Tag Archives: Glen Cathey

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).

Talent42 Keynote: Building Talent Pipelines

 

Glen Cathey - Talent42In theory, building a talent “pipeline” sounds like an ideal strategy, ensuring that you always have a steady supply of the talent you’re looking for.

In reality, there are many issues with building talent pipelines, and they all “leak” extensively.

I recently delivered the closing keynote at the always excellent Talent42 technical recruiting conference where I explored the core issues associated with building talent pipelines, proposed that talent acquisition is essentially responsible for managing a company’s human capital supply chain, and challenged the audience to see that the “war for talent” is really a supply chain management competition.

If you have a difficult time seeing the parallels between talent acquisition and supply chain management, take a look at the definition of supply chain management according to the CSCMP (Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals): “Supply chain management encompasses the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management…It also includes the crucial components of coordination and collaboration with channel partners, which can be suppliers, intermediaries, third-party service providers, and customers.”

Talent acquisition certainly involves the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing, procuring/converting candidates and all associated logistics – as such, I believe HR/recruiting organizations need to leverage proven production and supply chain management principles (e.g., Lean, kanban, Just-In-Time, etc.) in their recruiting processes and strategies to gain competitive advantages.

Unfortunately, many companies seem to be very late to the game in this regard. As the ultimate owners of talent acquisition, HR/recruiting should be the experts in human capital supply chain management and processes, leading innovation in this space. However, I have found several examples of global I.T. professionals innovatively leveraging Lean principles to recruit people for their own teams and to manage recruiting processes that should serve as a serious wake-up call to HR/recruiting organizations.

If you’re curious about the core problems associated with proactively building talent pipelines and would like to learn about the many benefits of applying lean principles to the recruiting process, including reducing the “7 deadly wastes,” employing kanban and enabling Just-In-Time delivery, take some time to navigate through the Slideshare below.

My live presentation deck was comprised mostly of images, so I’ve published a modified version that can be consumed without the benefit of hearing me speak to the concepts.

Enjoy, and please do share your thoughts.

Free LinkedIn Sourcing Webinar Wednesday November 20 @ 2PM ET

 

LinkedIn Sourcing Webinar November 2013

When you search LinkedIn, are you finding top talent, or simply those people who are easiest to find?

Would you know the difference?

While some people firmly believe that LinkedIn is “over fished,” I can confidently tell you that nothing is further from the truth.

In fact, what if I told you that you routinely find only a fraction of the people that can be found on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn 259 Million UsersNow that LinkedIn has grown to over 259,000,000 registered users, finding people has become much easier, but finding the right people becomes increasingly more challenging, and finding all of them even harder. As such, knowing how to effectively source talent on LinkedIn is now more important than ever.

During Wednesday’s LinkedIn sourcing webinar, I’ll review advanced human capital data retrieval concepts, techniques and strategies that you can leverage in LinkedIn Recruiter, including Dark Matter, Maximum Inclusion, Adaptive Search, Strategic Exclusion, Intelligent Results Processing, and Moneyball Sourcing.

Be sure to attend this LinkedIn webinar live, because this session won’t be recorded and the slides won’t be distributed afterwards.

Also, I simply have to recognize the LinkedIn team’s graphic designer for putting this “Lord of the Strings” image together – I’m a huge LOTR fan.

Although I like the concept of Gandalf, Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn having my back in the war for talent, I think I’ll stick with my shaved head. :)

Lord-of-the-Strings 2 LinkedIn

LinkedIn Certification, Talent Connect and Boolean NOT Update

LinkedIn Recruiter Certification

In case you missed it, LinkedIn has launched a recruiter certification program!

LinkedIn Certification-Badge

If you think you’re ready to get certified, between now and December 31, 2013, LinkedIn will waive the exam fee for the first 500 customers that register for the LinkedIn Certified Professional—Recruiter certification exam. Click/see the coupon code below:

LinkedIn recruiter certification free

Before you attempt to take the certification assessment, you will definitely want to see what I only recently discovered about LinkedIn’s support of Boolean search exclusion operator (NOT vs. Minus sign) – skip to the bottom of the post to learn more.

LinkedIn Talent Connect

Talent Connect 2013 Logo

I’m honored to be presenting again at both Talent Connect events this month in Vegas as well as Talent Connect London, which happens to be the largest corporate recruiting event in Europe.

The event in Vegas is sold out, but you can view the live stream – click here to to register.

I will be presenting two sessions on LinkedIn talent sourcing on Wednesday the 16th in Vegas and one session on Thursday the 24th in London,  covering core principles and advanced strategies.

Now that LinkedIn has grown to over 238M profiles, finding people has become easier, but finding the right people has actually become more challenging. As such, knowing how to effectively source talent on LinkedIn is now more important than ever. In the foundation session, I’ll be reviewing information retrieval best practices, the importance of understanding the behavior of the people you’re looking for and that of your competitors, and how to develop the ability to ask better questions with Boolean logic. In the advanced session, I will cover Dark Matter concepts, Maximum Inclusion, Adaptive Search, Strategic Exclusion, and Moneyball Sourcing.

LinkedIn Boolean Search Exclusion: NOT vs. the Minus Sign

You may recall that I broke the story on LinkedIn’s undocumented Boolean search operator over two years ago.

In preparation for the LinkedIn Recruiter Certification, I inquired with the team at LinkedIn about any differences between the Boolean NOT operator and the minus sign (-).

They responded, and you should know that LinkedIn officially only supports the NOT operator for exclusion, as there are some “corner cases” in which the minus sign will not work for exclusion – this is true for searching LinkedIn for free as well as for LinkedIn Recruiter.

Now, if you’re a fan of words like I am, you may especially appreciate their specific use of the term “corner case,” which clearly came from their engineers. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia offers an excellent explanation:

corner case (or pathological case) is a problem or situation that occurs only outside of normal operating parameters—specifically one that manifests itself when multiple environmental variables or conditions are simultaneously at extreme levels, even though each parameter is within the specified range for that parameter.

For example, a loudspeaker might distort audio, but only when played at maximum volume, maximum bass, and in a high-humidity environment. Or a computer server may be unreliable, but only with the maximum complement of 64processors, 512 GB of memory, and 10,000 signed-on users.

Contrast a corner case with an edge case, an issue that occurs only at a (single) maximum or minimum parameter. For example, a speaker that distorts audio at maximum volume, even in the absence of other extreme settings or conditions.

Corner cases are part of an engineer‘s lexicon—especially an engineer involved in testing or debugging a complex system. Corner cases are often harder and more expensive to reproduce, test, and optimize because they require maximal configurations in multiple dimensions. They are frequently less-tested, given the belief that few product users will, in practice, exercise the product at multiple simultaneous maximum settings. Expert users of systems therefore routinely find corner case anomalies, and in many of these, errors.

Mind you, you can still use the minus sign in lieu of the Boolean NOT operator to exclude terms and OR statements, but be advised that there are some rare scenarios where the minus sign won’t work.

Now, I’ve personally never encountered a situation in which the minus sign did not work exactly as the NOT operator, so what are the corner cases in which the minus sign won’t work?

Ah, you know I have already asked the LinkedIn team…I am eagerly awaiting their response.

 

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.

LinkedIn Sourcing Ninja Webinar Recording now on YouTube

 

In case you missed my record-setting LinkedIn sourcing webinar on 6/4 (3,000+ attendees!), the fine folks at LinkedIn recorded the whole session and have graciously uploaded the presentation to YouTube, where you can find the Become a Sourcing Ninja: Earn your Boolean Black Belt with Glen Cathey video.

 

 

Be sure to change the quality to 720 for the best viewing experience.

Content covered includes:

  • Boolean search operators and query modifiers supported by LinkedIn
  • Beyond Boolean – asking better questions
  • Human-Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR)
  • Hidden Talent Pools
  • Diversity sourcing (gender demonstrated)
  • Agile Sourcing Methodology
  • Probabilisitic and Exhaustive Sourcing
  • Sourcing Capability Maturity Model
  • LinkedIn Signal
  • How to automatically find people who have just joined LinkedIn

 

Happy hunting!

 

The Top 100 Most Connected People on LinkedIn

 

LinkedIn 225 Million StatisticsI’ve compiled a list of the top 100 most connected people on LinkedIn, who represent the top .000044% of LinkedIn’s reported 225 million+ registered users.

Here are a few interesting facts:

  • There are only 5 women in the top 100, but 2 are in the top 10, and a total of 4 are in the top 20
  • The U.S. accounts for more than half of the top 100 (55)
  • The other 45 members represent the following 15 countries: U.K. (11), India (6), Netherlands (5), Canada (5), Brazil (5), Australia (3), U.A.E. (2), Turkey (1), Spain (1), South Africa (1), Israel (1), Singapore (1), Venezuela (1), Monacao (1), and France (1)
  • As might be suspected, a solid percentage of the top 100 are in staffing/recruiting/HR (28%). Other highly represented industries include I.T., Management Consulting, Financial Services, and Marketing and Advertising.
  • Beyond those top 5, the industry diversity in the top 100 is quite broad, including Logistics and Supply Chain, Telecommunications, Wine and Spirits, Construction, Transportation, Internet, Online Media, Think Tanks, Venture Capital, Utilities, Aviation and Aerospace, Computer and Network Security, Research, Translation and Localization, Photography, Mining and Metals, Real Estate, Security and Investigations, Public Policy, Accounting, Pharmaceuticals, and Non-Profit.

You might be surprised to know that it takes at least 36,000 1st degree connections to crack the top 10.

If you try to send invitations to connect with these folks, don’t be upset if they aren’t accepted – some of them simply can’t be.

Once you hit the 30,000 1st degree connection mark, LinkedIn won’t allow you to accept invitations to connect – so any connections added past that point must be invitations sent out to others to accept.

And so, without further ado, here is the list of the top 100 most connected people on LinkedIn: Continue reading

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

 

How to Find, Hire, Train & Build a Sourcing Team: SourceCon 2013

 

Male_whale_shark_at_Georgia_AquariumI recently presented at the largest-ever SourceCon event held at the mesmerizing Georgia Aquarium where you can network with industry peers while watching whale sharks, manta rays and Beluga whales swim by.

My session focused on building out a sourcing function with an emphasis on building a sourcing team from scratch with people who have no prior experience in sourcing and recruiting.

I recently hired and trained a team of 40+ sourcers so I was able to share my journey and lessons learned, as well as my theory that you can more effectively train people with no prior experience than you can people with a few years or more of sourcing and recruiting.

My theory is supported by my own experience (I’ve never attended or received any sourcing or recruiting training), as well as a couple of books I referenced in my presentation: The Talent Code and Talent is Overrated. It’s quite interesting to realize that most environments are neither conducive to effective learning, nor effective in developing extremely advanced levels of sourcing and recruiting capability.

If you didn’t have the chance to see me speak at SourceCon and you haven’t already viewed this deck on SourceCon’s website, please review my presentation below to learn more about the ideal conditions under which you can create the next generation of sourcing masters.

And yes, you’ll get the chance to see a handful of the Boolean search strings I use to find people with no prior sourcing or recruiting experience (or any specific experience, for that matter!) who have a high probability of developing into world-class sourcers and recruiters.

 

 

 

The Moneyball Recruiting Opportunity: Analytics & Big Data

 

Earlier this year, I traveled to Australia to present a keynote at the Australasian Talent Conference on the topic of the Moneyball opportunity that exists for companies when they are sourcing, identifying, assessing, recruiting, and developing talent, and how big data and predictive analytics will be the next major area of competitive advantage in the war for talent.

Below you will find my keynote presentation, including a couple of YouTube videos.

Big Data and predictive analytics are just beginning to be leveraged in talent acquisition by a few forward thinking companies, and I am convinced they will both play major roles in the near future.

Unfortunately, at this time there is still some confusion around exactly what “Big Data” is and is not. For example, this Wall Street Journal article incorrectly references the use of personality assessments and other online tests to facilitate hiring as an application of Big Data, when in fact it is really just an example of analytics.

Data from personality assessments and online tests coupled with other human capital data doesn’t represent a combination of high-volume, high-velocity, and/or high-variety information assets, which most experts agree is required for something to be classified as “Big Data.”

In this presentation, I think you will find the examples of how companies are currently leveraging analytics in their recruitment as well as in the analysis of their current workforce to be quite interesting, as well as some of the tools that already exist that do in fact harness high volume, high velocity, and high variety information assets.

You may be shocked to find that data supports the finding that taller and more attractive men and women make more money than their shorter and less attractive peers (especially shocked to find out exactly how much more!) – which gives us a glimpse into how people make hiring and promotion decisions on a daily basis based on unconscious prejudice, similar to how unconscious prejudice, wisdom, and “gut” instincts are and have been used in athletic recruiting – which Billy Beane and Paul Depodesta of the Oakland A’s specifically set out to counter.

As demonstrated in Moneyball, very strong teams can be built with data-based decision making, throwing conventional wisdom to the wind.

Enjoy the presentation, and please do let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

 

 

If you like what you’ve seen in the Slideshare, you may want to read this post I wrote on Big Data, Data Science, and Moneyball recruiting last year.

 

I Return to London For LinkedIn Talent Connect and TruLondon

 

I’m writing this from the International terminal of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport – the busiest airport in the world.

I thought I would let you know where in the world Glen Cathey is, and this week – I’ll be in London to speak at my 5th LinkedIn event, LinkedIn Talent Connect Europe.

I’ve cooked up a great presentation for the attendees who come to my session at 2:30 on Tuesday the 23rd.

While I understand Talent Connect Europe will have attendees from all across EMEA, I must say that there is a special place in my heart for Londoners.

Why? Because for the 4th year in a row, London has more unique visitors to my website than any other city in the world, with New York in 2nd and Bangalore in 3rd.

The sourcing and recruiting community is strong in London – check out my Google Analytics map of unique visitors below:

 

 

I also plan to sneak into TruLondon on Monday the 22nd – Bill Boorman has assembled an impressive list of some of the world’s top minds in sourcing, and I am keen not to catch up with those fine folks as well as throw my skills and experience into the mix.

This will be my second TruLondon experience, and Bill always puts together an amazing unconference, so I am very much looking forward to it, even if I can only attend for a few hours on Monday afternoon.

If you’ll be attending either event, please be sure to find me and introduce yourself if you have the chance.

Happy hunting!

 

 

My SourceCon Presentation – LinkedIn: Beyond the Basics

 

I was honored to be asked to present at the Dallas 2012 SourceCon event – which turned out to be the largest SourceCon event ever!

When I was talking with Amybeth Hale back at the end of 2011 about what I’d like to present on, I asked if anyone had ever run a session solely dedicated to LinkedIn.

Now, I’ve been to every SourceCon save 2 (the first one and 2011/Santa Clara), I’ve spoken at 5 of them, and I couldn’t recall anyone delivering a LinkedIn presentation, and neither could Amybeth (for the ones I missed or sessions I did not attend).

That struck me as beyond odd, given how valuable a resource LinkedIn is for sourcing and recruiting.

What you see below is the deck from my “LinkedIn: Beyond the Basics” session, complete with YouTube videos.

 

 

8 Minute Video from my LinkedIn #InToronto Presentation

 

I’ve had the distinct honor of speaking at every event that LinkedIn has put together in the U.S. and Canada, and I will also be speaking at the third Talent Connect event on October 10-12 in Las Vegas, where they expect well over 2,000 people to attend. I’ll be running 2 sessions on effectively searching LinkedIn (one basic and one advanced). I am also looking forward to speaking at the LinkedIn Talent Connect Europe event in London on October 23rd.

While the Talent Connect events in the U.S. are strictly restricted to corporate customers only, when I presented at the #InToronto event, there was a mix of corporate customers and agency users, and over 1,200 people showed up.

I ran two 30-minute sessions on searching LinkedIn to find talent, and the LinkedIn staff filmed one of them and compiled an 8 minute video that they recently uploaded to YouTube.

In case you hadn’t seen it, I wanted to share it with you here. Granted, my U.S. Talent connect sessions are usually 45 minutes to 1 hour, and they edited out quite a bit of the “good stuff” to get a 30 minute session down to 8 minutes, but I think you’ll find the content of interest if you happen to use LinkedIn in your sourcing and recruiting efforts.

 

 

 

I’ve Joined SourceRight Solutions, a Randstad Company

When it comes to recruiting – it’s all about timing and opportunity, right?

I’ve had a great 15 year run in the staffing industry, starting off in 1997 at a small privately held company in Chantilly, VA, and ultimately ending up at Kforce after they acquired that no-longer-small staffing company back in February of 2005.

Over the years, I’ve progressed from a top producing recruiter to a VP of recruiting, and I’ve relocated twice with Kforce from Ashburn, VA to Tampa and more recently to Atlanta.

As with most people in the recruiting and staffing industry, I’d received my fair share of opportunity pitches.

Some came from companies I would have loved to work for, but none were the right match for what I was looking to do, and disappointingly, most seemed to be looking for someone to fit into very defined and scoped roles offering little room for me to bring all of my knowledge, experience, and passion for sourcing and recruiting to bear.

I’ve enjoyed many rewarding roles at Kforce that offered me the ability to stretch the boundaries of my job descriptions to be able to add value to the entire firm in as many ways as possible. When I was contacted about positions that were limited in scope and seemed more like the company was looking for a specific piece to fit their puzzle, it was an easy decision to not pursue them any further, as I promised myself I would never take a step backwards, even if it was an opportunity with a marquee company.

However, after 15 years in the staffing industry, the right opportunity finally came along. Continue reading

SourceCon 2012 Atlanta – the Biggest SourceCon Ever!

It’s official.

The SourceCon event at the Georgia Aquarium on Feb 9 & 10 will be the biggest event ever, with more attendees than any other SourceCon!

What that really means, other than proof that Atlanta is the center of the sourcing universe [sorry Seattle ;)], is that attendees will have more opportunity to network with, share best practices, and learn from other sourcers and sourcing leaders than ever before.

As you would expect, SourceCon will treat those in attendance with high-value keynotes and general sessions from industry luminaries such as:

  • Aida La Chaux from Yahoo on sourcing through adversity
  • Adam Lawrence of Alexander Mann Solutions on global sourcing
  • Jim Stroud of Bernard Hodes on social & personalized search
  • Eric Jaquith from SourceRight on how to stack the deck in your favor when it comes to sourcing
  • Conni LaDouceur on phone sourcing best practices (and yes, you’ll hear recorded calls!)

In addition, there are breakout tracks for sourcing leaders and for sourcing practitioners lead by Charles Bretz, Shannon Van Curen, Shannon Myers, Cathy Henesey, Elaine Order, Justin Clem, Anne DeWys, Therese Hightower, Cathy Henesey, and Atlanta’s own Chris Havrilla, covering topics such as ATS/candidate databases and social and mobile sourcing. Continue reading

The Guide to Semantic Search for Sourcing and Recruiting

If you have nearly any tenure in HR, sourcing or recruiting, you’ve probably heard something about “semantic search” and perhaps you would like to learn more.

Well – you’ve found the right article.

As a follow-up to my recent Slideshare on AI sourcing and matching, I am going to provide an overview of semantic search, the claims that semantic search vendors often make, explain how semantic search applications actually work, and expose some practical limitations of semantic search  recruiting solutions.

Additionally, I will classify the 5 basic levels of semantic search and give you examples of how you can conduct Level 3 Semantic Search (Grammatical/Natural) with Monster, Bing, and any search engine that allows for fixed or configurable proximity.

But first – let’s define “semantic search.” 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.

Looking Back, Forward, and For Your Input

As a reader of Boolean Black Belt, I’d looking for your feedback and input on a few things.

For example:

  • What would you like to see me write more about?
  • Would you like to write a post on Boolean Black Belt?
  • What do you think of me changing my site to something other than “Boolean Black Belt?”

However, before I go any further down that rabbit hole, I’d like to thank you, give you some insight as to why I blog, and let you know about what you can expect from me in 2012.

First & Foremost – Thank You

As 2011 has come to an end, I find myself reflecting on the past as as well as looking forward to what 2012 will bring.

Most importantly, I want to thank you and the other 112,320 people who stopped by my blog in 2011, who came from 175 countries and viewed over 300,000 pages.

I owe special thanks to all of you who have commented on my posts, shared them with others, and suggested my site to peers, managers, and team members.

If I’ve ever shown you something you didn’t already know, or made you think or reconsider what you do already know,  I’ve accomplished one of my main goals in blogging, and it makes all of the hours of precious personal time I take on a weekly basis to publish my blog posts worthwhile.

Why Do I Blog Anyway?

This happens to be my 165th post since I started blogging back in October of 2008.

I write for many reasons, and monetizing isn’t one of them. I will never take a 2000 word post and split it into 4 500 word posts just to string my readers along.

I’d love to post content more frequently than once per week, but with a family and a full time job, blogging about recruiting, sourcing, and social media is essentially a weekend hobby.

A hobby is defined as “a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.” I’m not so sure blogging relaxes me, but it certainly doesn’t feel like “work,” as time flies while I am writing and it is definitely intellectually cathartic.

If I could sum up what I am trying to accomplish by blogging, I would have to use something Erik Weihenmayer said during his LinkedIn Talent Connect 2010 keynote: I want to “contribute to something extraordinary.”

While it may sound corny or ridiculous to some, I am actually trying to try and change the world of recruiting one post at a time.

How?

I don’t write to make people agree with me – I just want people to think instead of clinging to what they already know and are comfortable with.

Because if you’re comfortable, you’re not growing.

What’s Coming From Boolean Black Belt in 2012

I had a pingback a while ago from a blogger who praised the content of one of my posts, but complained about the length.

I took it as passive constructive criticism, and I took a moment to think about my blogging style.

Most of of my posts are in the 1500 word range, and some go over 2000. In the blogging world, that’s on the long side. I know that many people want “fun-sized” content (500 words or less) that they can consume in 30 seconds or so. However, some concepts can’t adequately be explained in 500 words or less, nor would 500 words do some topics proper justice. And as I stated previously, I don’t write to string people along – I would rather publish a 2000 word post than split it into 4 500 word posts.

There’s nothing more annoying to me than clicking on a link from a tweet that praises an article, and once I get to the article, I find it to be a 300 word “fluff” post, totally devoid of substance. I personally don’t have a lot of time to read other blogs, so when I do, I want to sink my teeth into something substantial that I can learn something from – not some “quick hit” post that skims the surface of a topic to get a pageview.

When I am hungry for information and knowledge, I want a 7-course meal of thought – I’m not there for appetizers, and I’m never on an idea diet.

I know I may be in the minority on this issue, and I am 100% comfortable with that.

I don’t write to cater to the casual reader looking to skim over a topic or concept – if my long posts drive some people away, I actually think that’s a good thing. There are plenty of sourcing and recruiting blogs for readers to choose from. I write for people who are looking for 7-course meals of sourcing and recruiting substance.

Speaking of sourcing and recruiting substance, in 2012 I plan on going deeper into some topics that I am very interested in and passionate about, but haven’t written about as much as I would have liked in 2011. For example, semantic search, the critical importance of data and technology in support of talent identification and acquisition, and applying Lean as well as proven supply chain principles to talent acquisition

In 2012, I will also continue to update my free sourcing and recruiting resources page, and you can continue to rely on my average of 1 post per week, typically published on Monday morning, and 1000+ words per post.

What I’d Like From You

As a reader of my blog, I’d like to hear from you. Specifically, I am looking to know:

  • What would you like to see from me in 2012? Is there something you’d like to see me write more about? Please be as specific on content and topics as possible.
  • Would you like to write a post on Boolean Black Belt? Although I’d never really thought about it before, I’d love to start having guest bloggers. If you have something helpful, insightful, though-provoking and interesting regarding recruiting, sourcing and/or social media that you’d like to share, posting it on Boolean Black Belt will get your content exposure to recruiting and sourcing practitioners and leaders all over the world. With nearly 4,000 subscribers and over 10,000 unique visitors per month from over 100 countries, I can and want to help you share your ideas with the global recruiting and sourcing community, including some of the best and brightest from the most well-respected companies and talent acquisition teams in the world.
  • On a different note – what do you think about me changing the name of my site to something other than Boolean Black Belt? I write on so much more than Boolean search that I think “Boolean Black Belt” is too narrow and limited and doesn’t accurately reflect the totality of my content. I have some ideas in mind, but would honestly appreciate your input on my blog’s name and the idea of changing it to something else.

I’m looking forward to your input.

Once again, thank you very much for reading, sharing, and recommending my site and content, and you have my best wishes for a successful, fulfilling, and prosperous 2012.

Happy hunting!

How I Search LinkedIn to Find and Identify Talent

Would you like to know how I search LinkedIn when sourcing for talent?

I don’t have a premium LinkedIn account, so you may be surprised to learn that I don’t X-Ray search LinkedIn all that often.

I’ll tell you why in a moment, but first I would like to share my inspiration for this post.

I recently read a great post that addressed an issue with X-Ray searching LinkedIn and that pointed out that pattern recognition is critical to effective online sourcing.

I could not agree more – truly dynamic pattern recognition is something I think is unique to humans and is something that I believe cannot be replicated by applications claiming to leverage artificial intelligence, semantic search, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). I could elaborate further on this topic, but that would unfortunately bore 98% of my readers, so I will save it for another post that they can choose not to read later. :-)

Suffice it to say I wholeheartedly agree that is it more important to have the right investigative thought process than to have any specific Boolean search string or pre-built X-Ray search.

Getting back to how I specifically search LinkedIn to find people – you first need to understand some of the significant issues associated with using Internet search engines in an attempt to find public LinkedIn profiles. In other words, you should know they “why” before the “how.”

As an added bonus, you’ll also find that I’ve discovered that Bing and LinkedIn apparently don’t play well together anymore, and I’ll issue a LinkedIn Sourcing Challenge to the international sourcing and recruiting community to crowdsource the solution. Continue reading