Advertisement

Looking for more employers to work with?

Employers with vacancies are using Agency Central to find recruitment agencies every day. 

www.AgencyCentral.co.uk is not a job board – rather it’s your cost-effective business development tool:

· Most popular directory of UK recruitment agencies.
· Last year we had over 200,000 employer (and 5.5 million candidate) visits.
· No long term contracts – we’re in business because Agency Central works.
· Proven 10 years of delivery.

Would you be interested in receiving a share of these new business leads? Ring 01925 639100 or email enquiries@agencycentral.co.uk.

Article: Candidate Sourcing Best Practices by Glen Cathey - Part 2

This is the second part of the article we started in last week's newsletter. 

6: Search ALL CVs

I’m aware that there are MANY users of CV databases (online or internal) who focus specifically on CVs posted/entered in the last 30 days, assuming these are the candidates to target because they are “on the market.”

You do NOT know anything about a candidate until you establish contact with them. Just because their CV was posted yesterday, it does not mean they are “actively” seeking a new position. I’ve spoken to many people who happened to recently post their CV into my own database or on a job board, and once I made contact, they explained they were just “checking to see what’s out there.” Doesn’t sound too “active” to me!

Also, just because a CV is 3-6+ months old – you have NO idea what their job search status is. You cannot safely assume they are not looking and are “off the market.”

They could be:
1. Still passively looking, having not found the right match yet. 
2. Available because they are finishing up a contract position they took 3-6 months ago. 
3. In a new position, but extremely unhappy because it’s nothing like they were led to believe it would be. 
4. In a new position, but their a) boss is leaving, b) position is in jeopardy due to layoffs, c) the company is being acquired, etc. – you get the drift. 

Ultimately, you should want to find the BEST candidates possible, regardless of silly job search status labels (active, passive, etc!). Everyone is a candidate!

Never limit yourself to only searching CVs posted in the last 30 days – some of the best passive and active candidates have resumes 31 to 365 + days “old.”

And most people don’t call them.

7: Don’t be a Sourcing Snob

Despite popular opinion to the contrary, job board CV databases are not filled with desperate, low quality candidates. In fact, it’s statistically impossible. There are plenty of “A” candidates available in each and every job board CV database – major or niche.

If your experience suggests otherwise, perhaps it’s your searches or your search strategy. If you go fishing in the ocean and don’t catch the particular species of fish you were hoping to, would you be able to assume that there were no fish of that type in the ocean that day? Of course not. Just because YOU didn’t catch the fish you were looking for, it doesn’t mean they weren’t there to be caught.

And if you’re the type who believes that the job board CV databases are filled with “active” candidates, you might be surprised to know that approximately 75% of all CVs in the major job boards CV databases are dated over 30 days old. Some are 2-4+ years old. Are they still “active” candidates? Do you think anyone’s calling them?

Don’t be a sourcing snob. As I pointed out in best practice #6 – your goal should be to find the BEST possible candidates, regardless of what “side of the tracks” they live on.

8: Don’t Submit the First 2 - 3 Candidates You Find/Speak With

Sound crazy? I can hear someone asking, “Why shouldn’t I submit the first candidates I find that fit the requirements?”

Well, ask yourself this – what’s the statistical probability that the first two people you find and speak to magically happen to be the BEST candidates you can possibly find? Or the most closeable and controllable?

Recruiting candidates should not be conducted on a first in first out (FIFO) basis, but on a BIFO (Best In, First Out) basis. Find and speak to 10-15 candidates and then submit your BEST.

Talent selection based on FIFO methods is like a single person walking into a bar and leaving with the first person that speaks to them. There is no “selection.”

Think about it.

9: Seek to Continually Improve Your Candidate Sourcing Skills

As a sourcing/recruiting professional, one of your goals should be to get better at what you do on a daily basis. Not just meeting your objectives and Key Performance Indicators – but actually improving your sourcing and recruiting skills and ability.

Author Geoff Colvin cuts to the root of the matter, pointing out that “Most fundamentally, what we generally do at work is directly opposed to the first principle of deliberate practice: It isn’t designed by anyone to make us better at anything. Usually it isn’t designed at all: We are just given an objective that’s necessary to meeting the employer’s goals and then expected to get on with it.” Ouch – that hurts Geoff…but you’re right on the money!

As a sourcer/recruiter, you can perform deliberate practice, which is specifically designed to improve performance by getting you out of your comfort zone and continually stretching you just beyond your current ability. Ever hear the cliche of, “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse?”

Unfortunately, when most people “practice” on the job, they are just doing what they’ve always done, going through the same old motions – which does nothing to improve performance. Unlike many professional athletes, most business professionals (including sourcers and recruiters) do not go to work every day specifically trying to get better at what they do. It’s something many people may talk about, but very few people actually do.

Be one of those few.

10: Spend 80% of Your Sourcing Time Using High-Yield Sources

Why spend a lot of time trying to squeeze blood from a stone? I feel there are many sourcers and recruiters spending too much time focusing on intrinsically low-yield candidate sources.

For example – some people spend countless hours searching the Internet for candidate leads at the expense of not heavily/effectively leveraging their internal CV database/ATS. While you can certainly find great people on the Internet, the Internet is not indexed specifically to enable sourcing and requires many tricks and tweaks to yield relevant results.

If you have access to an ATS or internal CV database – it’s specifically designed to store and retrieve CVs, and probably has more local and more qualified candidates than the Internet, and might actually have a better search interface enabling more precise searching to find more of the right people more quickly.

To top it off, your ATS/CRM is filled with people that have already expressed interest in your company (at some point in time) and with candidates that you or other sourcers/recruiters found elsewhere and entered in. High yield sources of candidates are #1 Highly Searchable, and #2 Deep on candidate data. Of the social networking sites out there, LinkedIn is the most searchable and has the deepest candidate data, and you don’t need more than a free account to leverage it like a rock star. Also – if you have access to any of the major job boards – they have highly effective search capability, actually have a larger percentage of “passive” job seekers than “active,” and they have some fantastic candidates – see best practices #6 and #7.

Final Thoughts

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I feel it represents some of the highest impact candidate sourcing best practices. Happy hunting!

Glen Cathey has accumulated 14 years of experience in the recruiting and staffing industry. He has serving as the thought leader for recruiting strategies for a billion dollar staffing firm, has hired, trained developed and managed large recruiting and delivery teams and is an award winning and top performing full life cycle recruiter. He has a passion for leveraging technology to enable recruiters to find, engage and hire more of the right people more quickly. http://www.booleanblackbelt.com  

Advertisement

GET THE SOFTWARE. GET THE RESULTS.

In the race to place the best with the best, IQX gives you the competitive edge. Our system works the way you want it to work. It gets you the results you want fast, so you see the results you want fast. It’s as simple as that. 

Put us to the test. Talk through your current system with us and we’ll tell you the difference IQX could make. Contact Viola on 0845 4607540 or email us at sales@iqx.co.uk.