ResearchGoddess

I have observed successful people for the majority of my adult life, and I wanted to share a life lesson that I have learned from the best of the best:

No matter how busy you are, always make time to talk with people who seek you out.

I’ve watched so many people blow off individuals who have later gone on to accomplish great things. I’ve also observed people who take time to have a conversation with others, return phone calls, and just be there. While I believe it is good to keep yourself productive as much as possible (notice I did not say “busy” because you can be busy but not be productive!!), if you give the impression that you are so “busy” all the time, people will eventually stop trying to get time on your schedule and you will miss that window of opportunity to be an influence in their lives. This applies in both your professional and personal lives!

Don’t get me wrong: it is important to filter your conversations. Don’t waste a lot of time with people who just want to gripe and complain about things without seeking solutions to their challenges. You are not a trashcan with a hairy lid! But make time to network with and listen to people. I believe in this wholeheartedly, because you’ll never know if a seemingly insignificant conversation in your mind may have inspired someone and changed the course of their life.

In case you have not heard, there is a conference coming up in September called SourceCon 2007. This conference is the first of its kind, a global sourcing conference geared specifically for sourcers and researchers! Finally, something just for us!

Registration for this conference is now open! The conference will be held in Atlanta, GA at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead from September 11th – 13th. The event will be MC’ed by none other than Searchologist and All-Around-Nice-Guy, Jim Stroud.

This should be a great learning experience for anyone who does or has interest in any kind of research and/or sourcing. I myself will be in attendance and hope to meet many of you there!

A great, yet relatively obscure, question was asked within my LinkedIn network today by Geoff Peterson of General Lead:

“Can you share your best or most effective sourcing technique/tip/strategy for finding candidates?”

A number of different directions could be taken to respond to this question, and responses ranged to ones focused on active candidates:

“I do sourcing for a living. Generally my routine goes like this (I move to the next bullet when the resource is exhausted).
- Monster.com
- Dice.com (For IT)
- Question in LinkedIn
- Post in CraigList
- Post in RecruitLadder (for 100k+ Jobs)
- Search for related people in the area and ask for referals. “

“Careerbuilder, Monster, Yahoo Hotjobs, Craigslist, Linkedin, Facebook, Myspace… “

…to more passive contacts, word of mouth, and networking responses like these:

“Stay away from the big job boards, recycled candidates with many entry level recruiters hounding them. Socialize with user groups where people with the right skills meet in groups of 10-50. Online professional groups on Facebook too… Work on keeping your network fresh, reach out to “dormant” contacts twice a year.”

“I source effectively through third party vendors and referrals through my existing candidates.”

“My best sourcing comes through employee referrals and direct hunting.”

“Relationships. Relationships. Relationships. Word of mouth. Reputation. Trust.”

Even though I am a researcher and I do not recruit, I learned a great ‘Target Recruiting’ method from Marc Sennett, one of my former co-workers. The bulls-eye is the first place to start when sourcing: referrals from present and past candidates. As you move away from the center, you discover individuals who are a little further away from your immediate sphere of influence. Next would be your personal/professional network connections. After that would be your internal database. Following that would be your external resources – this would include engaging a dedicated researcher to uncover passive leads from various sources. This might also include your resume boards like Monster and Dice. I like how someone responded that those are ‘recycled’ candidates. My belief is that these boards should be the LAST place you go to for that very reason. Those candidates are like scraps of meat in a hungry lions’ den – everyone’s fighting over them. Notice also that the target area (i.e. your contact selection pool) gets larger the further from the center you move. You have more to choose from, but you’ll have more junk to sift through as you move away from your hot contacts.

Looking at this method from a research standpoint, the target areas only change slightly. Here’s an example of how I do research:Starting off with my internal database only makes sense. Why re-invent the wheel? If I’ve already discovered those individuals in the past, why use external resources first only to find those same people all over again? After that, I will tap my professional networking groups. These are people I have chosen to hook up with, or who have decided that they want to connect with me. Then I move on to more passive searching methods – using listservs, discussion groups, press releases, Boolean search, etc. Finally, I will use resume databases to find the “leftover scraps”. Now, if we have a resource that we pay for, I may use that earlier in the process to justify that cost, but this is traditionally how I will conduct my searches.

Your sourcing techniques will also vary depending on the industry in which you are searching. For example, when I am conducting research in the IT function, I will look at user/discussion groups, listservs, and online resumes. This job function area lets me go to town with creating some Boolean search strings. When I am looking for a person in engineering, or in construction, I might look at an engineering association site, for example the Florida Board of Professional Engineers (www.fbpe.org). Sites like these often have directories, or at the very least names of individuals who are certified in specific areas. Different resources will prove to be better for different industries.