How Sourcing is Separate (and Different) From Recruiting - Part 2

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

This is a two part series on phone and internet sourcing. Check out part 1 and part 3. 

Sourcing and recruiting are all too often seen as one and the same. The truth is that these activities are very different, and even if your organization blurs the liens between the two, it’s important to know how the roles are separate and how they fit together. In part one of this series I shared that sourcing is the act of locating, following leads on and uncovering candidates to fill a position or be included in your talent pipeline. This is done through a number of ways, from networking to phone sourcing to Internet sourcing. The sourcer does the initial pursuing of candidates and often screens them as well. But what some people may not know is that that’s as far as the sourcer goes. It’s easy to have some gray area in your organization when it comes to the tasks and roles of sourcers and recruiters, but if you’re looking to draw a line between the two, this is where it should be.

A recruiter’s role

Recruiters pick up the process when sourcers hand off the information of the candidates they’ve sourced. Their role is much different from that of the sourcer. If a sourcer is like the casting director for a movie as I mentioned in part one, then the recruiter is the executive director. They qualify the candidate further, work directly with the hiring manager and communicate with both parties. They orchestrate timelines, develop connections with candidates, make critical decisions and maintain a relationship with hiring managers. Together, all these tasks help them accomplish the goal of filling a role in a timely, effective manner.

The need for separate roles for sourcers and recruiters

Often times, a recruiter will source for candidates depending upon their needs and skills and the resources of the organization, and especially given how much a recruiter’s role has changed over the years.  However, these roles involve very different skill sets and responsibilities, creating the need for them to be two different jobs. A recruiter has a significant responsibility just in the project management area of their job. It’s a big deal just to manage the expectations and timelines of candidates and hiring managers, much less do your part to help both parties find the best match and advise them in the decision making process. One of the problems that recruiters run into is simply finding time to stay on top of all parties and perform follow-up activities that contribute to a positive candidate experience.

Sourcing also requires a different skill set. When considering what qualities make a great recruiter and what qualities make a great sourcer, there may be some overlap but for the most part, they’re very different. A sourcer is a great investigator, uses creative thinking and problem solving, takes advantage of networking opportunities and personal connections and does the digging required to find the type of candidates they’re looking for. On the other hand, recruiters must be great at developing relationships, overseeing timelines, helping candidates and hiring managers prepare for the hiring process and managing expectations. While sourcers can certainly posses these qualities and recruiters could potentially be great sourcers as well, these roles require that different skills be exercised.

In addition to the skills required for these jobs, the nature of sourcing and hiring also lends itself to being separated into two different categories. For instance, sourcing is typically ongoing for multiple positions, requiring a consistent time commitment. Additionally, legal reasons could also lead an organization to make these duties separate as sourcing often involves seeing protected class information that should not be part of the hiring process.

Watch for part three of this series to find out how to draw a clear line between the two in your company.

This is a two part series on phone and internet sourcing. Check out part 1 and part 3. 

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.  
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How Sourcing is Separate (and Different) From Recruiting - Part 1

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

This is a 3 part blog series on sourcing. Check out part 2 and part 3. 

The terms “sourcer” and “recruiter” are sometimes used interchangeably, but the roles of each can be very different, or one and the same, depending on the organization with which the professionals performing these roles work. While I believe that recruiting and sourcing are completely different and therefore should be done by separate individuals, I also understand that at many companies that just isn’t the case. However, there are many organizations today that see these as two different functions filled by two different professionals, as they should be. Sometimes resources necessitate the lines here be blurred, but it’s important to understand how and why they’re different and what that means for sourcers, recruiters, those in hybrid roles and hiring managers. When you understand how the two activities are separate but reliant on each other, it’s easer to understand the importance of each.

What is sourcing?

In our industry, sourcing is the act of locating, following leads on and uncovering candidates to fill a position or be included in your talent pipeline. Sourcers use a number of resources to find candidates, searching in the nooks and crannies to locate the best and brightest. This activity has historically been focused on passive candidates, but as I’ve said before, the “passive candidate” has evolved over the years with the adoption of social networks and online resources and doesn’t mean exactly what it has in the past. This is because sourcers have moved from using phone sourcing as their primary means of sourcing to focusing on Internet sourcing, or more likely, a combination of both, virtually eliminating the cold call.

Phone sourcing vs. internet

In the past, the typical passive candidate was someone working at another organization and not considering a new job. They didn’t have an online job seeker profile or a resume uploaded on job board websites. Sourcers would, and still do, find them through networking or phone sourcing in which they would call companies and do a bit of recon to find out who was in the role, names, titles and perhaps email addresses or phone numbers. They would then contact the passive candidate and begin the initial conversation to gauge interest.

This whole explanation is the very reason I say the term “passive candidate” isn’t relevant anymore. Today, the vast majority of professionals has an online profile and can easily be contacted, reducing the need for strictly telephone sourcing and virtually eliminating the cold call. Workers are also changing jobs much more frequently than they were 20 or so years ago, which means that the “passive candidate” isn’t as passive as you might think and more than likely is open to new opportunities.

Social networks, Internet job boards and resume posting changed the game for sourcers. Online candidate search is now what I call internet sourcing. Now, sourcers can locate candidates and find out a significant amount about them before they ever send a message or pick up the phone. The Internet has also given sourcers more creative ways to find candidates, such as industry forums, non-professional social networks and more.  

Beyond the resume review

What most people think of when they say the term “sourcer” whether internet or by phone is a person who reviews resumes and does an initial screening. While these are both important tasks that sourcers do in addition to seeking out candidates, they are a small part of the job. Sourcers don’t simply review resumes. They serve as an important role behind the scenes.

They make the initial decisions regarding whether or not a candidate might be a good fit, both skill wise and with the company’s culture. They often do this by qualifying the candidate by phone, via G chat or instant message before passing it on to a recruiter for further evaluation. Sourcers have a very important role and are really like the casting directors for a movie. They find the talent prospects but aren’t involved in the interviews, or selection.

While a sourcer’s job may not be complicated in and of itself, confusion often comes in when we start talking about how their role ties in with the recruiter and hiring manager, which is why the next part of this series will tackle how it all fits together.

This is a 3 part blog series on sourcing. Check out part 2 and part 3. 

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.  

5 Things You Can Learn From Inbound Marketing in Your Recruiting & Hiring

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

As a marketing strategist who earned her stripes working in HR and recruiting, much of what I do centers around engagement, community and relationships. When I made this transition, it was a major shift in my career but it wasn’t a 180-degree turn around because what I quickly found out is that marketing has striking similarities to recruitment and hiring. And what I’ve seen through the years is that the recruitment function is becoming more and more like marketing every day.

Marketing is all about promoting, reinforcing our brand, fostering connections and creating channels through which customers can engage. Recruiting leans on those activities heavily to find, engage and hire the best candidates by focusing on building an employment brand, developing an employee value proposition that is in line with an employee's needs and wants, shaping the public’s view of the company through a number of ways using multi-channel messaging and creating unique campaigns that reach a very targeted and niche candidate community.

You may not know it, but you’re probably already using inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is one of the most significant ways we achieve customer or candidate reach and response goals, in both marketing and recruiting. Inbound marketing focuses on creating channels for customer traffic to occur and engaging community members by using specific messaging and materials. Essentially, inbound marketing happens when we promote and engage with the hopes of customers, or in our case, candidates, circling back around and engaging us or making a buying decision. In recruiting, these efforts could mean providing a downloadable resource or job seeker template, or providing a salary negotiation guide video series for technical candidates.

Whatever the platform, messaging or method you use to engage as well as attract candidates, inbound marketing in recruiting focuses on these five things:

Your website or career site as a foundation

Your website or career site is the force holding all your efforts together. It should be where candidates know to go first anytime they have a question, are interested in your company or are ready to make the buying decision of applying for a job. It should be easy to navigate, optimized for high listings in search results, feature content people want, and most of all should help candidates engage and take that next step in the decision making process.

Creating candidate landing pages that convert

Creating landing pages that relate to what candidates are searching for, from “cover letter templates” to “tech jobs in California,” is simple and it works. The key to move them along in the buying decision once they’re there is the language you use.

Speak to your candidates as well as employees

In marketing, research is the first step and guides most of the decisions marketers make. Take a lesson from the profession and talk to candidates and employees about what’s working, what’s not, where and how they’re looking for jobs, what the company has to offer, where you’re lacking and more. Not only does it help you make the best inbound marketing recruitment decisions but it also provides a good baseline if you choose to measure your efforts. (Which you definitely should.)

Go visual

We are visual people living in a visual world, so as important as the words you use are, an image or video can sometimes say more than an entire page of copy could. Use visual channels and use pictures and video in your communications and channels that you wouldn’t necessarily consider visual as well.

Make your website sticky

Your inbound marketing will likely send candidates to your website or careers page, but what’s going to make them want to stay there?  Make your website sticky, that is, make them want to stay, with free resources, great content, ways to engage and more. Give them a reason to hang out a while and you’ll make an impression on them.  

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell. 

Take a Community First Approach to Engage Your Job Seeker Community - Part 2

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Be sure to check out part 1 of our 2 part series.

As human beings, we crave community. It’s not just something that enhances our favorite hobbies, vacations or work life. As I mentioned in part one of this series, it’s usually what makes those hobbies vacations or work worthwhile and enjoyable. This is just as true in recruiting as it is in our personal lives. Candidates want community, and believe it or not, recruiters need it too.

A sense of community connects candidates, helps recruiters ensure better hires and creates a tie to the organization that makes the job acceptance decision easier. It also creates reasons for candidates to come to your talent network or careers site when they’re looking for information and job search resources instead of flocking to the nearest job board website.

Overcoming the hidden competition

When it comes to the candidate marketplace, I have long said that as recruiters, our biggest competition isn’t really our industry peers. It’s actually the job boards that candidates flock to. Organizations that run job boards are entrepreneurial in nature. They focus on candidate resources and relationships to help users land the job. Candidates searching for resume templates, interview secrets and salary negotiation tips will probably find themselves on one of these sites. Resources are the name of the game for these job boards, with one of the most popular features of job boards being their daily candidate job alerts. There’s nothing wrong with these  job board, and in fact they are one of our biggest tools in recruiting, but they’re not as powerful for your company as creating your own job seeker community.

In that sense, there’s good news about this hidden competitor: they lack community that connects a candidate to the organizations they hope to become a part of. They can’t put the candidate directly in touch with the hiring manager or answer a prospective employee’s quick question about a benefits plan. Sure, they can send reminders, provide resources and keep candidates in the know, but they can’t create a sense of community or establish a connection between the job seeker and recruiter.

You can overcome any type of competition by going beyond simply providing basic organizational information and truly helping the candidate, regardless of whether or not they become your employee. As a recruiter, you have the power to create a community that helps your organization establish a reputation for being a great company to work for.

What community looks like

Community comes in all different shapes and sizes. It could be a forum, like Indeed’s popular job seeker forum. It could be a customized talent network such as TalentCircles. It could be created on a social network. Whatever it may look like, there are a few things that it must provide in order for it to be successful. It should offer access to your company’s recruiting team so candidates can get the answers they need, allow candidates to interface and give them a reason to be there, as I mentioned in part one.

Fostering community among job seekers and recruiters is one of the best ways to engage candidates, gain an edge on the competition and keep potential job seekers coming back. It’s a worthwhile investment for your talent acquisition team.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell. 

Take a Community First Approach to Engage Your Job Seeker Community - Part 1

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

If you think about anything lasting, enjoyable or worthwhile in your life, from your work to fun vacations to your favorite hobby, it probably involves other people. Whatever the activity or pastime that comes to mind, I’ll almost bet that what you really got out of it was community. Whether it’s family and friends that you’ve developed deep relationships with, co-workers that encourage you, maybe a fitness buddy that pushes you, people make our lives better.

Community is a powerful thing, both in our personal lives and in our jobs as recruiters. Gathering with people who are like-minded or with whom you have something in common is comforting, encouraging and helpful. In recruiting, we can use this reality to our advantage by creating community among job seekers and recruiters.

Recruiting and Selection Taking a Community Garden Approach

Think about your candidate community like a community garden. The goal is not just to produce a great crop but to network, build relationships and to learn as well as grow together. This is the basis of the future of recruiting and selection. This is the power to engaging your job seeker community.

The power of community

The community first approach is powerful and worth focusing on. The perfect example of just how powerful a community can be in the virtual world is Reddit’s very vibrant, passionate and eclectic group of members who, for better or for worse, are engaged and involved in the organization. These members care so much about the online community that they drive the success of or can even create conflict in the organization. As individuals, they are simply people sitting at a computer feeling passionate about particular issues that shape the company, but united, they have the power to actually guide the company’s decisions. That’s what you call a powerful community.

As recruiters, we’d be well served to think about how to take a community first approach in our own recruitment and candidate attraction strategies. Imagine a community of job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers that is proactive, involved and responsive. It could save your team time and help develop deeper connections than ever before. Of course community is important, but in recruiting what’s even more important is what that sense of community creates, such as a tie to your organization, a desire to be a part of it and a connection that makes the job acceptance decision an easy one.

How community happens

The key to a great community is to give your members a reason to be there. You can do this by providing a service, platform or resources that are truly unique. This could mean simply being available and responsive in answering candidate questions. Trust me when I say that even this could make your organization stand out. You can also provide resources that help candidates understand your company using a talent network like TalentCircles. 

However, I believe there’s an enormous opportunity to foster community beyond showing candidates what your company does and stands for, so consider carving out a bit of time and developing ways you can also help their overall job search. Candidates want information, resources and most important options. You could do this by providing resume and cover letter templates, salary negotiation tips, ongoing engagement and best practices for reaching out to a recruiter for an interview with your company, as well as other companies. It might seem risky to help them in this way but the reality is that they are going to get those resources somewhere, so you might as well be the place they go.

You’re not only showing them you’re invested in their success but also enabling them to be proactive, which ultimately aids you in your search and benefits you in your recruitment and selection efforts.

Be sure to check out part 2 of our community job seeker series.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

6 Strategies to Effectively Use Video In Your Recruitment Efforts

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Video is a part of our everyday lives. It’s what we use when we need to find out how to put together furniture, the thing we scroll past in our Facebook newsfeed 200 times a day and how we share special moments with family and friends. AT&T recently reported that 50% of its Internet bandwidth use is video. It’s also become a resource for us in the recruiting and recruitment industry to reach candidates as they become more accustomed to and expectant of video in the hiring process.

The Power of Recruitment Via Video

Video a powerful medium that presents a real opportunity for employment branding, content sharing, recruitment, candidate reach and providing resources. It’s a great way to engage a candidate, tell a story and build a relationship that leads to the most qualified candidate applying for your job posting or joining your talent community

Video doesn’t have to be an over-produced and expensive production. It just has to resonate with the job seeker and support your talent acquisition team’s larger employment branding strategy. Start by incorporating these six easy strategies for effectively using video in your recruiting efforts:

Video job posting

Video job posting is one of the quickest and simplest ways to use videos in hiring. Your job description will provide a general script, but don’t be afraid to veer from that. You can share a little about the team and projects they’re working on, show their work area and even introduce the hiring manager or key team members. This definitely steps outside the job posting box and provides more of a narrative than a traditional job posting ever could.

Embed your video

Utilize your social channels by embedding your videos everywhere you can. From publishing platforms like Medium and LinkedIn, to your company blog, and of course networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Also, don’t forget to add recruitment videos to your slide decks on Slideshare as well as your career site pages and individual job postings.

Use on demand video

Apps like Periscope and Meerkcat can help you engage new viewers and candidates in real time. Since videos are live, it provides a unique medium for sharing with candidates and much less time preparing, editing and sharing.

Video interviews

As people become more accustomed to video being a part of their lives, they also become more comfortable with video interviews. Of course video interviews are ideal for candidates who don’t live in the area, but consider replacing your initial phone interview or screening with a video one to create a familiarity up front.

Video introductions

Ask candidates to submit a video introduction as part of their application. For example, I’m hiring a new blog editor and asked my candidates to share a short one to five minute video introduction of why they’re a good candidate for the position. It also shows their proficiency in a medium I’ll be working in with my blog, business and company.

Video job fair

Video job fairs are a great way to engage, build relationships and talk with a large number of candidates. They’re efficient, cost effective and extend your reach beyond geographic barriers.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

3 New Types of Candidate Content to Elevate Your Employment Branding Efforts

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

The race for the right candidates is moving faster than ever and recruiters are responding by trying out new ideas to reach the best and brightest. One of the most effective techniques that we’re seeing used today is a focus employment branding throughout content. We know that content is king, and we’ve found that it’s not only a great way to reach candidates but also provides us with countless opportunities to brand our companies as employers of choice – the type of place that anyone who comes across our content will be intrigued by.

The challenge with such a focus on content and using it to showcase an employment brand is that after months or even years of using content to attract candidates, things can get stale. While you must keep content fresh, it can be challenging since the messaging is likely strategic. The answer to creating candidate content that elevates your employment branding efforts is where you share.

Get creative with these three channels by creating new content, repurposing previous content and meeting candidates where they are.

Podcasting

Podcasting is my new love in the content world. I’m especially drawn to how it can be as structured or as laid back as your brand requires, how easy it is and the personality and employment branding you can infuse in each episode. I’ve now created around 50 Workology podcasts, and it hasn’t been an enormous commitment to record the 25-30 minute episodes.

Many employers are seeing the benefits of podcasts for employment branding, such as Marriott’s The Wandernaut Show that is geared toward reaching millenials. It’s innovative, creative and helps the company stand out to young candidates among the hundreds of other employers in the hospitality industry.

Periscope

Periscope is fairly new on the scene but live video broadcasting is the future of not only recruiting but our day-to-day lives as well. Early adopters have already seen a great deal of success with the app, such as HootSuite’s Operation #FollowTheSun campaign. The company has been able to engage candidates across the world in a new and exciting way that increased engagement and promoted their employment brand with simple real time streaming video.  

Virtual networking and events

The majority of our candidate pool lives and breathes online, so it’s not much of a leap to hold a virtual job fair or networking event. These are growing in popularity and are a great way to build relationships, answer questions and get to know your job seekers. They’re efficient, provide a much wider reach than your average job search event and are certainly cost effective. The easiest way to do this is my using a talent network technology that enables this type of event, such as TalentCircles.

Employment branding is all about sharing resources, information and insights into what makes your company a great place to work. In this competitive candidate market, it’s imperative to use content and your creative assets in new and exciting ways to engage the best candidates for your company.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.