I'm getting ready to finish my current one year contract, and thus I've started the process of finding my next opportunity. To that end, I put my resume on Monster and Dice, to see if I find any interesting leads. Now, I put it up there on Confidential, for the simple fact that I have had too many examples of account managers from agencies trying to contact me to try new client inroads.

My Monster title is "Talent Acquisition", and the *first* line (Objective, if you will) is: "Seeking contract or full-time *corporate* senior recruiting opportunities in the Seattle/Redmond WA, Vancouver/Victoria BC, QC, or Toronto/Ottawa ON areas only at this time." I think these two "labels" should spell out pretty clearly what I'm looking for. (So if you have an opportunity that fits this model, by all means contact me. I'll be unavailable between Oct 5-23 on vacation.) For most of the last four years, I have been a technical recruiter and as such I have listed some of the technologies I have recruited for and positions.

What tends to happen is that I get email from random scattershot sourcing that xyz company or agency has done, targeting me as a Software Engineer, or Project Manager, or whatnot. What this tells me is that whomever is doing the sourcing is just pulling up a keyword search and then sending a gazillion emails out to all the keyword search results coming back as "high" (specifically on Monster.)

Now, I know that we are in a tight recruiting economy, but what does it say to potential candidates, or in my case perhaps a potential client or employee, about how you go about targeting talent? Granted, the resumes on job board are "low hanging fruit", active or at the very least warm passive candidates. 

Here's how I do my sourcing on Monster. Yes, I run a keyword search. But when I pull up 1600 resumes, I'm a bit selective about whom I contact. If profiles look interesting to me, I forward them to myself in email. Once I've got a decent pipe, I then comb through those email resumes in my email to target who truly fits the profile/s I'm sourcing for.

I'll admit that it takes more time, but it isn't a *major* time drain. Yes, I have been blessed to work for companies with generous relocation plans, so I can look nationally, but I do respect someone who puts that they are only interested in very specific cities (IE they list three TX cities even though they say 'yes' to relocation).

I feel that although I tend to put a bit more time into my sourcing efforts and that it may slow me down in the short run, it really pays off in candidates' impressions of me and my representation of the company I'm branding and selling. I'm passionate about the candidate experience, and for me that starts with the first contact someone receives through the entire interview process.