The Candidate Generator

Sunday Morning Sourcing Session: Google +

2012-01-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

site:plus.google.com

Results:

About 17,100,000 results (0.11 seconds)
__________________________________________
site:plus.google.com "software engineer"

Results:

10 personal results and 409,000 other results (0.25 seconds)
________________________________________________

site:plus.google.com "software engineer" Java

Results:

About 9,040 results (0.25 seconds)
__________________________________________

site:plus.google.com (Occupation AROUND(1) "software engineer") (Employment AROUND(1) eBay)

Results:

About 84,300 results (0.28 seconds)
__________________________________________

site:plus.google.com (Occupation AROUND(1) engineer) (Employment AROUND(1) Yahoo)

Results:

About 866,000 results (0.35 seconds)

Drive or Be Driven

2011-05-22T10:39:00.001-07:00

I have been an experienced recruiter and sourcer in both major corporations and startups. Currently I’m a Senior Recruiter at the Cobalt Group and Dealix (both ADP companies). One of the greatest challenges I see in staffing today, is the trend of recruiters allowing hiring managers to drive the recruiting process.

Over the last few years I have become known as the “fixer”, dropped into“hot zones” in staffing where there are urgent hiring needs or a hiring manager’s confidence in recruiting has eroded. My goal when approaching a situation like this is simple, first and primarily is to fill the open roles that impact a company’s ability to generate revenue and do it quickly. Secondarily, I have sought to improve the hiring manager’s view of recruiting but it has been my experience that hiring managers typically will not change their opinion, unless you are meeting their expectations. At that point you have aligned yourself with the hiring manager’s needs and not the needs of your company. Your mission has shrunk dramatically. You are now more focused on meeting the hiring manager’s needs rather than filling roles. It’s not easy to remove yourself emotionally from the hiring manager and work only focused on the end goal, but it is necessary to achieve a quality hire.

Letting the hiring manager drive the recruiting process will ultimately lead to bad hires and a muddied recruiting process. Universally, it is a killer to the recruiting cycle and the health of an organization overall.

How does a hiring manager wrestle control away from a recruiter? It can be passively or actively, but the end result is the same, you are no longer in the driver’s seat. A hiring manager may not even be aware of their actions when we are talking about them assuming a passive approach, but the end result is moving the control of the staffing process away from the recruiter.

While not a complete list, here are some of the ways in which the tables get turned on a recruiter.

Passive Approach

No interview feedback or limited interview feedback from phone interviews and onsite interviews.
Changing the job description once, twice or more.
Including negative information in meetings outside of recruiting that has never been shared with the recruiter or the recruiter’ manager. This could possible show a desire to control the situation or passively “blame shift” the failures of an organization onto recruiting.
Showing up late to onsite interview and phone interviews.
Unclear feedback from phone screens.
Asking a recruiter to complete tasks outside their recruiting area.
No employee referrals are coming in and limited activity by the hiring manager or team on social media (shows lack of partnership).
Over estimating their team’s appeal to outside talent
Missing meetings with the recruiter or chronically being late.

Active Approach

Yelling, intimidation in meetings or 1:1 situations.
Belittling, asserting authority in an overly aggressive fashion in front of a recruiter’s peers, managers or a recruiter’s other hiring managers.
Escalating issues to a recruiter’s manager before talking to the recruiter.
Directing inappropriate anger or frustration towards staffing support or the process overall.
Negotiating an offer with a candidate without the recruiter’s knowledge (if the manager you are working with is not a new hiring manager, they are fully aware of what they are doing).

How to Drive the Process- Once a requisition is assigned to you be sure to do the following:

Set up a requisition intake meeting to review the job. Going beyond the job description to really see what they are looking for in a viable candidate. Set expectations early.
Ask your manager to be involved in all meetings with the team or teams you are supporting.
Set up a weekly or bi-weekly meeting to check in on the recruiting process, include a simple weekly report on where things are. It may seem like extra work, but it goes a long way in making your life easier.
Clearly define the interview loop, interview guidelines and make sure that the hiring manager will be the interview advocate for the rest of the team/interview loop.
Solicit feedback indirectly from the candidate during the recruiting process regarding their interaction with the hiring manager and team.
If the hiring manager is waffling on candidates or only sending one line emails regarding feedback, nicely challenge them on it by using your notes. Example- “I was looking over my notes and you didn’t list J2EE as a requirement but you are passing on this candidate due to what you said was limited J2EE experience, can you tell me more about this?”
Identity an advocate for you, hopefully this will be your immediate manager. This will be someone that can intercede on your behalf if necessary.
On interview days meet the candidate in the lobby and check in on them during the interview day to see how things are going.
Make sure interview training is up to date for your manager and their team.
Set up sessions (live, virtual, and recorded) on the employee interview process or get information sent out to the team from a top down approach.

Other thoughts-

Recruiter goals should be tied to business objectives plain and simple. Too much emphasis is placed on manager feedback about the recruiting process. A good recruiter will drive the recruiting process. They might not always receive glowing praise from the hiring manager, but organizations need to look at the whole picture. Sadly, most don’t. What should be asked is; was the requisition filled, did the candidate have a good experience with the recruiting process, how long did it take to fill the role (depending on requisition complexity) and other similar measures. The final feedback sought should be the hiring manager feedback. I’m not advocating an adversarial situation with hiring managers, only that for the good of the company the recruiter needs to be in the driver’s seat in regards to the recruiting process.

Twitter Search Part 1

2011-04-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

Searching Twitter, Twitter Tools
Twitter Simple Search- http://search.twitter.com
Twitter Search Advanced- http://search.twitter.com/advanced
Twitter Search Operators- http://search.twitter.com/operators
About Twitter Search- http://blog.twitter.com/2008/07/finding-perfect-match.html
Twitters Search Technology- http://engineering.twitter.com/2010/10/twitters-new-search-architecture.html

Searching Twitter, External Tools
Bing Social Search (pick Twitter on the left of the page under Source)- http://www.bing.com/social
Google Social Search-

Blog update on Social Search- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-to-google-social-search.html
Features- http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165228

Other Search Twitter Search Tools-
I looked at (and used) other Twitter search tools, but the one that works the best for those that are new to searching Twitter and want a simple tool to use, Twellow works decent. No need to register when asked, you can do it later.

Twellow- http://www.twellow.com
Twellow Operators- http://www.twellow.com/search
Sample Search- "Software Engineer" Amazon

Twitter Widgets
Firefox-

Twitter Search- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-search
Bing Tool Bar (has a Twitter search feature)- http://toolbar.discoverbing.com/toolbar/en-us.html

Search Stings

Google Search
site:twitter.com "Software Engineer" ("i am" OR "I work") Seattle -job –jobs
site:twitter.com "Software Engineer" ("i am" OR "I work") "Bay Area" -job –jobs
site:twitter.com "Marketing Manager" ("i am" OR "I work") "New York" -job –jobs
site:twitter.com inurl:lists ("Java Engineer" OR "Java Developer")

Bing Search
site:twitter.com "Java Developer" "i am" -job -career –not

Exalead
site:twitter.com "Senior Software Engineer" "i am" -jobs –job
site:twitter.com (bio NEAR/6 "Senior Software Engineer") -jobs –job
site:twitter.com bio (Engineer NEXT Amazon) -job –jobs
link:www.twitter.com "software engineer" Java -job -jobs

DuckDuckGo.com
site:twitter.com "software engineer" USA "i am"

Yippy
site:twitter.com bio "software engineer" Seattle

Part 1 - Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer Simple Search

2011-03-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

Internet Explorer Version 9

Google Toolbar
Version: 6.6.1409.1944/en (GGHP)
Notifier Version: 5.6.6209.1142
Search Engine, Google

Overview
For Part 1 we are looking only at the Google Toolbar and how it can be used with Internet Explorer 9 to speed up and enhance you research.

Once you have downloaded IE 9 and installed the Google Toolbar you are ready to go. It's easy to get bogged down all the features of the toolbar, so I’m only going to show you examples below that work for staffing and are quick and easy.

Open IE9 and make sure the tool bar is installed (see highlighted below).

Lets start with a simple search using this string, the Google Tool bar will have a small box with your search terms where you can click Jump to Text and go right to your keywords on the page. -
site:linkedin.com inurl:in "greater seattle area" Java "computer science" Amazon
Additional location examples for a LinkedIn site: command search:

“San Francisco Bay Area”
“Greater New York City Area”
“Greater Atlanta Area”

You can reuse this string by changing the modifiers (key words) for your search.

-The first search result is Gautam Kanvinde, lets use him for this exercise

In the search results on Google click on the magnifying glass to the right of Gautam Kanvinde to see your search terms highlighted, quickly determine if it is a good lead for you.

Open his LinkedIn profile in Cached mode.

Highlight Gautam's name and pick which type of additional research you want to do using the Google Toolbar. Basically this will save you time from having to open another browser cutting and pasting his name in, etc. You can search with Bing or Google using the Google Toolbar. When a new the new tab opens search by his name add modifiers (key words) like Amazon or his education to narrow down your results. Bing and Google may be listed on the main menu after you right click on his name but to see all your search options you have to selecting “All Accelerators” in the list, it is the option second from the bottom. Here you can search with Bing, Yahoo! Search or add additional Accelerators by selecting “Find More Accelerators” it’s the option second from the bottom. You can pick Accelerators such as search Facebook or you can install Manta where you can highlight Gautam's company (Amazon) and select Manata and it will pull up information on Gautam's company. Look for the the Green HQ listed in the search results from Manata and open the company profile. Here are the results for Amazon.com. Select the search result with the green HQ to see the company profile as I mentioned abive. Here you could get the company number and call the company directly to try and reach Gautam. There are many different Accelerators that can be added, here is the link to the entire list. http://www.ieaddons.com/

The Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer also lets you share on LinkedIn, Twitter and other similar websites.

The Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer is not my favorite to be honest, I look forward to sharing what can be done with FireFox and others. Search results will very, hunting is not an exact science but with technology it can help us manage our time and get to the information we need quicker.

To Err is Human (Capital Institute)

2011-03-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to write a blog, a post for twitter or the like when people are suffering. Libya as well as other countries are in revolt and people are dying. The crisis in Japan is nothing like we have seen. The news piles up daily and those are just the stories we hear about. There are families being ripped apart by divorce, kids missing meals… I have started and stopped writing a post on Twitter. It will come out later this week, but I had to get something of my chest.

I got an email last week from the Human Capital Institute a good organization as far as I can tell but this email was an example of what I think is wrong with my profession. I know we are all trying to make money, support our loved ones, grow a business etc. At what point do we draw the line and stop and think before we put something out?

The email from the Human Capital Institute was titled “Are You Prepared for a Talent Tsunmai?” It wasn’t even spelled correctly in the subject line but worse how can you in any way shape or form use Tsunami in an email selling your services after what just happened in Japan? The newest reports say there are 21,000 dead or missing in Japan. In the email the HCI did say they send out their thoughts and prayers to Japan, but if they didn’t do that in the email wouldn’t have been in bad taste? I’m not sure if it is one person writing the emails, a marketing department, but someone should have had second eyes on that. If second eyes were on that email before it went out, then I want to gouge mine out.

So what is the talent Tsunami they are warning us about and how should I prepare? The email mentions that “Many argue that a talent tsunami is coming too.” Well now I’m freaking out and I started building Boolean strings, checking to see if my job board contracts are up to date, I updated my social presence and I bought bottled water and some fruit snacks. It seems my salvation is found in preparing ahead of time! I need to be proactive and their upcoming webcasts will help! Right on! Fail to plan, plan to fail! Thank you HCI!

At the bottom of their email they claim a “network of over 175,000 progressive executives in over 170 countries.” I wonder if Japan is one of those countries?

My personal response-

Human Capital Institute

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The Rainmaker’s Credo- Functional Use for Lead and Candidate Development for Staffing

2011-02-22T22:01:00.001-08:00

How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

By Jeffrey J. Fox

Cherish customers at all times.

Cherish leads at all times; treat them the way you would like to be treated. Always move towards the goal of changing the lead to a candidate and finally to a hire.

Treat customers as you would your best friend.

If you were trying to help a friend obtain a position with your company, how would you do it? Would your pressure them or would you explain the process and provide the information they need, etc. Would you follow up on what you said the next steps would be?

Listen to customers and decipher their needs.

When engaging a lead listen to what they aren’t saying and form questions to get behind the conversation.

Make (or give) customers what they need.

Make the sell convincing and answer the questions the lead has. Meet their needs.

Price your product to its dollarized value.

Determine what a 5- 10-15 minute phone call to a Director would be worth, in other words set a time frame with a lead based on what you think they would charge you for that set amount of time. Respect

Show customers the dollarized value of what they will get.

When talking to a lead, it isn’t what they will be getting for their money, but it’s about the investment they make in speaking with you and what the potential return on that conversation is.

Teach customers to want what they need.

With a cold call to a lead you have an opportunity to change the way they were thinking when they woke up that morning. The role they have been in for 5 years isn’t the only option and it would be a mistake to at least not listen to what you have to say. Recruiters are life changers.

Make your product the way the customers want it.

You called them, play by their rules, be professional and courteous, call back if requested, but set a time, call them on another number if needed, be accommodating.

Get your product to your customers when they want it.

Repeat after me, pipelining isn’t evil; don’t pressure a lead into moving forward in the process only to face a sloppy close at the end. There are seasons for leads and we need to engage a lead in the right season, it is our job to determine the season for the lead.

Give your customers a little extra, more than they expect.

While I don’t advocate working while on vacation, I did make a short 15 minute phone call to a Vice President while on vacation once. I was returning his call, He wasn’t expecting that and it was a little something extra to show the difference in my company as opposed to other companies. I took time and invested in the lead.

Remind the customers of the dollarized value they received.

At some point revisit the investment they made in having a conversation with you and the possible rewards for doing so. It helps to keep the lead engaged.

Thank each customer sincerely and often.

In email, on the phone or whenever, always thank the lead for taking time to speak to you and for listening to what you have to offer. Kindness goes a long way.

Help customers pay you, so they won’t be embarrassed and go elsewhere.

This means making the process easy for the lead to be converted to a candidate. Do you really need a resume to move ahead in the process right now? Can you rephrase your interview questions to be more inline with a passive candidate? Can you streamline the process to help close a passive candidate?

Ask to do it again.

Thus is the age old, “who do you know” question. Great people typically know great people. After closing a lead and making the hire, let them do the work for you by referring great people in their network.

Cold Call Success Tips

Fish where the big fish are, make calls that matter, don’t waste your time.

Welcome objections, it shows interest, they want you to help them say yes.

Treat everyone as a potential lead or lead generator, in person, email or on the phone.

Break the ice at the end of the call, save the chitchat until the end.

A shot on goal is never a bad thing, if you don’t make the call you have already lost.

Going off the Rails on a Crazy Ruby Search

2011-02-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

Everyone claims to be a sourcing expert these days, they have taken the AIRS classes or some similar classes and now the books for those classes are gathering dust on their desks and the the printable certificates of completion hang lifeless on their cube walls. I took one of the first AIRS classes back in 1999 when you had to go to one of those tech training schools and sit in the class room in front of an old computer and take a web based timed test. The machines would hang up but I passed the timed test and became certified. I recently took the AIRS class again this time virtually. This time there was no class room, I was in my cube but it was online and I dialed into a conference call with an AIRS trainer, I passed. I still see a lot of value in what AIRS offers and what others provide but I guess what worries me is what happens after the test.

There are so many people with certification “this” and certification “that” for sourcing that everyone now feels they are an expert at finding passive candidates or cold calling, etc. The truth is that most of the skills that people put on their LinkedIn profile are worth about as much as the paper that their certification was printed on. Skills decay if they aren’t used daily, just like a martial art. Don’t fear the man who knows a 1,000 moves fear the man who practices one move a 1,000 times. As a full cycle recruiter I know that my skills decay, especially sourcing if not used weekly, actually daily.

To me the biggest issue is knowing the terms and tricks, but not being able to put structure around approaching a search. I have been on calls interviewing sourcing candidates and they can produce search terms, but when I ask them how they would approach sourcing for lets say a Ruby on Rails developer they fall flat. It becomes even more difficult when you are a full cycle recruiter and have to place even more structure around your searches.

What tricks work best? What is the shortest route to the lead (M (method) x TI (time invested) = LGT (Lead Generation Time) ) and what is the shortest way from a lead to candidate (M (method) x L (lead) = CGT (candidate generation time). Is a short way from a lead to a candidate a cold call or an email? The first equation is what runs through my head at the start. If I’m given the Ruby on Rails developer search how do I select a method that will get me to a lead the quickest (M (method) x TI (time invested in that method) = LGT (lead generation time). For example the Ruby On Rails developer, remember we are not talking about job boards, your ATS, your network but about using other methods to find the leads that will become candidates.

Keep it simple, keep it easy. The more complicated you make it, the harder it will be for you. Open a simple Word document, use a notebook or Moleskine and write the date and what you have done so far and then list out what advanced search techniques\strings you are going to use. Below is the way I approached a recent Ruby On Rails search, I also included a few resources I use beyond the search strings. A great book to read to help with getting organized is The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande. Also if you want to save your search strings, Firefox offers some good bookmark add-ons and Delicious still works great and Internet Explorer has some good bookmarking features as well.

Ok lets go off the Rails on a crazy Ruby search!

Pre-Work
~~Check ATS~~
~~Check my network/CRM~~
~~Search LinkedIn~~
~~Post job~~

Step One Deep

site:linkedin.com inurl:in "Greater Seattle Area" "ruby on rails" (getting beyond your network on LinkedIn, no contact info but you get the person and company, just cold call)
site:github.com intitle:profile "Ruby on Rails" Seattle (site search on Google focused on Github and Seattle)
site:meetup.com/The-Seattle-Ruby-on-Rails-Developers-Meetup-Group inurl:members (site search of the Seattle Ruby on Rails Developers on Meetup.com)
filetype:pdf "ruby on rails" resume (Bellevue OR Redmond OR Seattle) (Bing search)
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) “Ruby on Rails” (Seattle OR Bellevue OR Redmond) (local to the greater Seattle area)
Step Two Deeper
filetype:pdf (members OR attendees OR speakers OR "meeting minutes" OR meetup) "he is" "ruby on rails"-job
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae) "Ruby on Rails" (Seattle OR Bellevue) –jobs (power search string, again local search)
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) ((ruby OR rails) NEAR developer) (Near search on Exalead)
Step Three Deepest
link:github.com "ruby on rails" Seattle –job (Link search on Exalead, Seattle focused)
(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) ((Ruby OR Rails) NEAR/2 engineer) (Near search (2) on Exalead)
inanchor:Ruby on rails "she is" (Bing anchor search, check out the Similar Searches on the left)
Other Resources
http://www.seattlerb.org/ (just did a basic Google search for Seattle and Ruby on Rails)
http://jobshouts.com/candidate-search (Jobshouts social search)

Music for the week- Ozzy, my first concert and a great song featuring Randy Rhoads one of the best guitarists ever. We lost him too soon.

In the Midst of Lions

2011-02-02T23:52:00.001-08:00

In Seattle we have Microsoft, Google, Facebook, F5 ,cool startups like Bonanza.com and others are opening each day. Lions, each one of them, who we face daily in our recruiting efforts. The over used phrase “war for talent” is real in this market and we are on the frontlines at Cobalt.
How do we contend for top talent? Here are some key areas I have identified that have helped us and other companies in the past.

Focus\Refine your brand, what is your message, what are you trying to say. You first have to take inventory on why your company is a great place for a candidate to land. Is it the culture, compensation, work life balance, benefits, free lunch, foosball tables, location and soda? Don’t bend your brand to compete with other companies. Make your brand reflect who you are as a company, don’t fake it.
Candidate experience- I joked the other day with a candidate that I was their “career concierge,” but when you think about it who doesn’t like the service of a 5 star hotel. It makes me feel important and I would like to make my candidates feel that way. This is one of the more difficult things to do,don’t try to be a people pleaser but try and at least fulfill what you have promised. Cobalt/ADP includes a survey to each new hire on how their recruiter was. I think this can be helpful and harmful, maybe not harmful but maybe not 100% accurate. Dealing with people is not an exact science.
Retention recruiting doesn’t stop at the offer – The Cobalt/ADP onboarding process is longer than others I have been involved with including a drug screen. It would be easy to lose a candidate during that time. Staying in contact, email and phone calls are critical. Current employees can either enhance or muddy your brand/ability to hire. Companies need to remember that employees are ambassadors.
Stop emailing out to your team the news stories that say Facebook is going to hire this or Google is going to hire that. It creates, at some level, a nervousness with the recruiters and/or employees. It screams the lions are at the gates, but honestly we knew that already.
Pick your battlefields look for high ground- Choose the ground wisely where you want to engage the other companies in a battle for talent. The battle grounds can be social media to the compensation you offer. Don’t get into an arms race, decided what works for you and what delivers your message best. At Cobalt we are using Social Media but are also doing some really cool ads around Seattle on buses, ferries etc.We also sponsor the Rat City Roller Girls, Seattle’s Roller Derby Divas. Compensation, throwing more money at a candidate may close them but for how long? Also, do you really want a candidate coming to work with money as their main driver.
Use technology- It levels the playing field and gets your message out there to people. From social media to using a CRM to stay in contact, technology has made it possible for smaller companies to compete on a more level playing field.
Have a short memory – Like a defensive back in Football, when you get burned on play for yardage, you have to forget it and start clean on the next play. If you keep reliving your mistakes then you will never move forward and will likely make more mistakes.
Its not personal but make it personal, invest in the candidate and they will invest in you. Don’t manipulate them, but honestly seek to connect with them at whatever level you are comfortable with. If the candidate turns down the offer, don’t take it personally, congratulate them and move on but stay in contact with them.
Constant contact - walking that fine line between smothering, hovering and just being there. Like a waiter you don’t want to stop by every few minutes to check on things, people will have their mouths full, but you don’t want the table to be neglected. I always put myself in a candidates shoes. What would I like in terms of updates etc. It turns out that I’m not that needy after all. Use technology maybe a CRM, etc. (see above).

Final thoughts, diamonds are coal placed under tremendous pressure. Recruiting for a name brand that people will recognize when you call or email is much easier recruiting than recruiting for a company like Cobalt, I already hear the responses to that, but it’s true. You really have to believe in what you are doing and be able to covey that message to the candidates, you have to bring you’re A game each day. If you are in a situation like that you will be a much more solid recruiter.

I love music on the heavier side of things, In the Midst of Lions is also a great band. Here is their video for the song The Machine from the CD/Album The Heart of Man. –Todd

The Machine, In The Midst of Lions