Sourcing: What It Was, What It Is, What It Could Be (Part 3 of 3)

By Bryan Chaney

We recently looked at what sourcing used to be, and then examined how it‘s evolved. But it could be so much more, and it will.  Let’s peek into the crystal ball of the not-too distant future of sourcing.

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Candidates as Customers

As much as some of us may not like to admit it, we spend most of our cognizant lives as consumers. We buy products and services, and trade money, time and energy in exchange for items of perceived value. This is also true in the world of work. Many of our clients and employees as well as our prospective clients and employees are all connected to each other in a myriad of socio-economic circles. The sooner we realize this, the better the candidate experience will become. Sourcing is becoming more and more a part of that experience.

Tools

In any modern sales organization, we don’t think twice about paying for a Client Relationship Management or CRM platform. But candidate relationship management is generally considered a luxury in talent acquisition today. These tools, or at least the functionality of these tools, I predict will become mandated and mainstream in the next 3-5 years.

Talent Communities/Networks/Pools

Whether branded, unbranded, user-generated/moderated or managed by an organization, our prospective candidate lists are becoming more organic and dynamic, and less of a static spreadsheet or database. This is taking the form of talent communities, or networks like TalentCircles.

Now, this isn’t your 1999 “talent community” which was basically a glorified database. We’re talking about interaction and discussion, knowledge sharing and distribution. A place where people can actually have conversations and learn about the real employee experience, via private and public messages or video chat. More and more, these platforms will offer a way to foster relationships regardless of geographical distance, over the span of a few months or years during a candidate’s career.

Just remember that a micromanaged community will look like a predatory watering hole near the Serengeti. And an unmanaged community or network will fall as flat as a dance club without a DJ to keep the crowd moving. The ideal balance is somewhere in the middle, depending on your audience.

Fit over Function - Soft Skill Sourcing

With the skills gap ever yawning, the emphasis will continue to be on attitude, personality and train-ability over specific skills. But how do you source for someone who thinks like a pirate, without the term “eye-patch aficionado” in your search string?

The answer is technology that interprets the meaning and intent behind text-based content and social behaviors. More companies like eiTalent will develop algorithms for core values and driving motivators. This will help us determine a better fit on the front end of a search, rather than an assessment right before a hire is made. Not to mention the positive implications of getting a recruitment marketing message *just right* for your targeted prospects. You do want the right people responding, don’t you?

Social Validation - fraud prevention

As sourcing becomes more of the forefront to talent acquisition, the teams and leadership are being tasked with intelligent checks and balances. I spoke to an industry colleague recently who was looking for a way to verify employment information in a candidate’s resume and social profiles. The reason? A prominent executive was hired with a completely fabricated employment and education history. I’m sure there were hundreds of thousands of dollars…lost.

This is another example of one bad apple changing a recruiting process. My recommendation? To leverage ZoomInfo, Hoover’s and social aggregators like Klout and Kred, for the double and triple-check.

Teams

Sourcing will grab more of the spotlight as recruiters have to tackle research and lead generation. They have plenty of applicants for open reqs, but the appropriately qualified applicants are harder to reach.

As candidate generation becomes a necessary skill set, I can see corporate Community Managers turning into Talent Advocates. After all, a good brand knows it has to nurture relationships with clients as well as candidates. Which means blended roles for both marketing and recruiting/sourcing professionals. They are all brand ambassadors and soon those that haven’t admitted so yet,  will learn to act accordingly.

Tactics

To truly build a relationship, you have to focus on engagement. Marketers understand this, and build calendars of targeted, relevant content, to start conversations with their prospects. Why?

They know that if your messaging is only about the sale, then it will be one-note and turn off the audience quickly. The same is true for recruiting and sourcing.

Imagine a world where candidates get invitations to join a passionate network of similarly minded professionals. Not to look at a job or push an agenda, but to talk about what makes their creative or analytical engines purr. That’s engagement.

Now imagine that network plugging into their social graph, to determine who they interact with intimately, as well as their professional acquaintances. As a sourcer, you will be able to call out specifically who is connected to the right circles of influence in that niche. You will also see who would make an ideal referral, instead of asking the ubiquitous “who do you know?” question.

The future of sourcing is indeed social, predictive, and growing by popular demand. And as someone who started my recruiting career as a sourcer, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

About Bryan Chaney: Bryan Chaney is a Talent Branding and Attraction Strategist. He most recently led employment branding and social media for corporate recruitment at Aon. Previously, he developed the recruitment marketing arm of a Texas based RPO provider that serves SMB and Fortune clients. He serves on the board of Social Media Breakfast in Austin and founded careerconnects.org, a community event platform, to gather niche recruiting and HR professionals with candidates to share career strategies. The Huffington Post recently named him one of the Top 100 Most Social HR Experts on Twitter. Connect with Bryan for consulting and speaking availability at Bryan Chaney.

6 Ways to Properly Vet Prospective Job Candidates

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

How to Vet a Job Seeker Candidate 

While it’s a common practice for employers to call on references and confirm past employers, vetting an employee takes a bigger look into the applicant’s background. This process might include looking for prior convictions or jail time, credit checks, verifying professional licenses, or tracking employment history. The majority of all of these tasks are usually outsourced to investigative type agencies. As recruiters start to take a bigger role in the vetting process, here are a few ways to properly vet prospective candidates: 

Find a Connection: One of the best ways to gather accurate and relevant date is to find common connections. Take a look at the connections you have in common with prospective candidates and conduct your own blind interview. These types of reference checks are getting easier because of LinkedIn. If you are not only able to find out common connections, you’ll be able to find out what degree level your connections have in common.

Once you have a couple of contacts, reach out to them and ask to talk for a few minutes about your candidate. If you get a lot of responses, the candidate is more likely to get better reviews and if no one responds, well, maybe you’re wasting your time.

Google ‘Em.  One of the quickest ways to vet a candidate and locate a discrepancy is leveraging Google.  While not fail proof, googling a job seeker is a great way to vet the candidate before they actually become a candidate for a job. Searching for blogs, published articles and other professional mentions, recruiters can get insights into the prospective job seeker beyond the standard employment application or job interview. Steer clear of protected candidate information that could get you and your employer into discriminatory waters for what I call social media discrimination.

Conducting Background Checks: Once a candidate has gone through a few initial interviews they are pushed onto the next step of the interview process, and it may just be time to make a job offer. Conducting the background check is usually preceded by a job offer. Before the vetting process can begin, the employee must sign a consent form in which they allow the company permission to investigate their background.

Pre-Employment Testing: One of the best ways to test a candidate’s true skill is pre-employment testing. With the vast amount of skills testing out there this will help the recruiter find out if a prospective candidate possesses the right skills for the specific job they’re hiring for. The benefits of skills testing are numerous and outweigh the consequences for hiring someone who might not fit potential job positions. Don’t skip out on these because it's more expensive to train than to prevent a bad hire.

Video Interviewing: Video Interviewing does more than allow a recruiter feedback on standard interview questions: it allows to gain a better sense of how the candidate behaves in a more controlled environment. While under pressure it’ll show the candidates' ability to demonstrate critical thinking skills and answer questions in a quick and concise manner. With the introduction of new video interviewing services and talent networks, video interviewing will become a must in the near future to save not only the recruiter's time, but the job seeker's as well.

Invest in a Talent Network: Talent networks are hands down one of the easiest ways to vet prospective candidates. Being able to build a relationship with job seekers either active or passive will help the recruiter when a specific job position opens up. When trust is formed through talent networks, job seekers tend to let their guard down and become more open with a recruiter. This is not necessarily a bad idea on either end because it allows the recruiter to find out who they truly are and it also allows job seekers to get a better feel of what they are getting into. Before the background checks, reference screening, video interviewing, or pre-employment testing happens, it’s important to build a rapport with the job seeker. A talent network is the easiest way to do so, and is beneficial to both parties.

Vetting to Ensure Candidate Quality 

While each candidate will be vetted differently from company to company, these practices build a good foundation to follow when conducting interviews and finding a quality candidate. Make sure when vetting employees they are all done in the exact same fashion to destroy any attempts at being sued for discrimination. Ensure that consent forms are signed and easily understood before any background or credit checks are implemented. And lastly, try to avoid any type of request for information that doesn’t relate directly to the job. 

Photo Credit. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs.