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Two new tools have debuted recently. One will help with your sourcing research and the other promotes the passive candidate who may be overlooked by tech recruiters seeking fresh candidates.

Dice.com, the IT job board, introduced a new search result report that allows recruiters to toggle between the results that meet their criteria and other candidates who also match the criteria, but who haven’t been active on the site for a year.

Tom Silver, senior VP North America of parent company Dice Holdings, said the thought of offering additional results came about because more than half the searches on Dice are for candidates who have been active in the last 90 days. In their quest for fresh job seekers, recruiters were missing candidates with equally good skills.

“So,” says Silver, “We wanted to make it easier to see older candidates. We’re just trying to prompt recruiters to look at the entire database.”

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Social networks are so hyped right now among recruiters that it is hard to separate their real value and purpose from often overblown marketing promises. By creating a social network specifically for your organization, you can differentiate yourself from the crowd, build your brand, and find most of the candidates you need without any other sourcing techniques. keep reading…

A new mobile sourcing application is having its coming out party tomorrow. AutoSearch Mobile for the iPhone and iPod Touch became available on the iPhone Store a month ago, but Wednesday marks its official debut at $4.99.

AutoSearch Mobile, like its full-featured — and more expensive — PC and Mac version, makes it a snap for on-the-go recruiters to search much of the public (and some of the private) web without having to know all that complicated Boolean stuff.

That sound you just heard was the collective gasp of every sourcer in the world sucking the oxygen from the atmosphere. So that we may all resume breathing, let me hasten to say every recruiter ought to know how to write a Boolean search string.

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Over the past few months I’ve been describing a new approach for determining quality of hire, and using changes in this to justify any new expenditures on an ROI basis. While the methodology is pretty slick, the pushback is coming not from the process, but from the idea that HR/recruiting is responsible for quality of hire at all.

If not HR/recruiting, then who? keep reading…

The Recruitosphere is undergoing significant change, and one of those changes just announced was the acquisition by ERE of the only sourcing conference event of its kind: SourceCon. ERE is no stranger to acquiring bright and shiny pieces of the Recruitosphere; the present event was foreshadowed by the purchase of the three-decade-old Fordyce Letter, widely considered to be some of the best information for the search and placement industry.

Now that ERE has taken over the reins of the industry’s only live, in-person sourcing conference, it will be interesting to watch where it goes. David Manaster, owner of ERE, recently described the sourcing community as possessing a “distinct (and quirky) ethos.”

There are many definitions of the word “quirky” in the dictionary. Some of them say it is: far-out with informal terms; strikingly unconventional; idiosyncratic; odd; a strange attitude or habit

Although all of these describe one or some of sourcing’s characteristics, we would take it a bit further and suggest the grassroots sourcing community that has developed over the last decade or so around the teachings of several well-known sourcing gurus is a strikingly individualistic and dedicated workforce bringing some of the most innovative solutions to today’s hiring challenges. Even so, the industry itself is at the threshold of a new era.

For a very long time, sourcing was treated as a red-headed stepchild. Shunted to the darkened far corner of the room, some of today’s sourcers stingingly remember the disregard and sometimes contempt they were held in within their organizations. This was in the very few organizations that even had the foresight or temerity to bring them onsite! Many of them fell by the wayside, disheartened and discouraged by the lack of support, training, and development that they encountered in their daily pursuits. A few of them realized that the choice that lay before them was in the decision that they could either get better or get bitter. The ones that decided to get better trail-blazed the path that led to the threshold we are on today.

It’s only the beginning, folks.

We’re just scratching the surface of where we’re going to go. There are a few things we wish for the Sourcecon conference (and for all sourcers in the sourcing community) moving forward and they are enumerated below. keep reading…

I’m proud to announce that ERE Media has acquired SourceCon, the only live, in-person event for sourcing professionals in the world.

SourceCon is unique. It brings together the best minds in the sourcing profession to focus on minute intricacies of the art like no other event in existence.

I was at the first SourceCon, and remember being impressed by the vibe. There was an excitement in the air of a community coming together face-to-face for the first time. Several people came up to me unsolicited and told me how amazing it felt to finally be in a place where there were other sourcers “just like me.”

Since the current recession began, there has been talk of the death of sourcing. I disagree, and now ERE is putting its money where its mouth is.

So what does this mean? keep reading…

Carmen Hudson recently highlighted SearchOnTheGo as an iPhone application with real value for recruiters. While it is a handy tool for completing CV searches on Google, the essence of the program is that it creates ‘complex’ searches through a point-and-click interface. This is a great simplifier for many, but Boolean search writing is a skill that top recruiters need to know directly in order to get meaningful candidate search results from a wide range of software.

Beyond Google, many other systems we use on a daily basis accept Boolean searches. This includes LinkedIn, Monster, and quite probably your internal ATS. SearchOnTheGo won’t help you with these platforms, so if you want to get the most from them you need to know the basics of Boolean searching directly. Therefore, in less than 1,000 words, let’s see if I can explain how to do it! keep reading…

Many aspects of a recruiter’s job remain the same as in the past, before the arrival of social media. We all review resumes, assess the matches, interview on the phone, and meet prospects in person. Social media has added and keeps adding new options on how to get there. To remain competitive and productive we must figure out and start using social media in recruiting. I’d like to highlight some aspect of how it can work for us.

Let’s talk about the very interesting phenomena of communicating with potential candidates in ways that have not been there before. For years, we have been discussing whether to call first or email first. Some gurus suggest that you first send a detailed email, then leave a phone message, and then send a short email mentioning that you had called. Fine, but here are your other options today: keep reading…

Jobvite is introducing what I hesitate to call a new sourcing tool, only because the term doesn’t really do it justice.

Google is a sourcing tool, but while it may get the job done, how long will it take to sift through the results? Jobvite Source is more of a blend of the best attributes of ZoomInfo and Broadlook with access to the social networks as well as the entire Web.

Last week, during a demo, Chief Product Officer Jamie Glenn did a search for an online marketing manager and came up with the resumes of, maybe, a couple hundred possibles from all the Web’s free sources. A similar search on Google turns up results in the hundreds of thousands.

The difference is Jobvite Source can compare the results to the job req, sifting out the job listings and other stuff, leaving you with resumes that match the requirements. It does the same as a well-structured query to your ATS or a resume database.

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One of the worst-kept secrets in recruiting is that source of hire data is inconsistently gathered and rarely accurate. To many corporate recruiters, the validity of source of hire data is a non issue; after all, once the hire is generated, their role is over.

However, if you view recruiting as a marketing and sales job (as I and many strategic recruiting leaders do), knowing what channels brought the prospect to the organization and what messages led to conversion (talented individual > applicant > candidate > hire) are by far the most critical bits of data the function can collect. Without this information, it’s extremely difficult to scientifically budget for sourcing or build strategic sourcing systems capable of impacting organizational performance.

Luckily, however, there is a simple approach that ensures much more accurate and helpful information that doesn’t rely on transaction-minded recruiters documenting the source of hire.

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“Apply or Goodbye” is a great metaphor for a transactional recruiting process. Sadly, “apply or goodbye” seems to be the end result with most recruiting processes. Everything seems to be about a transaction—filling the open requisition. If a prospect is qualified and interested, then they are moved through the process. If they are not qualified, then at best, they receive a letter of rejection. If a prospect is not ready to apply to do a job, we usually do not know about them. We have de facto told them “goodbye.” And given the prospect-to-candidate falloff rate (research projects application non-completion rates as high as 70-80%), a great number of prospects get lost because of the transactional nature of recruiting technology.

In a moment of frustration (or epiphany) I quipped that candidates were seeking relationships and our recruiting technology offers them the equivalent of a one-night stand (or more accurately a chance to complete an application). Looking past the potential off-color nature of the comment, the truth is there is a gap between what people in this world of Web 2.0 desire and what a typical recruiting operation allows. That gap is the williness on the part of recruiting to have a conversation with you unless you are part of the chosen few that meets with requirements of a specific job. keep reading…

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. keep reading…

A small trickle of new jobs will cause a tidal wave of unexpected replacement hiring. Here’s why you need to get ready now. Hopefully, it’s not too late.

In a recent ERE article, I made the point that “employment churn” (fully employed people switching seats) will increase dramatically three to four months before any pickup in overall employment. This unplanned spike in voluntary turnover will leave many companies ill-equipped to handle the surge, since most are not considering replacement hires in their new hiring forecasts as a big item.

Based on some recent evidence, I believe that this spike will be more significant that anyone realizes. Worse, this could happen sooner than expected, blindsiding unprepared companies.

Here’s some of the evidence supporting this view.

Over the past few months I’ve been asking people who are fully employed these two questions:

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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. keep reading…

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.

keep reading…

Search Engine Optimization seems to be on everyone lips. SEO seems to be on the tip of every consultant’s tongue. SEO is “all the craze” right now. The chief reason to “optimize” our jobs is because job seekers primarily use search engines to look for a job (as opposed to job boards). But if you think SEO will solve your challenges with talent identification and engagement (aka sourcing), you will be disappointed. keep reading…

I was talking to my brother a couple days ago and we were talking about the economy.

“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.” keep reading…

The baseball trading deadline has just passed, and 100 or so players have new jobs with different clubs; however, total player employment is still exactly the same. Employed people switching seats with other employed people doesn’t count as a positive in the employment statistics, regardless of how much effort it entails. I refer to this seat-switching as employment churn, or employment velocity, and even though overall hiring might not increase for nine to 12 months, employment churn will begin to accelerate in Q4 2009.

From what I can tell, most companies aren’t ready. keep reading…

Facebook’s 250 million members would be a recruiter’s gold mine except for one thing: there’s a bouncer at every entrance and there are 250 million entrances.

The analogy doesn’t hold up perfectly because friend collecting is a Facebook pastime, and if you ask around you can almost always find someone to let you into any network. But it’s still not recruiter friendly. Unlike LinkedIn, where the search tools were designed with recruiters in mind, Facebook’s tools seem intended to discourage sourcing.

Yet those millions of Facebook members are too tempting a target to resist. Since the beginning of the year Appirio and Jobvite have both come up with applications that connect HR tech systems of their own or their partners with Facebook. Both however, are intended for corporate recruiters using either Salesforce or Jobvite’s recruitment system. Both focus on referrals.

InSide Job is different. It’s a Facebook application that individual users choose to deploy, making them searchable and findable to other InSide Job users.

The idea came to Lorne Epstein, a career recruiter, as he tried to get contacts out of LinkedIn for free.

Says Epstein, “They charge $10 for an email (there are corporate accounts, but he’s talking about an individual search) and there’s 40 million profiles. Facebook has 250 million and it’s only getting bigger.”

So Epstein, author of You’re Hired! Interview Skills to Get the Job, came up with a simple way to connect recruiters with Facebook users, and job seekers with the people who might be able to help them get a job. keep reading…

Control freaks hate community. And most recruiters are control freaks. Ergo, recruiters hate community. Perhaps my deduction is a little harsh (and purposely attention-grabbing). Maybe a better way to describe how many recruiters feel about community is that they are suspicious, or at the very least skeptical.

To suggest that recruiters are control freaks is not an epiphany or an “ah-ha moment,” as being controlling is one of the traits that make recruiters good at our jobs.  We are managers of a set of projects called search assignments or requisitions and are required to direct a volume that easily reaches the double digits. And we need to control as much as possible to be successful.

Recruiters like the idea of community and having a relationship with prospects and/or candidates. But when recruiters take a deeper dive, they begin to understand that some of the conversations that transpire in community are outside of their control, they lose some enthusiasm. So why advocate community if one cannot control the outcome?

In my upcoming Fall 2009 ERE presentation, I am weaving five topics/questions/discussion points into the storyline. One discussion point is “Web 2.0 solutions proclaim that this is the new way to pipeline candidates into a private talent community. What is a talent community and how do I build one? In this article, I will deal with the “why” of talent communities.  And if you are in Florida in September, I will discuss the “how to” at length. keep reading…