Top 15 Common Secondary Sourcing Mistakes
Top 15 Common Secondary Sourcing Mistakes
I’ve had the opportunity to assess, train and coach hundreds of recruiters from corporate and agency environments responsible for performing sourcing functions, and I’ve been exposed to many myths, misconceptions and mistakes when it comes to leveraging information systems for sourcing and recruiting. I’d like to take a moment to share my observations on what I think some of the major mistakes that are commonly made in secondary sourcing efforts. Originally, I wanted to make this a “Top 10″ post – but if you read this post within the next 2 minutes, you get 50% more free!
In no particular order:
#1 Overanalyzing resumes
Resumes are by nature imperfect and are poor representations of a person’s experience and capabilities, so apply what I call the “10 second rule:” Don’t read resumes – scan them. If you can’t absolutely disqualify/rule out a candidate based on reviewing their resume in 10 seconds, pick up the phone and call them. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
#2 Running overly generic/basic searches
You’ll get correspondingly generic and basic results, typically what I’ve overheard people refer to as “too many.” People making this mistake unknowingly increase the size of the Hidden Talent Pool of candidates they don’t find.
#3 Making assumptions about candidates from their resumes
See mistake #1. Ever hear the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover?”
#4 Not spending at least 10 minutes thinking about and researching your search strategy before you start running searches and making calls
You should always take time to analyze your search criteria to assess the possibility that your search terms may not find all qualified candidates, and in fact might actually be eliminating viable candidates. I have found that the more time I spend on the front-end of a search, the more relevant my results become, which in turn increases my productivity by enabling me to find more and better candidates more quickly. Imagine that!
#5 Seeing each resume only as a potential match for the position you’re working on
Any resume database you have access to can be leveraged in much the same way as LinkedIn can – every person is actually a conduit to a larger network of people. So even if a particular resume you’re reviewing doesn’t appear to be an ideal match – they actually might be (see mistakes #1 and #3), and they may know someone who is.
#6 Assuming 1 search finds all qualified candidates
It’s actually impossible. Trust me.
#7 Searching only resumes posted within 30 days when searching major job boards
Did you know that 75% – 80% of all resumes on the major job boards are dated over 30 days old? You should never limit yourself to only searching resumes posted in the last 30 days – some of the best passive and active candidates have resumes 31 to 365 + days old online. And most people don’t call them.
#8 Not calling candidates that appear to be under- or over-qualified
First, see mistakes #1 and #3. Second, see mistake #5. Third, people who are in fact too junior or too senior for your current needs might fit future needs. Fourth, people who are either too junior or too senior for a particular position might work with or know someone who is an exact match.
#9 Submitting the first 2 -3 candidates you find that fit your job/hiring profile and moving on to the next open position
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 2 people you speak magically happen to are the best candidates you can possibly find? The most closeable and controllable? The most “affordable?” Recruiting and staffing should not be conducted on a FIFO basis, but on a BIFO basis. You saw it here first. Think about it.
#10 Thinking that after searching a particular source of candidates (your ATS, a job board, the Internet, LinkedIn, etc.) that you’ve found all of the available candidates and cannot find any more.
You’re wrong – invariably you’ve left behind Hidden Talent Pools of people who do match your positions, but you could not find them because your Boolean search strings made it impossible to do so. Being aware of this is a major step on the path towards secondary sourcing enlightenment. See mistake #4.
#11 Thinking that the major online job boards have poor quality candidates
Read this post on not believing the hype that the job boards have low quality candidates.
#12 Relying solely or heavily on title-based searches
Not all companies use the same titles for the same roles and responsibilities – so making this mistake contributes to you populating Hidden Talent Pools with every candidate that matches your hiring profile or job order but has a title that you didn’t think of and include in your search. See mistake #4.
#13 Not using the NOT operator
It’s the least utilized, and in my opinion, actually the most powerful standard/basic Boolean operator – it’s not just for getting rid of stuff you don’t want. I will dedicate an entire post to the NOT operator in the near future. Puns intended.
#14 Only using skill/tech terms (e.g., Java, Oracle, Accounts Payable, SOX, etc.) when creating Boolean search strings
The best searches don’t rely solely on skill/technology based terms, but also include responsibility terms (administer, configure, create, manage, reconcile, coordinate, design, etc.) and environmental terms (enterprise, host*, etc.) where applicable. This is the first step in moving beyond simple buzz-word matching.
#15 Spending 80% of your time using low-yield resources that can only provide 20% (or less!) of the potentially available results
For example – spending hours searching the Internet for candidates and not heavily/effectively leveraging your internal resume 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 resume database – it’s specifically designed to store and retrieve resumes, and probably has more local and more qualified candidates than the Internet, and might actually have a better seach interface enabling more precise searching – see this post as a dramatic example of this point. Also – if you have access to any of the major job boards – they actually have a larger percentage of passive job seekers than active and they have some fantastic candidates – see mistakes #7 and #11.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it certainly covers some of the most common major mistakes sourcers and recruiters make while performing secondary sourcing.
Have a mistake to add to the list? Post a comment and let me know.
Thanks!
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This is so interesting! Thanks for all of the great resources, too!
I would add as a mistake (and this really has more to do with search strings themselves) not structuring your search strings so that it’s easy to remove items that don’t work well in your search. Your search strings have to be written in such a way that you can make changes quickly and accurately. I write mine using the following structure:
1) Wild card action words (what this person will actually be doing–admin*, develop*, support*, etc)
2) Required skills
3) desired skills
4) experimental key words (things I want to try just for the heck of it)
you can see that with this structure, if I try something and it doesn’t work, I can quickly scroll to the end of my search string and just start backing out keywords and rerun the search using my “core” search string (as opposed to scanning through it and changing words here and there).
i would also add (and again, this really goes to search strings so a possible blog posting could be “the top 15 search string mistakes”) that a common mistake is not typing one’s search strings into Word documents first (so that you can both save them if they work well but also you have them handy just in case you get kicked out of Monster/Careerbuilder/etc and you end up losing that great search string).
Just my two cents! And I welcome your feedback as I consider myself a search string blackbelt. I love them with all of my heart!!