How does confidence relate to sourcing? I am referring to the entire process of sourcing for any position you work on. How many times do the following questions hit your mind before starting to source candidates for a requisition? How will I fill this requisition, what are my sources, what are the channels I can get help from, will my job postings bring great results with candidate applications – and if not, then what kind of impression will it deliver to my recruiters, am I choosing the right source in the beginning, and many more.
Sourcing. In my world, it consists of countless innovations as well as renovations. We are presented with innumerable opportunities to do new things every time we perform a search on the Web. One might find the number of resources, techniques, strategies, and approaches to sourcing to be insurmountable to achieving a certain level of success. However, a sourcing professional does not need to be an expert in everything. One main skill is required to become a successful sourcer: I call it curiosity.
Finding someone to just fill a seat at your company isn’t hard. But finding great people—the ones who fit with your culture, who share your vision, who can make immediate and lasting contributions—can be very difficult. This is true for small and large companies, as the right people can transform any organization.
Here are 3 ways you can better source and hire truly great people for your company.
You are judged on your ability to identify and attract top talent for your hiring authorities. The job market is turning from client driven to candidate driven which means the competition for top talent will continue to escalate.
It is important that you utilize all resources including referrals, social networks, website postings, job postings, networking, your database and leads. Often the most qualified candidates are the passive candidates. These candidates are currently working, have a successful track record, but would consider a move for the right opportunity.
Sourcing talent these days is a monumental task. According to the U.S. Labor Department’s latest monthly job openings and turnover survey, for every open position there are 5 potential applicants – a small improvement from the previous month’s survey. However; surely this number doesn’t include the pool of currently employed (and underemployed) adults who are so stressed by the possible loss of their job due to economic conditions they can’t imagine tempting fate by applying for an open and potentially better position, with a new employer.
Recruiters often like to use the site: command on search engines to find LinkedIn profiles (a method we first described five years ago) because search engines avoid the 100 results per search limit imposed on queries done within LinkedIn’s own Advanced search (for free LinkedIn account users) and because they reveal unblended profiles of people outside your three-degree network (only LinkedIn corporate account holders can view virtually all users), especially handy when you’re sourcing in new areas where you don’t have a strong network.
A couple of weeks ago, I was providing some interview coaching for an Ivy college Junior. He is searching for a summer internship on where else? Wall Street. This isn’t exactly open season for hiring in Financial Services, so he has to have every edge over the competition. After explaining that interviewers are often tough, I began a series of questions that “searched for limitations”. One of them, “Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss” led to a response I hadn’t been counting on.
My hunch is that most companies have started to use social networks for their recruiting, but it is most likely happening more by accident than strategy. Recruiters are setting up their own personal profiles – rather than corporate accounts – and manually building their contact networks using the social sites to source candidates and market their jobs by tweeting, wall posting, or sending group updates with each job requisition.
You may, or may not know that the adoption of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) provides the means to alleviate unnecessary expenses currently embedded within the hiring process. An ATS can also greatly streamline the hiring process, multiply the efforts of a small recruitment staff, and give valuable performance feedback to managers.
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” — Vivian Greene Americans remain apprehensive about the economy, their job prospects and their incomes, even as a recovery is taking shape. We as a country are going through a financial crisis, which is testing us in many [...]
