How I Discovered Sourcing

When I first discovered what “sourcing” really was, I had been tasked to work on Mobile/OO Software Engineering positions for a large Big Box & Mammoth of a company.

…See what I did there, I didn’t disclose the client… #Staffing

I was told not to use the traditional job boards or LinkedIn since my client would have been all over the candidate by the time I clicked the profile or called. I also had rules of engagement which stated that if the targeted candidate had been spoken to, text corresponded with, literally emailed or in-mailed with by the internal Recruiter and the candidate replied “at all” in the last 3 months… then they claimed and had rights to the candidate.

Bummer 👎

So what was I supposed to do!? What else was there?

Candidate’s Perspective

Around this time Monster had created a social media aggregation product that I had the opportunity to trial. I have to give their Sales team props because they really set me up for thinking further than the following:

You are a fit.
You don’t have your phone number or email on your resume.
You are also not in my database.
How can I reach you? Next…

Normally, in my fast-paced and high volume environment, if that had happened, I just moved on to the next candidate with contact information. No shame… it’s #Staffing… I had to contact that candidate before my competition! The Monster team really wanted me to be successful with their product and as any good Salesperson would and gave me resources and tips to develop, personalize, and craft my messages to candidates. I had no idea what a Developer inbox looked like until they showed me (OMG)!

Was I guilty? 💯

Through this process of growing as a Recruiter (and what I realized later was Sourcing… with a splash of Recruitment Marketing) did I begin to realize how important the candidate experience, my personal/company brand, and my engagement approach was in talent acquisition. It was a game changer! Writing fun and catchy subject lines? Stop it… the search was becoming exciting again! I really had no idea how much credibility that sort of stuff gave me until I discovered this path and approach. As time went on and I continued to learn, I researched hundreds of sourcing resources and participated in many product trials.

Continued Learning and ROI

Then there were the webinars… oh my gosh… webinars galore! It became addicting and I couldn’t miss another live and in person, with Katrina Kibben and whoever she brought on that knew about all this secret sourcing stuff! I was in heaven thinking I had figured out how to beat the internal client Recruiters and my competition!

Well, as a Staffing Recruiter… you realize pretty quickly that a lot of tools are not meant for your industry. You have to prove ROI with a 1-2 week trial and convince your higher-ups that this is a must-have resource. You are in the game of “now and yesterday” and not so much 2 years from now which a lot of tools are built to help support. Do we pipeline in Staffing, of course we do, but not in the way many of these resources benefit a true sourcing model.

Once I realized, that although these resources were AMAZING some of them just weren’t cut out for my industry. My approach to webinars changed and it became less about how these tools can help me find a candidate and more about will it work for the Staffing model.

My Favorite Sourcing and Recruiting Tools

I want to share with you some sourcing resources I have learned about over the last few years (from this very community) that are very helpful and can help you instantly in your searches!

Chrome Extensions (FREE and some you can pay more for better features):

Extensity – Allows you to turn off and on extensions with a simple click instead of going through the motion of the browser itself to seek/find and turn off through a long process. You NEED this!
Grammarly – This extension follows you everywhere online and will help correct your grammar and tone of the message. There is also a desktop version for writing blogs like this one and help you correct everything (I am terrible).
OneTab – Once you start training your teams on how to source GitHub or Twitter, for example, you can collapse all your open demo tabs down to one and save a link you can send out when it’s done! It also allows you to combine your 9000 tabs you know you have open right now and save your browser some memory in keeping them all running.
WhenX – Once you learn how to X-ray the internet, this extension is great in giving you a time stamp for where you have been and when.
Hiretual – Hiretual is not only an amazing desktop application to help you create Boolean strings and do a ton of other stuff but also has an extension that allows you to collect contact information.
OctoHR – This extension is pretty cool because it will analyze a GitHub profile and let you know what the user uses the most in terms of technologies. It also gives email addresses and will let you know if they are in the market.
Loom – The first video tool I had ever heard about circa 2017 from Maisha Cannon – been using it since, mostly for training other Recruiters but can be used in so many other ways!
Multihighlight – Have you ever created a less is more approach on LinkedIn with keyword searches? Multihighlight will literally highlight every word you tell it to on a webpage and will not limit your search but simply highlight the word if the candidate has the skill.
Last Pass – Holy passwords… I am not one to feel completely safe having my everything inside of one vault however if you make one for just your sourcing needs this will epically help you from remembering your 90 million passwords for all the tools you are about to start using.
Machine Sourcer – A way to automate LinkedIn outreach/engagement and connections

Websites:

GlossaryTech.com – Website/Dictionary that will define technology for you and put it into a bucket (frontend tools, QA tools, backend, cloud, etc.)
emojipedia.org – To help you get clever with subject lines
mail-tester.com – Are you going to get caught in SPAM?
sendcheckit.com – Check your subject lines to make sure they are attractive
thatsthem.com – find contact information
truepeoplesearch.com – find contact information
hemingwayapp.com – like Grammarly will help you write more clearly
grammarly.com – my everything for grammar, tone and spell-check.

A little more advanced and not so much for the “fill this tomorrow” role:

Dataminer – Scraping websites, building lists…
Recipe Creator – Tool to build out the “what” of what you want to scrape using Dataminer
Instant Data Scraper – Scrapes for you, no recipes
Hikido – Helps you search Github and also has an aggregator paid feature
X-ray – Search up “how to X-ray recruit” or “common operators for X-ray recruiting” and start to teach yourself. I think it is my most favorite thing to do!

This could even be looked at as a beginner’s toolkit because you can use these in any field or industry. I hope this helps you if you are first getting started or need some help navigating the chaos.

Enjoy!