SourceCon CSE Challenge: And the Finalists Are…

We’ve tallied up the results of Round 1 of the SourceCon CSE Challenge. You voted for your favorite contestants, and based on your votes, the three finalists who will be going on to Round 2 are…

Kameron Swinton — Sr. Talent Acquisition Partner at Cymer, Inc. (171 votes)
Nitisha Gupta — Talent Sourcing Associate at Eaton Corporation (151 votes)
Julia Tverskaya — Partner at Brain Gain Recruiting (144 votes)

Now that your collective voice has been heard, we are set for Round 2 — the final round of this Challenge. In this round a panel of judges will be evaluating the quality and creativity of the contestants’ CSEs. Our five judges, who until today didn’t even know who each other was, are regular contributors to the sourcing community:

Glen Cathey: no one can question Glen’s contributions to the function of sourcing — he has provided us with some of the most in-depth analysis of technical sourcing through his various articles and presentations.
Mike Notaro: as one of the panelists in the recent webinar on creating Google CSEs, Mike was a natural selection to judge. His complex CSEs have won him awards and notoriety in the sourcing community.
Shally Steckerl: Shally has been a notable figure in the sourcing community for over a decade and has provided countless trainings, webinars, and resources to the community.
Julia Stone: Julia is one of the creators of previous SourceCon Challenges, a presenter at past SourceCons, and a former Challenge contestant herself.
Amybeth Hale: what… did you really think that as the Editor of SourceCon I wouldn’t get involved? 🙂

The judges have been tasked with objectively sampling each CSE to determine who among our contestants created the best candidate resume/profile/directory Google Custom Search Engine. Below, we are providing you with the criteria that will be used to determine this. You’re welcome to test our finalists yourself, but the judges’ assessments are the only ones that will count in this round of judging.

Rules for the final round of the SourceCon CSE Challenge

The CSE that earns the most points will be declared the winner. Plain and simple.

Judging will be based on the CSE’s quality and variety. Our distinguished panel of judges will evaluate each contestant’s CSE and award points based on the following criteria:

Quality of Results

Quality always rules. The first three (3) pages of results will be examined to determine how well the CSE filtered out irrelevant search results:

2 points will be awarded for results that are verified resumes, profile/bios (with or without contact information), or directory lists (must have at least one form of immediate contact information ). Sample resumes will not count and will be awarded no points.
1 point will be awarded for directory lists that do NOT contain contact information but contain first and last names, or result pages that do not contain any of the above but that contain contact information (must have a name and at least one form of immediate contact information ).
0 points will be awarded for all other results.

Variety of Sources

The instructions for creating a CSE were to make sure the results contained a variety of sources. Contestants will be rewarded for this:

1 point will be awarded for each unique site that returns valid results (see above). Example: if in 3 pages of results there are 16 LinkedIn profile results, 7 Twitter results, and 2 ZoomInfo results, the point total for these sources would be 3.
Additional unique sources, including individual resume pages and so forth, will be awarded 1 point each.

Since each CSE is different and unique, contestants will have the opportunity to put their best foot forward for their individual CSE and provide one example search word or phrase for judging; they have each been given criteria. To ensure panel accuracy, points awarded by each judge will be totaled, combined, and averaged for each contestant’s CSE. The contestant with the most total points will be declared the winner.

We will announce the overall Challenge winner next Friday! The winner will be receiving a free pass to SourceCon in Silicon Valley this coming October, as well as travel and accommodations to attend the conference and a coveted spot in the final GrandMaster Sourcing Challenge.

Good luck to our contestants — and have a fantastic holiday weekend!