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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Exclusive Look at LinkedIn’s 4 New Dynamic Filters
LinkedIn’s been busy.
I don’t know about you, but I have always wondered what LinkedIn was going to do with all of the deep/rich data they capture with every profile that is created on their site.
With the release of 4 new dynamic search refinements that are now available to users of LinkedIn’s Recruiter and Recruiter Professional Services, we gain some insight.
LinkedIn contacted me last week and gave me the honor of an exclusive sneak peek into what users of their 2 premium recruiter offerings will be able to take advantage of to quickly find more relevant candidate search results.
LinkedIn has definitely been busy, and they apparently appreciate the value of human capital data – maybe as much as I do. 
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Candidate Pipelines vs. Just-In-Time Recruiting Part 1
Last week I wrote about how I learned to use Boolean search to leverage information systems to quickly source candidates, and I challenged the concept and practice of building candidate pipelines.
Amybeth Hale commented on my post (thank you – you inspired me to finally write this one!) and mentioned that she was puzzled by the mention of the fact that I never pipelined candidates. I’ve literally never had to. Not for the rarest skillset, the most challenging under-market compensation, the highest security clearance, 3rd shift, 100% travel - I’ve successfully recruited for these and more from scratch. Honestly, I’ve never known any other way.
Amybeth feels that my experience may be somewhat unique and this might not be replicable by other sourcers, recruiters, or recruiting organizations. I’ll agree on the first part – that my experience may be uncommon – I’m undeniably a product of the specific environment and circumstances under which I entered the recruiting industry. However, I have to respectfully disagree on the second part. I won’t apologize for it (nor would Amybeth want me to), because professional debate is a good thing, and we should all welcome it! There’s no critical thought or learning involved if we all agree on everything.
On the surface, pipelining candidates and building candidate inventories seems to be just plain and simple common sense. However, sometimes what just “feels right” may in fact not actually be the most effective and efficient method of doing a thing.
Thomas Edison (I’m a fan) once said, “There is always a better way.” My goal has always been to find it. Whether it comes to quickly finding great candidates, creating voicemail and email techniques to get the non-job seeker to respond, developing candidate closing and control techniques, implementing effective time and activity management, etc. - I want to be using the BEST possible way to do a thing. Don’t you?
Keep an Open Mind
I know I am in the minority in my view of candidate pipelining – I’m going to ask you (most likely in the majority) to have an open mind and not just simply “stick to your guns” and what you know/what you’ve been taught. If you are a passionate candidate pipeliner and you’ve built a successful career around that practice – congratulations!
However, be aware that there are other ways to be successful in recruiting, and they might actually be more efficient and/or effective. You’re reading the words of someone who’s been highly productive and successful without ever having to pipeline a single candidate, I’ve never had the benefit of a hiring forecast, and I’ve outperformed all candidate pipeliners I’ve worked with head-to-head on the same positions consistently – even when they’ve had a head start!
How was I able to do this? That’s the good part - there’s a science of sorts behind the success, and it IS trainable and replicable.
Get ready for a paradigm shift – I’m going to move your cheese.
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How I Learned What I Know About Candidate Sourcing
When it comes to my theories and best practices for leveraging information systems for quickly finding highly qualified candidates, I am often asked, ”So, how did you figure all of this stuff out?”
It’s a fantastic question, and I am happy to be asked it, but my answer doesn’t seem to satisfy anyone.
The short answer is literally that “I just figured it out.”
The long answer provides some insight into how I figured some of this candidate search stuff out, but I think the real value and message of my personal story is that anyone can become quite proficient at electronic talent discovery – and it’s less dependent on any training you receive and more on how you approach your job.
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LinkedIn Search Results Sorting: Relevance or Keyword?
When I deliver presentations on how to leverage LinkedIn to source candidates, I have the opportunity to get a sense of what most people seem to know about using LinkedIn. Recently I have been making it a point to ask how people tend to sort their search results when searching LinkedIn, and the overwhelming majority leave their results sorting at the default value, which is “relevance.”
I find this especially interesting, because most people do not seem to realize that when you sort your search results by “relevance” on LinkedIn, you are not getting results based solely on the search terms entered – you are getting results ordered by a combination of factors – including your “social graph.”
LinkedIn’s definition of “relevance” is decidedly different than practically every other searchable source of potential candidates – Monster, Google, Applicant Tracking Systems, Twitter, etc. – and what LinkedIn *thinks* is relevant to you may actually not be based on what you are specifically looking for.
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The Two Levels of Candidate Sourcing
Many individuals and organizations treat the sourcing role and function of recruiting – searching for and identifying potential candidates – as an entry level position, and/or a simple and basic task that does not require much skill or experience.
I agree.
I believe that it does not take much skill or experience to simply transcribe job titles and required skill keywords into LinkedIn, Monster, or an ATS and click “search.”
However, that oversimplified view of sourcing talent only describes the most basic level of talent identification, of which, I believe there are at least two.
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Resumes Are Like Wine
In response to my recent post about the deficiencies in the search capability of many Applicant Tracking Systems, a few people commented to the fact that resumes stored in applicant tracking systems become stale and outdated over time, which may explain why ATS resume databases are often the candidate “source of last resort.”
While candidate records inevitably age over time and can become outdated, this definitely does not have to be the case.
A candidate record can only truly go “stale” if no one ever makes contact and updates the record with more current information from time to time – and it need not even be every 6 months.
Any recruiter worth their salt will attempt to maintain periodic contact with most candidates and update their information as appropriate, regardless of their job search status. This can also be automated to some extent with strong and effective CRM functionality – so even if the recruiter forgets to follow up with someone every 6 months, the CRM won’t.
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