As I alluded to in my first few posts, I finally found a company that wanted to bring me into the staffing world. I am currently in a sourcing position with David Brown International (DBI). DBI is a recruiting firm that focuses on helping architectural firms hire architects and other specific industry related positions. Now for me, this was a definite learning process as until now, most of my experience was in the information technology industry. The first order of business was learning about architecture and the different types of architects and all of the specific positions within the architectural (AEC) industry.
To be honest, there was a lot more to it than I would have ever thought. In our AEC world, an architect is like a program manager in the technology world. An architect can mean a lot of different things, and there are also many specialists within this industry. From commercial to hospitality, there are many different types of architectures, and that is not even counting all of the other industry related positions and titles such as designer and project manager to name a few.
In this role, I had to learn a new CRM called Bullhorn. I was shown how to find candidates who were already in our CRM system, and how Bullhorn adds a new candidate, and I learned how to submit candidates to a job. I learned how tear sheets are created through the system and how to submit people into the system. As I am sure most of you know, once you understand your CRM/ATS all of the hidden gold reveals itself, which helps you as a sourcer.
Bullhorn, like any other ATS/CRM, allows me to put candidates into profiles, quickly search them, update emails, update statuses and keep track of communications and submittals. When I typically get a new position, the first thing I do is go into Bullhorn and search. I also look at people that may have been submitted before and I review people who got hired into similar roles. I do all of this to get a feel for what I am looking for and, of course, to see where I can find the low hanging fruit.
The Search
Bullhorn wasn’t the only thing that helped me improve as a sourcer, I learned about different sites to source from, for example, the website archinect.com. Archinect is a website that helps architects connect with each other. At DBI, we use architects to find other architects who are not on LinkedIn and hard to find on Facebook. As an example, I actually used the XRay technique (site:) at Archinect, as it is far easier method to find people on this website through a search engine.
site:archinect.net/people (PM OR “Project Manager” OR “SR PA” OR “Senior Project Architect”) Seattle
Of course, I did bring my own toolbox with me. My toolbox included tools such as DataMiner, a scraping tool, SourceHub, a Boolean tool, Blockspring, an API tool, Google Sheets, the Chrome of spreadsheets, and many others.
DataMiner is a great tool that allows users to scrape information. As an example, if I do a search XRaying Linkedin such as:
site:linkedin.com/in (PM OR “Project Manager” OR “SR PA” OR “Senior Project Architect”) construction Seattle “gmail.com”
I will get about 500 results, I can use DataMiner to scrape all of the information I sourced, including names, titles, and emails. This allows me to easily upload that information into Bullhorn.
SourceHub is one of the best Boolean building tools out there. I use it to build my strings quickly and correctly. If I wanted to build a string for project manager, I could go to SourceHub, put “project manager” in the title and not only will it automatically add that title, but other possible titles, as well as other skills and locations. SourceHub then puts it all together for you. Oh, and it even saves your string for you for use later. Great tool.
Blockspring is a tool that allows you to easily use APIs. Application program interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. An API specifies how software components should interact and APIs are used when programming graphical user interface (GUI) components. Blockspring makes it so you can uss APIs without knowing how to program.
To use Blockspring, you need to use either Excel or Google Sheets. I recommend Google Sheets, as it is easier. If I need project managers, I would use Blockspring and Bing’s API to search for project managers. The list will include their name, company domain etc. I then would use Blockpsing’s Email Hunter API, a tool that finds work emails, to get emails and then combine the two sheets to have a nice CSV with everything I need. I then can also use Blockspring’s Clearbit (a social aggregator tool) API to get more personnel information on all the people I sourced from social sites.
Thrown Into The Fire
There was a lot of learning during my first few months as a sourcer, and I did get thrown into the fire once or twice. In these cases I was given a job description and asked to find people who matched it from specific companies. Immediately my training kicked in as I used the universal sourcing methods I learned from my Search Authority and Social Talent training to create my initial search string. I then used the string that I created and combined it with the tools I mentioned above and others to find the people we wanted. After I sourced profiles, I thin had to find contact information, which again was conducted by using the tools and methodologies I had been taught. I had achieved my tasked and succeessfully sourced everything that I needed and submitted my results.
Since this was my first search, I was neverous to hear how I did. In the end, all my training, and experience working at Search Authority, paid off as everyone loved what I did. Now of course while this was my first project it was and has been far from my last. Since then, I have successfully completed over 20 projects. As a result of my hard work, I have been promoted to Lead Sourcer.
Now, like with baseball, just because you have become talented and performed well does not mean you stop. There is always someone out there doing more, doing better, and if you want to be the best, you have to keep going. Always keep learning, keep working, keep growing and keep striving. For me, that will include my foray into event and conference attending.
