.

Are you? Do people remark on your telephone voice? Do they compliment you on your affability on the telephone? On your telephone skills?

The first thing you do when that gatekeeper answers is listen. You listen to what she says. You hear what she’s conveying. “It’s a wonderful, sunny day here at ABC Corporation, Melissa speaking. May I help you?” is a mouthful for any gatekeeper to get out and believe me, over time, the charm of it wears thin. Hesitating just slightly and acknowledging her dilemma before you blast her with your own agenda will go a long way toward making friends with her.

“Wow, Melissa, that’s a mouthful! It’s sunny here too, but we’re expecting rain later today!” will probably put her just a little off-guard and cause her to chuckle over the cross she bears so cheerfully.

Showing genuine empathy over her condition will make her just a bit more immediately comfortable with who you are and just might facilitate the communication between the two of you. Try it: I guarantee you’ll like the results.

But first, be sure you sound for real. Record your calls and listen to yourself. Get beyond the self-consciousness you feel listening to your own voice and actually listen to how you sound. What comes to mind as you listen to yourself? Do you sound real? Do you sound genuine? Do you sound sincere?

You’ll be surprised what you’ll hear in your own voice if you listen to it carefully. Take note of the thoughts that pass through your mind as you listen and heed them. It’s surprising how effectively critical we can be of ourselves when we really need to be.

If you don’t trust your own judgment, ask others. Choose people you trust to be forthright and tell them what you’re trying to accomplish. Ask them for their opinions about your telephone voice. Encourage their frankness.

Many times I have counseled a caller to speak up. Many times have I called to someone’s attention that they mumble on the phone and are hard to understand. And more times than I care to recall I have told someone they speak too fast. Critique yourself or have someone you trust do it and work to correct your shortcomings.

If you don’t quite get how these things work at first, that’s okay. Just keep doing what you’re learning, and you’ll start to get a better feel for the whole thing.

Getting Past the Gatekeeper’s Resistance

There are gatekeepers you will encounter who seem humorless and cold. It’s very important not to let one of these initial resistances throw you off and cause you to quit. The key here is to listen. What does she say? What doesn’t she say? Follow her lead.

If she sounds brusque and to the point, it’s not necessary for you to reflect her mirror image back to her. She’s more likely to respond to you if you are to the point (leave the brusque out) yourself and don’t waste her time. In instances like these, use one of the names you’ve gathered before you made the call (you did do this, didn’t you?) to offer as your admission ticket.

She cannot deny you once you’ve paid the fare.

Sometimes a gatekeeper just needs to hear a little more about who you are before she gives out her information. She is the Keeper of the Gate and some of them take their jobs very seriously, as well they should. The more you interact with gatekeepers, the better you’ll get at communicating with them. This skill will lead them to give you the information you want. Allow an older-sounding gatekeeper to assume command and follow her instructions. Do not resist her or try to get her to bend to your will. She doesn’t have to and she usually won’t.

How old does the gatekeeper sound? Younger and less-experienced gatekeepers usually offer less resistance, whereas middle-aged and older gatekeepers sometimes require more subtlety and creativity.

Just being respectful and polite to these kingdom key holders can be enough to encourage her to help you. And that’s the key: ask for her help. When I encounter rigidity, I go soft. “Can you help me? I feel so silly, I know I should know this but I don’t. Can you please direct me to…” will often engage her to the point where she will direct you into the area you need to get into. Avoid direct questions like the unforgiving, “Can you tell me who the civil engineers are there in your facility who do wastewater engineering?”

Rather, ask to be transferred to “the administrative assistant in the water group” and this less-threatening request will probably be put through. Once there, the department administrative assistant is likely to be young (though there are some older types in this bunch as well), but the idea is to forestall your defeat.

The more times you come up to bat, the more likely it is you will hit a homerun. It’s a numbers game; never forget that.

Having Fun With the Gatekeeper

Very few gatekeepers are the humorless and cold garden variety. Many of them are friendly and vivacious types who enjoy the banter opportunity the telephone occasionally offers.

If you understand that the person on the other end of the line is a human being (nothing more, nothing less), you will have a leg up in this telephone names sourcing business. It isn’t rocket science.

So make it fun for her by setting yourself apart from the madding crowd. If you’re friendly, sincere will creep in along beside it. If she senses these two things in you, she will usually tell you just about anything.

There are male telephone sourcers who can give gatekeepers hard times and get away with it. There are females who can extract the most amazing information out of a CEO himself. There are both sexes who understand the Albert Camus assertion that, “Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”

The point here is that sometimes it’s necessary to get your questions answered by asking other questions that may not appear substantive to your mission. Do you know how to do that?

When I’m telephone names sourcing, I usually strive to sound like a 9-to-5 secretary who’s bored to tears with what I’m doing and is just waiting for the whistle to blow so I can go home.

I don’t say any of this stuff, mind you, but it comes across in my delivery. When I ask who the sales managers are for all the different U.S. territories and she wants to email the list, I will at first acquiesce to her suggestion. Then I ask, “How many are there?” After she responds, I’ll daringly suggest, “Oh, don’t bother emailing them. That’s not too many. Just list them out and if I need you to repeat I’ll interrupt, I’m a fast typist!”

This quick camaraderie, along with the mind-numbing boredom cadence I attach to my request usually gets the job accomplished. Not always, but usually. Remember, this is a numbers game.

There are several ways you can solicit someone’s help that make it feel comfortable and fun for her. The important thing is that you’re having fun and you’re comfortable. Here’s a fast tip from the music industry for making yourself physically comfortable when you’re working:

Lift your chest. Place your hand at the bottom of your sternum and use it as a guide to lift the chest. When the chest is lifted correctly, the stomach muscles will lie flat; without having to suck it in, the back will be arched and the shoulders will be in a more natural position. In body language, high shoulders indicate stress, while lower, relaxed shoulders indicate confidence and control.

Talk to Her Like She’s an Old Friend

The technique of acting like the gatekeeper is an old friend is powerful indeed. Once you master this relaxed state of thinking and behaving, you’ll find that most gatekeepers will respond to you positively.

However, this does not include accosting the gatekeeper with some false hypocritical interest that betrays your intentions. Don’t insult her intelligence by inquiring after her health or her feelings. Be respectful of her position and your relationship to her position. Introduce yourself politely and ask her for the information you seek.

Remember, you may be calling this person back numerous times, and if you become a professional telephone names sourcer, there’s a very real chance that she may become a friend as you call her repeatedly in the future. There will be many more opportunities for familiarity. Don’t blow your chances in the beginning by acting like a jerk.

When All This Advice Doesn’t Work

It happens. The fact is that sometimes you’re going to meet a gatekeeper, or an administrative assistant, or an executive assistant, or an individual contributor, a janitor, a mailroom clerk, or whomever, who just won’t give it up. It happens. Move on.

You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs.

You have to accept the idea that when you’re learning how to use this material that you’re going to occasionally run into someone who may not get your humor, may not appreciate your inquiry, or may not respond to your best practices.

Don’t worry about it.

My personal best practice here is to just get off the phone as quickly as possible. I like to think I do it with grace and aplomb, but I know for a fact there are sourcers who just hang up. I find this rude, and you may be eliminating the chance to try on another day. When I first started telephone names sourcing, I remember fearfully asking, “Well, what do I do if…” and I was told, “If you get too freaked out you can always just hang the phone up. It’s just a phone!” and in its own weird way the advice is right on the money.

I don’t see any point in trying to reclaim a lost cause. Cut your losses and move on. Time is money in this business and there’s always another way in. Find it.

When I was a baby sourcer, I was filled with all sorts of terrifying fears about what I would say, what I would do, what would happen IF that Gatekeeper asked me any questions! I laugh now at my (mostly) unfounded fears, but I understand this is a common thread that runs through all telephone names sourcing discussions:

What happens when?

I ask you back, what happens when WHAT? The likelihood is that she is not going to ask you anything if you’ve approached her as you should be approaching all your telephone names sourcing calls: with confidence, with precision and, most important, with a routine.

The routine thing we’ve been discussing lately on the boards. You know, the “always identify yourself (name only), repeat her name back to her, and ask for precisely what it is you want (in most cases)” part.

Moving beyond that, though, what’s up with this confidence thing? How can you be confident when you’re making your calls into those companies that seem so terrifying?

Tap into Your Belief System

Instead of assuming she will not give you the information you seek (because of your own preconceived notions), turn the tables and ask yourself why wouldn’t she give you the information you seek? It’s a misconception that all Gatekeepers are sensitized to our “motives” and armed to the teeth with defenses. The great majority fall into that general population who has never heard of telephone names sourcing.

You tell me, if the greater percentage of recruiters has never heard of it (and this is true) why would their Gatekeepers have heard of it?

It’s just not true. The faster you lose this “excuse” from your perforated bag of defenses, the faster and better you’re going to get on in the Recruitosphere (a big call out to my friend the Recruiting Animal who coined this terminology).

Telephone names sourcing is a head game, so determine what responses you can elicit from the head of that Gatekeeper. Most of the time she is completely unaware how the information she so freely gives out can be used.

“But isn’t that ‘manipulating’ people and isn’t that a bad thing?”

Is it? I suggest you reflect upon your own value systems and decide for yourself.

“It’s a means to an end.”

Yep, it sure is.

“It’s unethical.”

Is it?

“It’s tricking people.”

Is it, really?

Setting up unfair terms of social exchange is the basic problem with manipulation. I’m suggesting here that “unfair” does not have to be a component of telephone names sourcing.

I do not believe telephone names sourcing “sets people up” for unfair exchanges. If I ask a direct question, knowing where it is I need to go, and I get a direct response, then there is no “manipulation” at all. Instead, it is simply an exchange of information.

If I choose my words carefully (which I do) and approach her cautiously and carefully, using all my powers of observation, and say very little to her (which I usually do), I am pretty much assured of this valuable information exchange. Notice I did not say “powers of persuasion.”

I don’t see the Gatekeeper as my enemy. She is the first voice of that company I am penetrating. If I can’t get the information from her, I know there are many ways around her where there stands a very good chance that I will get the information I seek. There’s always a way in!

I believe I have an obligation to do a job for my customer, and because of what I do someone just might, down the road, yes, just might, receive an opportunity that may or may not be better than the opportunity they have at the present time.

It’s up to that person to decide, and I see telephone names sourcing as a good thing in the world. In the real world, people are chewed up and spit out by commerce every day. Telephone names sourcing avails some of them with the chance to not “land” so hard if and when that happens to them.

It also pays well.

Similar to recruiting, telephone names sourcing is very much like sales. The buyer doesn’t usually buy the product as much as they “buy” the salesperson. In most instances where there is a salesperson involved, what gets bought doesn’t usually get bought unless the buyer “likes” the salesperson.

When you’re telephone names sourcing, you have three to five seconds to make that happen.

That is not a lot of time! Here are some basic things that can be accomplished in three to five seconds:

“Hi, Louise, this is Maureen Sharib.”

Or perhaps this:

“Hi, Louise, this is Maureen Sharib. Can you please tell me who??”

Or this:

“Hi, Louise, this is Maureen Sharib. I hope you can help me.”

Or maybe, even, occasionally:

“Hi, Louise, this is Maureen Sharib. I have Mike Jones as the Operations Manager there. Is that still correct?”

What I’m suggesting here is that the first thing the Gatekeeper hears in your voice is your tonality. If it’s pleasant, she’s going to continue to listen to you, and if it’s palatable to her ear she’s going to begin to pay attention to what you say.

If you’ve removed the mystery in the call by identifying yourself upfront, and she doesn’t have to take the time to ask you “Who’s calling?” you’ve eliminated several wasted seconds from your approach. Being honest about who you are, and by being direct by asking her exactly the information you seek, will get you much farther, much faster than any long, drawn-out imaginary tale about your mission that could land you in serious trouble.

Recently a gentleman approached me during a break in a seminar I was giving in Austin. He said, “You know, Maureen, what you say is true. Telephone names sourcing is simple. But it’s not easy.”

I couldn’t agree more. Adding to simple, I would also suggest telephone names sourcing is direct, FAST, and beats the heck out of some of the recruiting methods in use today. Try it. You just might like it.