Paper Sourcing

Reading through Wednesday's Telegraph whilst on a flight. I came across a section focussed around engineers. In particular it was a page showing who had recently achieved chartered status. 

Now we all know engineers are a difficult bunch to find and chartered ones have a little extra attraction. So how about an entire broadsheet spread of names including what they've chartered in...? Sounds pretty awesome. Combine that with a cross reference through social media and you've got yourself a lovely pool of candidates to target.

That led me to think if that potential pool of candidate is sat there, already verified in a paper then what else can we garner from the press? 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has sourced (or tried to source) candidates that have come up in the press through a Boolean search. Nor will I be the only one who has sourced (or tried to source) after watching a TV show and seeing a potential candidate. But how many times do you look at the paper when your flicking through with your Sourcing hat on? Probably a number of far better sourcers than I for sure, but the rest of us... 

The world is full of little snippets of sourcing gold and some of that data isn't available from the internet or phone. Take a look around!

The View From The Other Side

All I can say is wow! Time really flies when you're having fun. I can't believe I've now been in my new role in-house for 3 months. I feel like I've already achieved a huge amount but I'm very aware that my task is just starting. A few people (Hi Kasia) have asked to find out about the transition as a sourcer into an internal role. Now I've been brought in due to my sourcing knowledge but it's very much a broader recruitment role which is a little different to my initial thoughts of what I wanted to do. Which leads on to my first point of a few about the transition:

Things change, quickly

I thought that external roles were of fast change but being on the other side has changed my view point on this! Everything from priorities through roles to your very own role and ownerships can change very quickly. Its good to be comfortable with change as it happens!

There's a lot more scope

It's not just about finding candidates, getting them interviewed and hiring. Oh no. If it were that easy it'd be no fun! The flip side of this however is that it can be very much like being a kid in a sweet shop. There's so many exciting and new things to do that it's very easy to get overawed. I've found myself (aside from day to day recruiting) looking at psychometrics, graduate recruitment, apprenticeships, marketing, reporting, on boarding, training, assessments and much more.

Access to hiring managers

One of my biggest frustrations comes from feedback and being able to fine tune searches with input from the teams on the ground. Being on the other side means that I've got access to the managers either voluntarily or by going and finding them and sitting down to really understand their needs. 

There's no where to hide

The flip side of the above point is that that when things aren't going so well there is certainly no hiding to give yourself an extra hour or two to get things done. Everyone knows where you live!

Impacting the business every day

Probably the number one reason to make a move to an inhouse recruitment role is that you really can see the impact your work has on the people around you. You really will find that when you do well people are very grateful. Saying that, the business critical role that you're struggling to fill through direct or agency.. you really do feel the impact of it.

Learning
 
Very much along the lines of the scope point above, there is so much to learn. Whether you're learning how to put together graduate scheme, how to use that ATS or even contributing (in a very small way) regarding HR issues every day genuinely is a learning experience.

Agency recruiters

It is and has been really important to develop relationships with external recruiters who have a niche knowledge of our sector. The main problem for me at the moment is the cold call. It appears that there is a cold call manual with the script for introduction and objection handling. It also appears from my (albeit limited) experience that every single recruiter has it in front of them when they call. It can be frustrating.

Sourcing time

The biggest downside for me is the other side of the coin from my reason for the move in-house in the first place. I wanted to open up my responsibilities and get involved with a larger amount of things. This has had a significant impact on the time I'm able to spend sourcing and keeping up with latest tools and techniques. Before I spent almost all my time developing new techniques and testing the latest tools along with active sourcing. Now there's so much more to do that I just can't give it that same dedication. 

If you love your sourcing then you need to weigh this up versus the long term benefits of the great stuff from above. For me it's a no brainer but I'm acutely aware I need to find more time to study and practice amongst all the other exciting things I'm working on. 

And finally... Free stuff! 

One of the lovely things about working in FMCG is that you occasionally get to taste some of the produce and get involved with taste testing for future products. If you like food (like I do) then it's a brilliant perk! 

I hope this has given an insight into the transition that I've gone through but I'm more than happy to chat further if anyone has any questions.

On New Beginnings

Today is a big day for me. Today is the day I finish my time at Talent Works International.

It's A New Dawn

I'm incredibly excited about the new challenges ahead, the new people I'll meet and the new experiences I'm going to have. I've been given a fantastic opportunity to work on a really challenging project that is going to be huge amounts of fun (more about that further down the line).

It's also a time of introspection, looking back at the past three years (to the day) and looking forward to what the future holds. 

I've had the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business, I've had the opportunity to work with some of the biggest and best companies on the planet. I've had the opportunity to work on such a diverse range of roles that simply wouldn't have been possible in any other company. I've placed a VP of Finance for an oil and gas company in the Far East, I've placed a Brand Director for one of the world's leading beer brands, I've placed candidates across Europe, across sectors and learned so much in the process. 

Talent Works was my first step onto a road I didn't even know existed. It has been pivotal in shaping my view on how the world should work. It has been pivotal in making me realise what I want to do with my career. This is something I'll be eternally grateful for, I didn't know where I was going, what I wanted to do and what my passion was. 

Now I do. 

Really knowing how positively direct sourcing can impact a business is one thing. It's now time for me to implement that and show just how good it can be. 

It's an adventure I'm looking forward to.

Internal recruitment, I'm coming for you! 

Taking the Goldenline to Polish sourcing success.

Yes that is a pretty darn awful title I admit.

So you've been asked to complete a sourcing project in Poland. Where do you start? 

Well may I recommend having a look at Goldenline.pl. For those of you who haven't heard of Goldenline it is the number two professional networking site behind LinkedIn (according to Alexa Internet) in Poland with over 1.3 million people registered. From experience there is some exclusivity between LinkedIn and Goldenline so it's definitely a worthwhile place to search.

Whilst the internal search is there and works to some extent I've found it to be much easier, quicker and less restricted to complete a 'normal' Boolean search through Google. 

So how do we go about constructing a basic string to allow us to search through Goldenline? The first and obvious one is to utilise the site: operator.

So start with site:goldenline.pl followed by your search. In general the results are very clean although depending on the complexity of your search you can end up with some noisy results. To counteract this it's useful to focus in on candidate profiles only, unlike LinkedIn there's no /in or /pub to help to distinguish between people and 'others'. There is however a way to distinguish that I've found works pretty well. In the URL for candidate profiles the site is goldenline.pl/firstname-secondname. As such we can utilise the following to complete our search:

site:goldenline.pl/*-* plus your search should see you golden. 

If you fancy combining this with a LinkedIn search you can try a base of:

site:goldenline.pl/*-* | site:pl.linkedin.com/pub | site:pl.linkedin.com/in -dir followed by your search.

One of the benefits of Google is that it seems to translate your search into the local language so you can unleash your search in English and you shouldn't miss out on any results. 

It's a basic search but it's always good to share tips. I hope it helps. 

Searching The Official Board

I found an interesting website the other day that I have had a play around with. It seems to contain pretty much accurate top level org charts (although I would take the reporting lines with a large pinch of salt!) for a large number of companies. Having been using it we've found that it has been mostly accurate in terms of people and a large number of these weren’t available via LinkedIn or similar websites. We identified a large number (150+) of people across multiple countries and 10 companies with only 3 or 4 not being within their organisations.

The website is www.theofficialboard.com and it contains a large number of org charts for a lot of large corporates across the world. When you look at organisational structures within this a most of the names are obscured though their titles are not.

As such you can chuck in a quick search to uncover the names for each position:

site:theofficialboard.com Company Name Job Title

For example on: 

http://www.theofficialboard.com/org-chart/accenture-united-kingdom

You will see there’s a Business Process Outsourcing Director whose initials are P and G.

To search this you could enter into Google:

site:theofficialboard.com Accenture UK Business Process Outsourcing Director

The first link shows Peter George in the News section of the website, the second link points to Peter’s bio.

It’s not flawless but it seems to be pretty useful for high level searches across the world.

Markets...

How well do you know the market?

It's 3am and I'm currently sat in my car as we traverse Europe. (I've done my stint but I can't sleep in cars... I'm not blogging while driving, don't worry). Any way where was I? Right we're currently crossing Europe, somewhere in Germany. I've not seen the sign for Düsseldorf but we can't be far off. Nearly half way!

Back to the point. I've just filled up at the petrol station and it confused the hell out of me. Nothing to do with being up nigh on 24 hours. This led me to think, how well do you (me) really know your markets? I mean if something as simple as filling up your car (on much cheaper diesel) is significantly different then what else is?

There certainly must be a number of factors in sourcing and recruiting candidates that differ from home. So if you are recruiting outside of your own nation, how much do you really know about the factors that will impact your ability to attract candidates... There's two ways to find out I guess, research and immersion. I'm all for immersion myself but I guess the boss isn't going to send me out to Indonesia next time I have a role there..

I'm lucky in that I'm able to do the in depth research for my clients and have access to a fantastic team of insight consultants who are the best around at finding this info (and lots more) out. I'd be interested to learn how you find out that petrol stations are different?

The end of the /pymk/pcard?

The end of another great LinkedIn hack

It was great while it lasted wasn’t it? We’ve had a great method for uncovering the names that aren't immediately obvious on LinkedIn using the http://www.linkedin.com/pymk/pcard?mid= (candidate number) hack, recently publicised on various websites. This has allowed us to use the above address plus a potential candidates number to uncover their full name (leading to the below):

Unfortunately it appears LinkedIn has gotten wise to our sourcing games and have managed to block off this loophole. It also appears that this is a staged roll out as this method seems to still be working for me but not for a number of my colleagues. *Edit - It has now stopped working for all of us in our office. Instead of the above card they are getting redirected straight to the People You May Know page. Sad times.

Luckily for us some of the other, slower, methods still work but I’m sure it won’t be long until the next hack appears. It may even already exist! Well time to get searching.

Happy hunting and happy Christmas!

Liam