Boolean Search Conquers Impossible Google Position
When I run recruiter training classes, I often ask for the trainees to bring me example positions they are having trouble working on to use for live sourcing training.
During one such class (a little over 2 years ago), I had a recruiter bring me an opening for a challenging position at Google that had been open for a while. He had been working this position for a couple of weeks and had failed to produce a single candidate that Google was interested in interviewing.
Many Had Already Tried and Failed…
As I asked him for a little background on the position, I found out it had been open for 4 months.
That’s almost always a bad sign to a recruiter, as it had no doubt been thoroughly beaten up by countless other recruiters/vendors to Google. However, he assured me this was not a “black hole” requirement and that Google would indeed interview and hire candidates.
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What Social Recruiting is NOT
After recently writing about moving beyond the hype of social media and recruiting, I took some time to reflect quite a bit on the topic, and focused a critical eye on exactly what “Social Recruiting” is.
While there is no shortage of what people think “Social Recruiting” is, quite frankly - I’m not satisfied with any of the definitions and explanations I’ve found – most are too surface level and one-dimensional, as well as inaccurate, in my opinion. It seems that a large portion of what many people seem to be happy to accept as “Social Recruiting” is really nothing more than traditional job posting and employer marketing and branding in a 2.0 environment.
However, I can definitely appreciate the challenge of trying to nail down an accurate and concise definition of “Social Recruiting” – it’s quite the slippery fish. So rather than trying to answer the question of “What is Social Recruiting?,” I’m going to tell you what I think Social Recruiting is NOT.
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Social Media and Recruiting – Beyond the Hype
I’m very much an anti-hype, anti-bandwagon person.
I neither like to nor want to get caught in the undertow of the emotional rush associated with being excited about something that nearly everyone else seems to be excited about, where everyone celebrates the new and “cool factor” with little-to-no critical thought.
When that next bright and shiny object comes along, it’s all too easy to be blinded by it.
Rest assured I have not been blinded by #socialrecruiting. I’ve been using social media for a little while now (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and blogging), purposefully remaining calm and collected on the subject - choosing to explore the true potential rather than get caught up in the hype.
So whether you’re a social recruiting evangelist, hater or n00b (I’ve been all 3, not necessarily in that order), you’ll find some value in this post because I am going to strip away all of the hype surrounding social recruiting, demystify it, and cut straight to the heart of the real opportunities associated with using social media for sourcing and recruiting.
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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, he feels that “the need to conduct in-depth Internet searches and apply Boolean logic to searches is no longer relevant in the majority of cases.”
I was prepared to write an article just in response to that thought, but as I sat down to review his post again on Sunday in preparation for my post, I noticed that Kelly Dingee had commented in defense of electronic talent identification.
In response, Kevin wrote “I think that intensive Internet searching, for most internal recruiters, is a sign of their failure to develop a community of potential candidates. If the position is a unique or one-of-a-kind search, they should probably use a third party recruiter. For volume and routine hiring there should be no need to use anything beyond a network of potential candidates whether proprietary or not. Building that community is what a recruiter’s job is all about – not running searches or becoming a computer nerd.”
Wow. Where do I begin?
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LinkedIn Sourcing Tip: Searching by Company? Beware!
Recently, I wrote about the intrinsic issues associated with searching LinkedIn for potential candidates with specific industry experience, and how using the “Industry” field can actually prevent you from finding the people you’re looking for.
A number of readers responded by suggesting a logical solution to the issue – searching by specific company name(s) instead of using LinkedIn’s ”Industry” field.
It is a logical solution, but a potentially flawed one nonetheless.
I’m going to show you some reasons why, and if you read this post within the next 5 minutes, I’ll even throw in a LinkedIn company search anomaly as an added bonus.
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Thank You, and Happy Holidays from Boolean Black Belt!
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to you, whether you’ve visited www.booleanblackbelt.com just a few times or if you are a regular reader. If you’ve told someone else about my site or recommended it to others – thank you very much!
With all of the sourcing, recruiting, and social media blogs out there, I know it’s virtually impossible to keep up with them all, so I appreciate the fact that you’re making a conscious decision to spend time on my site, most likely at the expense of another site (or two).
I started this blog back in October 2008, and you’re reading the 115th post I’ve published 14 months. This time last year, I had a total of 2200 unique visitors.
As of today (12/22), I’ve had over 50,000 unique visitors from 154 countries, averaging 1400 unique visitors per week, and I have about 1800 readers who’ve signed up for my feed/emails. I have you to thank for that!
I spend an average of about 3 to 4 hours on each post I publish (some take as many as 7 hours!), so the work you see on this site represents at least 400 hours of my personal time that I have dedicated to sharing my thoughts and experience.
I created this site specifically to share knowledge and information with others – so if you know anyone who is interested in learning how to more effectively leverage information systems and social media for sourcing and recruiting, please pay it forward, and don’t keep me a secret.
2010 should be a good year for www.booleanblackbelt.com – I have over 200 drafts of various post ideas built up! However, you won’t see another post from me until the week of January 4th – I’m going to spend quality time with my family and friends – I hope you have the opportunity to do the same.
Thank you, and Happy Holidays!
LinkedIn Sourcing Tip: Industry Search Issue
Do you ever use social networks to such as LinkedIn to search for people with experience in a specific industry?
If you do, I can almost guarantee you that you are not finding everyone you’re looking for.
How?
There are intrinsic issues associated with any user generated content, especially when it comes to how users of social media identify themselves, and they can actually prevent you from finding the people you’re looking for.
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Candidate Pipelines vs. Just-In-Time Recruiting Part 4
In Ben Franklin’s the Way to Wealth, he talks about the issues associated with carrying unnecessary inventory, “You call them goods; but, if you do not take care, they will prove evils to some of you…You expect they will be sold…but, if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear to you.”
If Ben were alive today and in the recruiting industry, he’d tell you that building, maintaining, and managing the turnover associated with in-process candidate inventory (traditional candidate pipelines) consumes a great amount of time and effort which ultimately may provide little-to-no value to candidate or client alike, at great cost to you.
So how can recruiters go about creating more value for their candidates and hiring managers with less work?
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Candidate Pipelines vs. Just-In-Time Recruiting 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.
- Is a “push” based strategy that is not based on an actual customer (client or candidate) need
- Often results in recruiters pushing their candidate inventory (what they have on hand) to clients rather than going out finding the best candidates
- Creates a work-in-process inventory that is highly perishable and requires significant time and effort to maintain
- Poses an opportunity cost when recruiters spend time re-qualifying and re-verifying the availability of their candidate pipeline when an actual hiring need arises
- All of the time and effort spent maintaining relationships with candidates that will never be submitted to a hiring manager, interviewed, or hired is waste – it provides no value to candidate or client alike
- Creates 5 of the 7 classic wastes of Lean production: over-production (recruiting more candidates than necessary), over-processing of candidates that will never be advanced in the hiring process, excessive WIP inventory, defects (candidates who do not match actual hiring requirements), and waiting (the vast majority of WIP candidates never move forward in the hiring process and spend most of their time waiting for something to happen that never happens)
Now that I’ve bloodied my knuckles putting a serious beating on candidate pipelining, let’s explore what I think is a better way to get the job done and provide value to candidates and clients: Just-In-Time (JIT) recruiting.
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Candidate Pipelines vs. Just-In-Time Recruiting 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 guy.
What I am is the kind of guy that will tell you that anyone who says there is only 1 way to do something is ALWAYS wrong, because there is always more than 1 way to do anything. I’m also the kind of person who wants to find the BEST way of doing a thing – I am not satisfied to do things “the way they’ve always been done,” nor will I blindly accept what other experts tout as best practices.
There is always a better way.
The comments I received from Part 1 in the series were fantastic! They gave me significant insight into what many of the industry heavyweights think – and it’s obvious that traditional candidate pipelining is alive, highly valued, and practiced often.
At the end of Part 1, I mentioned that the ugly truth is that proactively pipelining candidates ahead of need has many intrinsic limitations and hidden costs that no one seems to want to think or talk about.
So let’s talk about them.
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