Resume Database Recruiting vs. Cold Calling and Referral Recruiting

Candidate identification is perhaps the most critical step in the human capital supply chain – you can’t acquire and hire someone you haven’t found and identified in the first place. While many people have their opinions about the pros and cons of cold calling, referral recruiting, and resume database sourcing and recruiting, my experience has shown me that properly and effectively leveraging resume databases (internal and/or online) can enable recruiters to more quickly produce a high volume of well matched and qualified candidates in response to manager/client Pull than any other method of candidate identification and acquisition.  This is primarily due to the inherent high degree of control over critical candidate variables that using Boolean strings to search resume databases affords sourcers and recruiters.

For example, candidates and job openings alike can be expressed as a combination of a few basic variables: Location, Opportunity, Compensation, Experience/Capability, and Availability.

Location: The location of where the work will be performed in relation to the location of the candidate, representing “commutability.”

Opportunity: This can include the type of work involved in the position, the company/team culture, opportunities for growth/advancement, etc.

Compensation: The pay of the position and the desired/required compensation of the candidate.

Experience/Capability: This is the experience required to be able to perform the responsibilities of the position – candidates must be capable of performing the basic duties and responsibilities required of the job. Education can also be represented here, if required.

Availability: The time window associated with a vacancy/job opening and a candidate’s availability (and willingness) to change employment

I will refer to these variables using the acronym LOCEA.

Ultimately, the best match between a job opening and a candidate consists of the best possible match between the candidate’s LOCEA variables and those of a particular job opportunity. Because most job openings have a fixed set of LOCEA variables, when it comes to identifying potential candidates for any particular job opening, being able to control or influence the LOCEA variables of candidates is critical.

Let’s take a look at the various methods of sourcing and identifying candidates with regard to the ability to control LOCEA candidate variables.

Cold Calling and Referral Recruiting

Location
When it comes to cold calling into companies to source and identify potential candidates, there is very little control over where the candidates live. When calling into a company, you know where the candidates work, but the candidates could live anywhere within a 20, 30, 40, or even larger 360 degree mile radius from that company location. Because there is no way to know exactly where the people you are calling live prior to sourcing them, there is no way to significantly control the Location variable of the potential candidates, and each person identified will likely have a different commute tolerance/preference which is based specifically on where they currently live, not where they currently work.

As for referral recruiting, we can neither control where the potential referred candidates work nor where they live, so there is even less location-specific control offered by referral recruiting over cold calling.

Opportunity
When cold calling into companies or referral recruiting to identify candidates, there is no way to predict or control what each person identified will be most interested in doing in their next career move.

Compensation
When cold calling into companies or referral recruiting to identify candidates, there is no way to predict what each person’s current compensation is, nor is there any way to predict their desired compensation. Even sourcing by title will not accurately or consistently predict the years of experience and specific responsibilities of each person identified prior to contacting them.

Experience/Capability
When cold calling into companies or referral recruiting to identify candidates, there is no way to predict or control each person’s capability to perform the responsibilities of the position being sourced for. Although you could ask for someone with a specific title or experience, there is no way to control the actual experience of the people referred or identified, nor is there any way to control their career history, years of experience, education, or certifications.

The one aspect of experience/capability that can be controlled through cold calling is industry-related experience – if you call into a pharmaceutical company, you can be assured that everyone you identify has experience working in the pharmaceutical industry. However, the same cannot be said for referral recruiting, as there is no reliable way to control the specific industry of the people who are offered as referrals.

Availability
There is no way to reliably predict or control whether or not people identified via cold calling and referral recruiting are available or open to make a career move at the time they are identified. Although you could ask people if they know anyone who is looking, this will not always yield results, and the specific availability status of any referred candidate cannot be predicted or determined prior to actually speaking with the candidate.

Resume Database Recruiting

Location
When it comes to using resume databases (internal or online), sourcers and recruiters have nearly 100% control over the location of the candidates identified. A small percentage of the time, candidates with resumes not updated in the past 6-12 months may have moved from the address on their resume, but this is a fractional minority. Although resume database recruiting affords specific control over the location of candidates identified, there is less direct control over the commute tolerance/preference of the candidates – that can only be reliably determined by contacting each candidate. However, sourcers and recruiters can target people who live very close to the location of the job opportunity (5-15 miles), increasing the likelihood of solving the commute variable.

Opportunity
Although sourcers and recruiters using resume databases to identify candidates cannot precisely predict what candidates will want to do in their next career move, a resume does afford insight into a potential “career trajectory.” In other words, a project manager over software development is likely to be interested in a similar role, or one that is a slight step up in responsibility. Similarly, a 3 year staff accountant is likely to be interested in a role as a staff accountant, or perhaps the next step up. Adept sourcers and recruiters can run Boolean strings to specifically target candidates who have experience similar to the work to be performed in the role being recruited for, increasing (but certainly not wholly controlling) the chances that candidates identified would be interested in the type of position they are recruiting for.

Compensation
As with the opportunity variable, sourcers and recruiters cannot precisely control the compensation requirements of candidates identified. However, resumes do enable recruiters to predict, to some extent, the desired compensation of candidates based on years of experience and market knowledge, and sourcers and recruiters can run Boolean search strings to target candidates with specific years of experience. For example, in a given metro area, recruiters are likely to know what staff accountants with 3-5 years of experience (or software engineers with 3-5 years of Java programming, etc.) are being paid by most local employers, and from experience, what those types of candidates are looking for in terms of compensation when making a career move. Although this is certainly not precise control, it does allow some degree of control. Also, when reviewing resumes in a database, recruiters can make the educated decision not to call candidates with 10-12 years of accounting or Java programming (unless they want to ask for referrals), and specifically target and contact candidates with 3-5 years of experience instead.

Experience/Capability
Sourcers and recruiters can run Boolean strings when searching resume databases to precisely target specific experience, years of experience, education, certifications, environmental/project, and industry experience. Those who are particularly adept can even achieve semantic search by crafting Boolean strings that go well beyond buzzword matching and target specific responsibilities, or in other words, what the candidates have actually done as well as what they have done it with. Although resumes are far from a perfect medium for accurately or wholly representing skills, experience, and capability, a well stocked resume database affords sourcers and recruiters the ability to run Boolean queries to quickly find candidates with highly specific experience closely matching the required skills and experience of the position being recruited for.

Availability
Much as with cold calling and referral recruiting, there is no way to reliably predict or control whether or not people identified via searching resume databases are available or open to make a career move at the time they are identified. However, when using online job board resume databases, searching for candidates with resumes posted within the past 30 days does increase the probability that the candidates identified are looking (actively or passively) to make a career move.

Let’s review the degree of control over the LOCEA variables afforded by cold calling, referral recruiting, and resume database searching:

I’m sorry that’s not prettier to look at - I am still quite new to image manipulation.

Speed of Identification

Next, let’s take a look at the speed at which candidates who closely match the LOCEA variables of a given position can be identified by cold calling, referral recruiting, and resume database searching.

Cold Calling/Referral Recruiting
While effective, cold calling into companies can be a slow and laborious process. And although cold calling into companies can in some cases quickly yield a high volume of names, because of the aforementioned low degree of control over the critical LOCEA candidate variables, the speed of identifying actual candidates who are close potential matches to the position being recruited for is inherently low.

Similarly, referral recruiting is also a slow and unpredictable process – not every person contacted will yield a referral, even those that do are not statistically likely to closely match the LOCEA variables of the position being recruited for.

Resume Database Recruiting
Sourcers and recruiters who are competent at creating Boolean search strings can find quickly find a large volume of candidates that are likely to closely match the LOCEA variables of the position they are seeking to fill. I’ve achieved and seen others I’ve trained achieve anywhere from 40-60 well matched candidates identified per hour using resume databases.

Here is a review of the speed of accurately qualified candidate identification and the volume of accurately qualified candidates that can be generated per hour of effort:

Conclusion

Although cold calling and referral recruiting are proven, viable and effective methods of candidate identification (and I would never recommend not performing them), there is no denying that they do not offer sourcers and recruiters a high degree of control over critical Location, Opportunity, Compensation and Experience/Capability candidate matching variables, and they are also intrinsically slow methods of identifying precisely matched and qualified candidates.

Using Boolean strings to search resume databases, recruiters have a high degree of direct control over the Location and Experience/Capability candidate variables, and to a large extent the Opportunity variable when identifying candidates to call and recruit. To a lesser extent, it is also possible through Boolean search techniques to control the Compensation variable because the recruiter has direct control over the years of experience the candidate has prior to calling the candidate. It should also be noted that resume database sourcing allows for direct control over the level of education a candidate has, any certifications achieved, and industry specific experience.

Resume databases are typically huge repositories of candidates – many companies have hundreds of thousands to several million resumes stored in their internal resume database or ATS. The major online job boards all have 20M+ resumes each, and often have over 100,000 resumes in each major metro area. Large databases afford sourcers and recruiters to benefit from the statisitcs of large sample sizes. If a recruiter or sourcer were looking to hire for a skillset or combination of skills and experience that represented only 1% of the available candidates and they had access to a resume database of 100,000 local candidates - 1% of 100,000 is 1000. Even half of 1% of 100,000 is still 500 people. Eye opening, isn’t it?

For those with access to large resume databases - internal, online, or both - with the application of sound Boolean searching techniques and strategies, large volumes of candidates that closely match the Location, Opportunity, Compensation and Experience/Capability variables of any specific job opening can be quickly identified and contacted – up to and over 40 well matched candidates per hour - even for extremely rare skillsets.

Resume database sourcing and recruiting via Boolean search strings has the distinct advantages of speed, volume, and controlled accuracy of match to multiple and critical candidate variables which can enable recruiters to perform Just-In-Time delivery of well qualified candidates with less effort, increasing productivity, and adhering to the Lean principles of Pull, Perfection, Value and Flow. The speed and match precision of searching resume databases with Boolean search strings effectively allows recruiters to produce more accurate results in less time, increasing productivity and reducing response time. Using appropriate resume database search techniques, the probability that any given call will produce the right match is intrinsically higher than any other method of recruiting (cold calling, referral recruiting, networking, user groups, etc.).

Let’s also be sure to recognize that the large volumes of candidates that can be quickly identified via resume database searching automatically yields a large volume of referral recruiting opportunities quickly.

I hope you enjoyed this objective look at the various methods of talent identification and acquisition.  Although I always had my hunches - it literally took me 11 years in the industry before I had my “A-Ha!” moment and started to examine the candidate variable control factors of the various methods of sourcing and recruiting. Many people have their opinions about the pros and cons of cold calling, referral recruiting, and resume database recruiting and which one is the superior method of talent identification - that debate will rage on indefinitely. However, there is no denying the objective and intrinsic advantages of precise control over critical candidate matching variables and high speed identification of accurately matched candidates that sourcers and recruiters adept at wielding Boolean search strings can achieve when coupled with a resume database of a decent size.

I’ll leave you with a lumberjack analogy:

Cold Calling and Referral Recruiting = Axes
Database Recruiting via Boolean Search Strings = Chainsaw

Both will get the job done, and every lumberjack as both tools at their disposal - but one employs technology that can get the job done faster and with more accuracy.

This work by Glen Cathey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.booleanblackbelt.com.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at and is filed under Cold Calling, Resume Sourcing, Resume Sourcing vs. Cold Calling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.