RECAP: Sourcecon Fall 2019

October 3, 2019 at 10:35 AM by Kandace Miller

Sourcecon Fall 2019 Recap Blog Hero

Last week, hundreds of sourcers met up in Atlanta for SourceCon. Attendees immersed themselves in three days of networking and sessions with some of my favorite techies & TA leaders as they covered all of the latest and greatest sourcing hacks and strategies. I had a wonderful experience speaking with attendees and learning about their current sourcing challenges and priorities they are facing in the new year. 

Here are a few sessions from the conference that specifically addressed tools and/or tactics to step-up your sourcing game.


Roll! Action! Cut! – Utilizing Video Content in Sourcing -
Erin Mathews - Talent Sourcer, FTD Companies

I loved this session! Erin highlighted how you can create quick, personalized videos and use them as a powerful tool for breaking through to prospective candidates in a competitive job market. Erin highlighted specific metrics including the rise in response rates when she took the time to create her own videos (Employer Branding Infomercial Parody). 

 

Don’t like being on camera? There are various ways to create videos promoting your position with a job advertisement video that includes images and video with a talking track. Take advantage of Erin’s amazing video resource toolbox here.

Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 9.53.14 AMDon’t forget to be conscious of the Linkedin Algorithm! Encourage engagement within 1 hour of the post. Use audience-focused hashtags (but no more than 3).

 

Let’s be real, Marketing isn’t Sales - Natalie Dunphy - Talent Acquisition, Senior Analyst, Lowe’s Companies

Candidates these days receive a ridiculous amount of inmails. Natalie discussed how posting and praying is just not cutting it for most recruiters and sourcers today. She highlighted the concept that even though you may be a TA leader, your job is really to sell the job you are trying to fill and “close the sale.” It’s super important to recognize the motivations of your candidates and really take the time to read into the conversations you are having with them.

 

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Is this going to improve their current state? Is their commute better? Is their career path greater? Is there faster growth potential? Are they going to make more money?

Really focus on getting into the mind of the candidate, being a problem solver, finding ways to bounce back from rejection all while collecting industry intelligence and connections.

 

The Best Sourcing Tool You'll Ever Possess - The Cognitive Side of Sourcing - Mike Chuidian - Senior Tech Sourcer, Walmart

Mike Chuidian kept it real! He brought us back to reality by focusing on the “Why, How and What of Sourcing.” Rather than spending all of your time focusing on plugging in keywords, boolean strings and ATS queries, he explained that sourcers need to look beyond tech and deeper into themselves and our most important (and free) tool...our brains! 

 

For example, did you ever stop to realize that maybe an Engineer may misspell their own title? We are only human, right? This is a great way to pull a list into a boolean “OR” statement. Its for this very reason that Entelo’s contextual search includes common misspellings.

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Mike also revealed some various tactics like google image search when sourcing for candidates. He discussed why asking the right question is a game-changer when it comes to cognitive sourcing. Here are some examples:

 

  1. Tell me what the person will have accomplished in the first 90-180 days that tells you that hiring them was the right thing to do?
  2. Describe 3 things for me that your group is doing right now to WOW a person doing this stuff elsewhere.
  3. Are there any obscure forums, blogs, conferences, or online communities I should know about? 
  4. What are some implied titles, words, phrases I should look out for in specific profiles that lead me to believe this is the candidate you’re looking for?

 

Quantum Sourcing - Mike Wolford - Lead IT Sourcer, Neilsen

This session highlighted techniques for discovering skills and credentials  that are often not self-reported such as Top Secret clearance. Clearly, this is information that is not available on most candidate public profiles or online resumes. 

 

Mike highlighted the idea of turning your sourcing technique around by searching for companies that have Top Secret contracts with the US, completely visualizing the market and mapping out this information, capturing a list of those companies and then specifically sourcing talent from the companies that work at those organizations, utilizing a tool like Claro to upload candidate data and uncover if they have clearance or not, and more importantly if they are exhibiting job-seeking behavior. To be successful here you have to ultimately map the market and track your high-value prospects through data analytics. The key is to commit to doing your research in order to unlock vital candidate information!

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Sound complicated? The good news is some tools like Entelo have taken a page out of Mike’s book and built algorithms that compute this for you to provide inferences about what clearance candidate’s hold.

 

My biggest takeaway from all these sessions was that sourcing is not all about the tech anymore and providing a positive candidate experience is what is going to help sourcing teams gain a competitive edge. From sourcing through onboarding, it is important to make sure you are reaching the candidates that are best-fit at scale while humanizing the entire candidate experience.

 

 

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