While you may not know that Balazs Paroczay recently posted a rebuttal of my proposed definition of sourcing, I strongly suggest you read his argument, as I appreciate his perspective as well as the fact that he disagrees with me on the definition of sourcing and I’d like to hear your opinion. I believe disagreement is important and valuable, … Read More
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: Additionally, I thought … Read More
What’s Wrong with Job Boards?
What’s wrong with job boards? Nothing, in my opinion. However, from the ridiculous overabundance of articles, comments, and recruiting conference content that trashes job boards as if they are the worst source of hire, I am obviously in the clear minority. I continue to see and hear well respected thought leaders in the staffing industry make claims that the value … Read More
Beyond Boolean: Human Capital Information Retrieval
When I recently spoke at SourceCon in New York, I showed an example Boolean search string that could be used as a challenge or an evaluation of a person’s knowledge and ability. The search string looked something like this: (Director or “Project Manage*” or “Program Manage*” or PM*) w/250 xfirstword and (truck* or ship* or rail* or transport* or logistic* … Read More
Passive Recruiting Doesn’t Exist!
When most people talk about “passive recruiting,” they’re referring to the practice of targeting and recruiting so-called “passive candidates” – people who are not actively looking to make a move from their current employer. If you accept that notion – what would be the opposite? Active recruiting? Think about it for a moment. Neither phrase even makes sense grammatically. The “passive” … Read More
The Future of Recruiting: The More Things Change…
Now that we are on our way into exploring the new year, I’ve seen some articles on what’s coming next for the recruiting industry this year, and even as far out as 10 years from now. When I read one such article written by Kevin Wheeler, I was struck by his comment that although sourcing remains a topic he is interested in, … Read More
Lean Recruiting & Just-In-Time Talent Acquisition Part 3
In Part 1 and Part 2 in this series, I explored many of the intrinsic limitations and hidden costs of traditional candidate pipelining – sourcing, screening, and “keeping warm” candidates for which you do not have a current need. To recap, traditional candidate pipelining: Is a “push” based strategy that is not based on an actual customer (client or candidate) … Read More
Lean Recruiting & Just-In-Time Talent Acquisition Part 2
In Part 1 of this series, I explored and challenged the practice of traditional candidate pipelining. Some people may have interpreted my last post on the subject to mean that I don’t believe in any form of proactively building candidate pipelines. That would be incorrect. Anyone that really knows me knows that I am not a black/white, either/or kind of … Read More
Lean Recruiting & Just-In-Time Talent Acquisition Part 1
I wrote about how I learned to use Boolean search to leverage information systems to quickly source candidates, and I challenged the concept and practice of building candidate pipelines. Amybeth Hale commented on my post (thank you – you inspired me to finally write this one!) and mentioned that she was puzzled by the mention of the fact that I never … Read More
How I Learned What I Know About Candidate Sourcing
When it comes to my theories and best practices for leveraging information systems for quickly finding highly qualified candidates, I am often asked, “So, how did you figure all of this stuff out?” It’s a fantastic question, and I am happy to be asked it, but my answer doesn’t seem to satisfy anyone. The short answer is literally that “I just figured it out.” … Read More
Candidate – Recruiter Relationships: Overrated?
What is the ultimate value you provide to candidates as a recruiter? I want you to really think about that question before proceeding. In this post, there will be more questions raised than answers provided. Please take a moment to ensure that you have your thinking cap on and that your mind is open. Who Defines Value? From the candidate’s perspective, what do you … Read More
Recruiting: Art or Science?
I recently wrote an article for Ryan Leary’s CruiterTalk blog titled, “Anyone Can Learn the ‘Art’ of Sourcing.”Although the main point I wanted to make was that sourcing isn’t all that mysterious or difficult, and that it can be taught and learned with a strong interest to do so and access to proper training and guidance, the post drew some comments … Read More
Real Recruiting: Talent Identification AND Acquisition
As you might be able to tell from the name of my blog, I’m passionate about leveraging information systems for finding candidates. Unless you’re running 1 word or title-only queries, you can’t search the Internet, LinkedIn, Twitter, your ATS/CRM, or a job board resume database without using at least the most basic Boolean logic. When I post links to my search-focused articles in … Read More
What is the Low Hanging Fruit in Recruiting?
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know I’m a fan of leveraging every information resource available to me – my internal ATS/CRM, the Internet, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and yes, even job board resume databases (gasp!). Have you ever heard job board naysayers refer to the resumes you can find on Monster, Dice, Careerbuilder, Hotjobs, etc. as the equivalent of “low hanging fruit?” … Read More
Don’t Be A Sourcing Snob
Are You a Sourcing Snob? Ask yourself these questions: Is a candidate identified on LinkedIn intrinsically “better” than a candidate sourced from Monster? Is candidate sourced by cold calling inherently “better” than a candidate sourced from a job posting on Careerbuilder? Does it really matter where a great candidate comes from? I continue to see well respected thought leaders in the staffing industry … Read More
Challenging Google Resume Search Assumptions
This post is second in a series focused on using Google to search for resumes on the Internet. In the first post I left some unanswered questions, such as why: I didn’t talk about searching for CV’s I didn’t suggest using the tilde ~ operator in conjuntion with the word “resume” I didn’t use -~job when trying to eliminate false positive results I didn’t … Read More
Boolean Search Does Not = Internet Search
If you read certain sourcing and recruiting blogs and discussion groups, you might get the impression that Boolean search pretty much equals Internet search – such as searching for people and profiles using Google, Yahoo, or other search engines. Some sourcing and recruiting professionals may be surprised to learn that Boolean logic significantly predates the Internet and even computers – by a couple hundred years! … Read More
The Internet has Free Resumes – SO WHAT?
BEWARE: This post takes a contrarian (yet fact-based!) view of the Internet as a sourcing tool that may be unsuitable to some readers. If you don’t want to hear anything other than how awesome the Internet is for sourcing and recruiting, please stop reading now. The Internet has Free Resumes – SO WHAT? Okay, so you can find free resumes on the … Read More
Job Boards = Bad Candidates? Don’t believe the hype.
I continue to see well respected thought leaders in the staffing industry make claims that the value of the job boards is waning and that the quality of candidates on the job boards is low. A few years ago, I weighed in on an ERE discussion in response to the question of, “What would happen if the job boards became … Read More