Category Archives: Future of Sourcing and Recruiting

Video: Discussing AI in Sourcing and Recruiting

I recently had the chance to participate in a Google Hangout with Jeremy Roberts of HiringSolved as an introduction to the speakers of their upcoming conference on Feb 7 in NYC (HIREconf).

You can watch the recording of our chat here or play the video below to learn a little about my background and my thoughts about the evolving role of technology and specifically artificial intelligence solutions when it comes to sourcing and recruitment, which will be the topic of my opening keynote at HIREconf. I’m planning on addressing how intelligent machines are changing talent acquisition and how sourcers and recruiters can prepare for today and tomorrow.

https://youtu.be/8yOHA2d66jU

The folks at HiringSolved have really put together a solid list of speakers for their 1 day event in NYC:

Here’s a peek at the agenda:

hireconf-agenda

If you can make it, I’d love to see you there!

Video: My thoughts on Sourcing & the Future of Recruiting

 

At LinkedIn’s 2014 Talent Connect event in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to be interviewed on the topic of up-skilling recruiting teams.

Watch this short video to hear my thoughts on the ideal sourcing/recruiting team alignment, critical skills for any recruiting team, and the future of recruiting (hint –  it has something to do with data).

Facebook’s Hiring Surprise is Good For Sourcing & Recruiting

 

Nearly a year ago I stumbled across an interesting post on LinkedIn that revealed that Facebook’s single biggest recruiting focus was NOT what most people would assume.

Can you guess what it might be?

Facebook Open Jobs and Recruiting Needs

Software engineering? Nope.

Infrastructure? Wrong.

People and recruiting? Not even close. Continue reading

My Future of Sourcing Keynote at Talent42

Talent42 audience viewI recently attended and thoroughly enjoyed the Talent42 conference in SeattleJohn Vlastelica and Carmen Hudson have done a fantastic job, and I was also honored to be asked to present the closing keynote on the current and future state of sourcing.

Aside from the stacked speaker lineup, valuable content, sourcing roundtables led by a good portion of who’s who in the sourcing community, and power + wireless for all (other conference organizers please take note!), what I especially enjoyed about Talent42 is the fact that it is the only technical recruiting-only conference.  My entire career has been focused primarily on the technical recruiting, so it was nice to spend a couple of days in the company of people who share a similar recruiting background and appreciate the unique challenges associated with sourcing and recruiting IT professionals.

As my keynote presentation had a lot of animations, off-slide commentary and embedded videos, I took the time to modify the slide deck so that it could be largely understood that without the benefit of hearing me speak to the content (I wish more presenters would do the same!!!), and I have uploaded it to Slideshare, complete with informative, funny, and controversial YouTube videos.

In this presentation I address what I feel is the current state of talent sourcing as well as what I believe the future of talent sourcing will be, sooner than later.  Additionally, I demonstrate Facebook’s Graph Search and offer insight into functionality from several “Big Data” talent sourcing tools, including Dice Open Web, TalentBin, Entelo, and Gild.

100+ Free Sourcing & Recruiting Tools, Guides, and Resources

 

It’s been a LONG time coming, but I finally got around to updating my free sourcing & recruiting tools, guides and resources page where I now keep a current list of the best of my work all in one place for easy bookmarking and reference.

You can find it here on my main page:

 

Here is where you can find all of the best of my Boolean Black belt content all in one place - free sourcing and recruiting how-to guides, tools, presentations, and videos - be sure to bookmark it, and if you're feeling  friendly, tweet it, share it on LinkedIn and/or +1 it on Google Plus.  Many thanks!

 

Additionally, I thought I might as well put all of my best work all in one blog post as well – over 110 of my articles in one place for easy referencing!

My blog is a pursuit of passion and not of profit – if you’ve ever found anything I’ve written helpful to you, all I ask is that you tweet this out, share it on LinkedIn, like it on Facebook, or give this a +1 on Google.

Many thanks for your readership and support – please pay it forward to someone who can benefit.

Big Data, Analytics and Moneyball Recruiting

Big Data, Data Science and Moneyball Recruiting

The Moneyball Recruiting Opportunity: Analytics and Big Data

Human Capital Data is Sexy – and Sourcing is the Sexiest job in HR/Recruiting! 

Is Sourcing Dead? No! Here’s the Future of Sourcing

The End of Sourcing 1.0 and the Evolution of Sourcing 2.0

How to Find Email Addresses

How to Use Gmail and Rapportive to Find Almost Anyone’s Email Address

Social Discovery

2 Very Cool and Free Social Discovery Tools: Falcon and TalentBin

Talent Communities

The Often Overlooked Problem with Talent Communities

Lean / Just-In-Time Recruiting / Talent Pipelines

What is Lean, Just-In-Time Recruiting?

Lean Recruiting & Just-In-Time Talent Acquisition Part 1

Lean Recruiting & Just-In-Time Talent Acquisition Part 2

Lean Recruiting & Just-In-Time Talent Acquisition Part 3

Lean Recruiting & Just-In-Time Talent Acquisition Part 4

The Passive Candidate Pipeline Problem

Semantic Search

What is Semantic Search and How Can it Be Used for Sourcing and Recruiting?

Sourcing and Search: Man vs. Machine/Artificial Intelligence – My SourceCon Keynote

Why Sourcers Won’t Be Replaced By Watson/Machine Learning Algorithms Any Time Soon

Diversity Sourcing

How to Perform Diversity Sourcing on LinkedIn – Including Specific Boolean Search Strings

How to Use Facebook’s Graph Search for Diversity Sourcing

Social Recruiting

How to Find People to Recruit on Twitter using Followerwonk & Google + Bing X-Ray Search

Google Plus Search Guide: How to Search and Find People on Google Plus

Facebook’s Graph Search Makes it Ridiculously Easy to Find Anyone

How to Effectively Source Talent on Social Networks – It Requires Non-Standard Search Terms!

How a Recruiter Made 3 Hires on Twitter in Six Weeks!

Twitter 101 for Sourcers and Recruiters

Anti-Social Recruiting

How Social Recruiting has NOT Changed Recruiting

Social Recruiting – Beyond the Hype

What Social Recruiting is NOT

Sourcing Social Media Requires Outside the Box Thinking

Social Networking Sites vs. Job Boards

LinkedIn Sourcing and Recruiting

Sourcing and Searching LinkedIn: Beyond the Basics – SourceCon Dallas 2012

LinkedIn’s Dark Matter – Profiles You Cannot Find

How to Get a Higher LinkedIn InMail Response Rate

The Most Effective Way to X-Ray Search LinkedIn

LinkedIn Catfish: Fake Profiles, Real People, or Just Fake Photos?

LinkedIn Search: Drive it Like you Stole It – 8 Minute Video of My LinkedIn Presentation in Toronto

How to Search LinkedIn and Control Years of Experience

How to Quickly and Effectively Grow Your LinkedIn Network

How to View the Full Profiles of our 3rd Degree Connections on LinkedIn for Free

How to Find and Identify Active Job Seekers on LinkedIn

LinkedIn Profile Search Engine Optimization

Free LinkedIn Profile Optimization and Job Seeker Advice

Do Recruiters Ruin LinkedIn?

The 50 Largest LinkedIn Groups

How to See Full Names of 3rd Degree LinkedIn Connections for Free

How I Search LinkedIn to Find People

LinkedIn’s Undocumented Search Operator

Does LinkedIn Offer Recruiters any Competitive Advantage?

Have You Analyzed the Value of Your LinkedIn Network?

Where Do YOU Rank In LinkedIn Search Results?

What is the Total Number of LinkedIn Members?

Beware When Searching LinkedIn By Company Name

LinkedIn Sourcing Challenge

How to Search for Top Students and GPA’s on LinkedIn

What’s the Best Way to Search LinkedIn for People in Specific Industries?

18 LinkedIn Apps, Tools and Resources

LinkedIn Search: What it Could be and Should be

How to Search Across Multiple Countries on LinkedIn

Private and Out of Network Search Results on LinkedIn

How to “Unlock” and view “Private” LinkedIn Profiles

Searching LinkedIn for Free – The Differences Between Internal and X-Ray Searching

Sourcing and Boolean Search

Basic Boolean Search Operators and Query Modifiers Explained

How to Find Resumes On the Internet with Google

Challenging Google Resume Search Assumptions

Don’t be a Sourcing Snob

The Top 15 Talent Sourcing Mistakes

Why Boolean Search is Such a Big Deal in Recruiting

How to Become a World Class Sourcer

Enough with the Exotic Sourcing Already – What’s Practical and What Works

Sourcing is So Much More than Tips, Tricks, Hacks, and Google

How to Find, Hire, Train, and Build a Sourcing Team – SourceCon 2013

How to Use Excel to Automatically Build Boolean Search Strings

The Current and Future State of Sourcing

Why So Many People Stink at Searching

Is your ATS a Black Hole or a Diamond Mine?

How to Find Bilingual Professionals with Boolean Search Strings

How to Best Use Resume Search Aggregators

How to Convert Quotation Marks in Microsoft Word for Boolean Search

Boolean Search, Referral Recruiting and Source of Hire

The Critical Factors Behind Sourcing ROI

What is a “Boolean Black Belt?”

Beyond Basic Boolean Search: Proximity and Weighting

Why Sourcing is Superior to Posting Jobs for Talent

The Future of Sourcing and Talent Identification

Sourcing is an Investigative and Iterative Process

Beyond Boolean Search: Human Capital Information Retrieval

Do you Speak Boolean?

Is Recruiting Top Talent Really Your Company’s Top Priority?

Sourcing is NOT an Entry Level Function

Boolean Search Beyond Google

The Internet Has Free Resumes. So What?

How to Search Spoke, Zoominfo and Jigsaw for Free

Job Boards vs. Social Networking Sites

What to Do if Google Thinks You’re Not Human: the Captcha

What if you only had One Source to Find Candidates?

Passive Recruiting is a Myth – It Doesn’t Exist

Sourcing: Separate Role or Integrated Function?

The #1 Mistake in Corporate Recruiting

How I Learned What I Know About Sourcing

Resumes Are Like Wine – They Get Better with Age!

Why Do So Many ATS Vendors Offer Such Poor Search Functionality?

Do Candidates Really Want a Relationship with their recruiter?

Recruiting: Art or Science?

What to Consider When Creating or Selecting Effective Sourcing Training – SourceCon NYC

The Sourcer’s Fallacy

Sourcing Challenge – Monster vs. Google – Round 1

Sourcing Challenge – Monster vs. Google – Round 2

Do You Have the Proper Perspective in Recruiting?

Are You a Clueless Recruiter?

Job Boards and Candidate Quality – Challenging Popular Assumptions

When it Comes to Sourcing – All Sources Are Not Created Equal

Boolean Search String Experiments

Boolean Search String Experiment #1

Boolean Search String Experiment #1 Follow Up

Boolean Search String Experiment #2

 

The End of Sourcing 1.0 is Near, Sourcing 2.0 Just Beginning

 

In case you haven’t read Dr. John Sullivan’s recent article entitled, “The end of sourcing is near…the remaining recruiting challenge is selling“, I highly recommend that you do so.

While I agree with some of the points that Dr. Sullivan raises, I disagree with others as I believe he has an oversimplified view of sourcing.

I argue that some basic and common sourcing functions and tactics will be coming to an end soon, and in fact, they have already ended in companies that are on the leading edge of sourcing.

However, as with many corporate functions, there will never be an end to sourcing itself – there will only be an evolution.

What follows is my sourcing manifesto.

Read further to explore:

  • Why sourcing exists in the first place
  • The underlying flaws of the “everyone is easy to find” argument
  • The limits of matching technology
  • Why big data requires people to make sense of it
  • My definition of sourcing
  • Strategic vs. tactical sourcing
  • The true value of sourcing
  • What can (and should!) be automated in sourcing
  • Sourcing 1.0 vs. 2.0

You should be advised that this is a lengthy article – if you’re looking for a quick read, you won’t find it here. Continue reading

The Current and Future State of Talent Sourcing

I had the distinct honor and privilege of serving as the conference chair of the biggest-ever SourceCon, held at the Georgia Aquarium in February. Part of my responsibility in that role involved kicking off the event, and I took the opportunity to touch upon my observations and opinions on the current state of sourcing, as well as what I believe will be the future of sourcing.

Even as I was standing on stage I knew I would be writing a post on this topic, because it was apparent that there is much misunderstanding and debate surrounding sourcing, and certainly no shortage of opinion, qualified or otherwise.

If you’re ready, I’ll walk you though my definition of sourcing, my observations on the current state of sourcing, and what I (and others!) see as the future state of sourcing.

WARNING: If you don’t like/have time to read long posts, I suggest you turn back now. While I could have split this content up into 9 weeks worth of 500 word posts, I’d prefer to give you the goods rather than string you along.

What is Sourcing?

First and foremost, I believe it is critical to have a common understanding of what sourcing is.

I define sourcing to include any and all activities whose primary purpose is talent discovery and identification.

My definition is purposefully broad, because I find too many people seem to associate sourcing solely with searching the Internet with Boolean search strings.

While some companies may limit their sourcers to exactly that – searching only the Internet and generating names for someone else to engage – sourcing is and should be much more than that.

Sourcing encompasses the use of any source of human capital data – an ATS, Monster, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, mobile apps, etc., and it can also include the phone, email, and messaging work of engaging potential candidates and networking with them to yield referrals and the opportunity to identify more potential candidates.

Yes, networking with people – whether they be new hires, existing staff and management, or complete strangers – to find and identify potential candidates is also sourcing, regardless of method (electronically, over the phone, or in person).

Of course, sourcing also includes traditional phone sourcing as effectively addressed and dramatically demonstrated at the SourceCon event by Conni LaDouceur.

And finally, although passive and offering little-to-no control over the qualifications and experience of the talent discovered, job posting is even a form of sourcing – the primary purpose of posting a job is to discover talent.

The Critical Importance of Sourcing

When it comes to the entire talent management lifecycle, nothing is more important than sourcing.

That’s because, quite simply, the entire talent management lifecycle is completely dependent upon discovering and identifying potential talent in the first place.

You cannot engage, build a relationship with, recruit, hire, retain and develop someone you haven’t found.

Period.

Try cutting and polishing a poor quality diamond, or better yet – try cutting a diamond you don’t actually have. You could have the best diamond cutters in the world on your staff, but without a steady supply of high quality rough diamonds, you simply won’t be in business.

When it comes to hiring and retaining, all future outcomes are dependent upon that magical moment when a sourcer/recruiter first finds and makes contact with a potential candidate.

The Current State of Sourcing

I believe that sourcing is largely misunderstood, undervalued, and under-invested in today.

I offer as evidence:

  • An alarming number of people seem to believe that sourcing is all about Boolean logic
  • There are people who believe that sourcing is a function that can be easily replaced by software
  • There are well respected companies who don’t give their sourcers or recruiters any premium or purpose-built tools or resources
  • The recently conducted sourcing compensation survey illustrated that 23% of the respondents make less than $40,000 annually Continue reading

Talent Sourcing: Man vs. AI/Black Box Semantic Search

Back in March 2010, I had the distinct honor of delivering the keynote presentation at SourceCon on the topic of resume search and match solutions claiming to use artificial intelligence in comparison with people using their natural intelligence for talent discovery and identification.

Now that nearly 2 years has passed, and given that in that time I’ve had even more hands-on experience with a number of the top AI/semantic search applications available (I won’t be naming names, sorry), I decided it was time to revisit the topic which I am very passionate about.

If you’ve ever been curious about semantic search applications that “do the work for you” when it comes to finding potential candidates, you’re in the right place, because I’ve updated the slide deck and published it to Slideshare. Here’s what you’ll find in the 86 slide presentation:

  • A deep dive into the deceptively simple challenge of sourcing talent via human capital data (resumes, social network profiles, etc.)
  • How resume and LinkedIn profile sourcing and matching solutions claiming to use artificial intelligence, semantic search, and NLP actually work and achieve their claims
  • The pros, cons, and limitations of automated/black box matching solutions
  • An insightful (and funny!) video of Dr. Michio Kaku and his thoughts on the limitations of artificial intelligence
  • Examples of what sourcers and recruiters can do that even the most advanced automated search and match algorithms can’t do
  • The concept of Human Capital Data Information Retrieval and Analysis (HCDIR & A)
  • Boolean and extended Boolean
  • Semantic search
  • Dynamic inference
  • Dark Matter resumes and social network profiles
  • What I believe to be the ideal resume search and matching solution
Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts.

Talent Sourcing: Beyond Tips, Tricks, Hacks and the Internet

It’s bothered me for quite some time now that many people essentially equate sourcing with Internet search – using search engines such as Google and Bing to find resumes, lists, press releases, etc.

It bothers me because sourcing is so much more than that.

It also bothers me because I am aware that many companies (some quite large and well respected) limit their sourcers and recruiters primarily to the Internet as the only source of information.

I believe a major contributing factor as to why sourcing isn’t highly valued by some organizations and why sourcing doesn’t get as much widespread respect and recognition as it should is because too many people associate sourcing primarily with Internet search.

The future of talent sourcing will involve a shift from manual Internet search and ATS/CRM systems with only rudimentary search and analysis capability to highly specialized tools specifically designed for mining vast and proprietary human capital data sets dynamically compiled from multiple sources that enables predictive analytics.

It’s coming – will you be ready? Will you be ahead of the curve or behind it? Continue reading