Posted by Cameron Laker on Thu, May 14, 2009 @ 02:15 PM
From www.cheezhead.com
One of the best recruiting blogs on the planet
"Where do your best candidates come from?
That’s the million-dollar question that the AIM Group, experts in online media revenue, wanted to know for their annual Recruitment Advertising 2009 survey. They asked 75 recruiters, HR professionals, managers, and recruitment agents where they are spending their limited ad budgets to find out what is and isn’t working for them."
Link to full article and report: http://www.cheezhead.com/2009/05/14/ved-recruitment-advertising-2009/
"Recruiters in the U.S., U.K. and Canada gave social and professional networking platforms and niche job sites the highest marks for bringing in quality candidates, supporting empirical evidence that recruiters are funneling more effort into these services. According to the report, when asked to rate alternative recruiting methods, networks and niches tied with 16% of respondents saying that both were great for bringing in quality candidates. No other recruiting methods came close in the “great” ratings.
Recruiters noted the two best networks for recruitment activity are Facebook and LinkedIn, with Twitter closing in fast. This is not surprising considering that Facebook is like a giant candidate playground for recruiters, 175 million potential applicants strong, while LinkedIn picks up about one new user per second. And both, for the most part, are free."
Posted by Cameron Laker on Mon, Jan 12, 2009 @ 06:25 PM
We've had many discussions at the office around what an effective sourcing strategy should look like. Ultimately the goal is to find a great hire, but there are two seperate ways that companies source candidates. The Shotgun and the Rifle.
The Shotgun Approach:
The shotgun approach is quick, dirty and sometimes extremely effective depending on the candidate profile. This strategy includes identifying as many possible leads from resume databases, social networks, membership lists, internal database and sending out mass emails 'inviting' them to apply for a specific job opportunity. We have tremendous success with this for generic skill set... like an Entry Level Sales Rep, Customer Service Reps, Jr. Developers. Is does not however work when you are looking for a niche skill set and experience... but you already knew this.
The Rifle:
The rifle approach is as it sounds, limited bullets, specific targets and detailed. You need to check the wind, altitude, terrain etc., this takes extreme skill and experience. We recently worked a search for a client for a Semantic Web Developer, needle in a haystack. Our research was pre-dominantly focuses on the major semantic web blogs and looking for who is contributing the blog, commenting on posts, speakers at Semantic Web Conferences and using Linkedin to identify individuals at specific companies.
So which one is better? I don't like using 'guns' as a metaphor but felt is was an appropriate analogy.
The answer is you want both and likely two different individuals managing these two strategies, one individual has a marketing bent and the other a more anlytical background.
The next time you need to source, ask yourself if you are more likely to get results by running through the forest with a shotgun and spraying bullets wildly or sitting up in the hill with a rifle, sleeping bag, a scope and food for 3 days.
Both are effective depending on the profile.
Top sourcing tools for the 'Shotgun' approach:
- Resume Databases: Monster + Workopolis (CDN) / CareerBuilder (US)
- Spoke and / or ZoomInfo
- Online Forums and Membership lists
- Internal Database
Top sourcing tools for the 'Rifle' approach:
- Linkedin
- Blogs
- Twitter (really powerful when searching for keywords)
- Conference Websites - Look for speakers
Please feel free to contribute your thoughts / recommended tools in the comments field.
CL