Recruiting In 3D

A Fond Farewell To A Friend

Professionally and personally, you get just a few people in your life who really make an impact on your life. One that lasts forever, and transcends time, space, distance and the assorted BS that life throws at you. Derek Zeller was (is, and forever will be) one of those people.

I don’t really know how to cope right now, but I know he’d tell me “write it down”. He’d tell me that the words will just find their way. He’s been right about this so many times before, so I suspect he’s right this time, too…

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I Get By With a Little Help From My…Hiring Manager

A great many sourcing discussions start with or involve some talk of candidate engagement. There are countless viewpoints on the best methods of outreach (how’s that Tik-Tok thing going?) and the best ways to get the talent we want to respond to our craftily worded messages.

The truth is, sometimes, despite the best research, the funniest meme, or the bullet point choices to get them to give you any response, it just won’t get it done. People who are talented have options. Lots of them. The sheer volume of messages they are getting is staggering and exhausting for them. And it’s time-consuming to parse through all the noise to get to the good ones.

Sometimes we just need some additional help. Someone with a different perspective, who can add an extra option to get the person to respond. Enter your hiring manager. (For the purposes of this post, we’ll assume you’ve got a hiring manager who is willing to play ball and help you out with some messages. If they aren’t, I’m sorry. And that’s a whole other post.) Read More

5 Simple Ways to Enhance Your Sourcing Engagement

In the day to day world of sourcing (or any line of work, really), we’re often inundated with a “to-do” list that is overwhelming and stressful. Seeing as we’re all human and prone to mistakes when we’re overloaded, we can often make mistakes in our messaging that can derail any candidate engagement before it even has a chance to blossom.

Attention to detail matters in our world, and small mistakes can have not-so-small consequences downstream. So here are some things you can start immediately implementing in your processes to ensure you stand out.

What’s in a Name?

This is the easiest one to control. We’ve found the person we want to reach out to, and have identified a plethora of platforms where they have a profile for us to gather information from. Yet, too often, names get misspelled or the wrong name is put in the message altogether. Those messages are often discarded before they are even read, and that effort is wasted. Take the extra second to make sure you’ve spelled the name right. Additionally, if someone uses a nickname on all their profiles, you should have a reasonable level of comfort using that name. For example, if a candidate uses “Steve” on all their profiles, it doesn’t make a ton of sense for one to approach that person with “Hi Steven”.

People misspell my name all the time, even when it is part of my ...

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WTF is THAT? Staying Curious While Sourcing

I’m a curious person by nature. I’m not generally satisfied with what’s on the back flap of the book – I want to know what’s inside. I’ve also lost more than one laptop to this curiosity. I, like many sourcers, was one of those kids who broke their toys as a kid to see if they could figure out how to put them back together. About half the time, the answer was “yes”, I could put them back together. The other half resulted in my mother asking things like “why is there a half melted G.I. Joe figure on the light bulb?” As you’d assume, I gave a plethora of answers to these questions, but no answer I’d give would ever suffice. This carried into my professional life, and as a sourcer, this innate curiosity has served me well.

As sourcers, we’re researchers at heart when you think about it. We can come up with a thousand ways to dissect profiles, absorb trends, siphon copious amounts of data off of public (and some not-so-public) websites and apps. But many of us seem to falter in an area that, while a little left of center of our core duties, is essential to our success. We can’t speak to technology as adeptly as we should be able to. We fail frequently to glean ample insight into the technology being used by those candidates we so covet.

The argument here for some may be that they don’t interact with candidates often, or at all. And while a firm grasp of specific technology talking points may be slightly more beneficial to those who are talking with candidates each day, those of us doing pure research can also benefit as well. By understanding the landscape of the technology we’re searching for, we are able to find similar, translatable skill sets that can meet the needs of the teams you are supporting. Read More

Maybe Size Doesn’t Matter

I spent the vast majority of my career thus far, working in small to mid-size companies. I always carried a bit of trepidation about working for multi-national conglomerates, so I stayed in my comfort zone. In retrospect, this wasn’t unlike how I chose where I was going to go to college back in the day. I was hesitant to go to a huge school and sit in a lecture hall with 500 strangers, mainly since I came from a smaller high school. Something about being lost in a sea of bodies was particularly offsetting to me, and this carried into my career.

Living in a Small Pond

Working in small companies, I had the chance to know my co-workers on a more personal level. It was also more comfortable to build relationships and move things through the decision tree process. If I needed to prod something along in Tech for a recruiting effort, going to the CTO and sitting down for coffee was as easy as me typing on this keyboard. In essence, the access was always there.

If I had technical issues, I’d parade myself down one floor to the support team and get the help of people whom I’d most likely sourced and hired into the company. One could liken it to the FastPass at Disney parks – straight to the front of the line. The same can be said for any system and procedural issues, whether that is a busted CRM, a benefits data snafu, or just getting office supplies, it was all at my fingertips.

The flip side of this, of course, is that with visibility comes accountability. There’s nowhere to hide in a small company when you mess up. You have to own it because there isn’t anyone else to pin it on. It seems trivial, and in most cases, I felt that was a good thing because it kept me on my game. Read More

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