Where Do I Start?

Posted by SourceCon
August 20, 2008

SourceCon Dude

***

Where Do I Start?

Jeff VersluisBy Jeff Versluis
Internet Recruiter
Management Recruiters of Grand Rapids

.

If you’ve been in the sourcing industry long enough, you’ve undoubtedly come across a situation when a recruiter comes to you to help with a search, and you have no idea where to begin. Whether it’s an industry you’re not familiar with, or acronyms you don’t understand, it’s not a good feeling.

When I joined the firm I am with now, we had a staff of 12, and we specialized exclusively in banking and finance. Since then we have grown to a staff of 20. In addition to our expertise in banking, we have expanded to working in information technology and finance/ accounting, as well as in contract staffing. When you have 20 different recruiters and account executives coming to you to help them find Senior Vice Presidents for a bank one minute, and contract Java developers the next, how do you juggle all these requests successfully? In this article, I’ll share with you some of the techniques that helped me succeed in sourcing candidates that resulted in close to $500,000 in fees last year, across all the industries I mentioned.

Before I took on a role in online sourcing, I spent three years as a recruiter for senior-level finance and accounting professionals, so that industry was no problem for me to help source candidates for. I knew where to go, what industry groups to join, and what keywords to search for. Banking and information technology? Now that was a different story. I learned very quickly that in order to succeed, I needed to learn as much about these other industries as I could, as fast as I could.

The first thing I did was make sure to assimilate with the entire staff. I made a point to go out to lunch with different people every day. It’s easy to sit at your desk and catch up on the news or run some errands on your lunch, but that’s not going to make you better at what you do. I would make a point to spend time with every recruiter in our office, asking questions about their industry, picking up on keywords, trends, etc. Also, Friday afternoons are typically a time when the phones are quiet and most of the staff is busy planning for the following week. This is a great time to carve out 10-15 minutes with each person in your office to go over what positions they are currently working on, where they could use your help, and to gain some insight on their industry.

Another important practice I started was to create a research/sourcing request form. This will be different for everyone of course, but mine was a simple form that I had recruiters fill out that listed not only the basics — position, pay range, etc. – but also asked what associations/groups a good candidate would belong to, what certifications/licenses they would have, who the key competitors of the client are, etc. This form serves two purposes: one, it gives you a starting point for your passive candidate searches, and two, it helps you prioritize what to work on when you have several recruiters that want your help at the same time. Also, it gives you something to show the recruiter who comes up to your desk saying, “Why haven’t you gotten back to me about my search request?” Being able to pull out five or six different request forms reminds them they aren’t the only recruiter working with you (in my experience, a fact they often forget!)

Another important aspect of being successful in your role is to make sure everyone in your office knows what your capabilities are. In many cases, the new recruiters are the ones you can help the most. They are working in new industries and new geographies where there are literally hundreds of passive candidates that are not in your database that you can unearth. The problem is, the new employees are busy training and observing and are often not aware of the full spectrum of services you can provide them. I make sure to sit down with each of them and carefully go over everything I can do to help them succeed, and believe me – it pays off.

Finally, be proactive! If I sat back and waited for recruiters to come to me for help, I wouldn’t have had nearly the same amount of success I’ve had. There will always be recruiters that utilize you more than others, but I always make sure to ask everyone what I can help them with, if they need any ads posted online, or if there is a specific profile I can look on the job boards for.

Hopefully some of these tactics will work for you in making your role as a Sourcing professional a valuable part of your company.

***
Global Sourcing Conference | Atlanta, Georgia | September 2nd – 4th 2008

.

Related Posts

[Post to Twitter] Tweet This Post 

SourceCon2008, Sourcing Tools and Tutorials

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.