Recruiters on Safari

Lately I have had a lot of people talking to me about technology, online research, social media and just geeking out in general in regards to recruiting. While I am not an expert in any of those things (well, except geeking out), I certainly have been a technophile for a long time, and have leveraged technology, the internet, and smart research in my recruiting. I love to share what I discover because it seems like a happy thing to do, even though I think it is human to feel the temptation to keep cool knowledge to oneself. If recruiters in general were smarter, more equipped and didn't exhibit foot in mouth disease (and we all have done it) we'd all be better off. So here is to the greater good, baby! If you find any of this helpful, please let me know.

In that spirit, let me also mention some excellent resources for recruiters to share information, techniques and activate networking power. Jason Davis has created RecruitingBlogs.com, and it is a great place to find other recruiters committed to high standards and innovation. If you as a recruiter are not there, you need to be, and if you want to find a recruiter, well what better place to look. SixDegreesfromDave and its Linkedin group SixDegrees are also necessary stops. If you want a community of high producers who share knowledge best practices and tips of the trade, get involved. Personally, each of these people and organizations have added to my identity and brand, lifted my spirits and also helped me find increase my reach - which is essential to recruiting success. If you are afraid of connecting with competition, or sharing potentially confidential information with folks who could eat your lunch, I urge you to rethink your stance. Especially on Linkedin, but really anywhere we network, we own our relationships not our contacts. I believe more is better, and sharing helps everyone. RecruitingBlogs, and SixDegreesFromDave really are great examples of that and are positive forces for developing community in the staffing industry.

Headhunting in the wilds of the internet has a lot in common with being a private detective, a profiler, or a hunter in unfamiliar territory. When you venture out on a new search you are on your own in uncharted lands, and you have to think about who you are seeking, what they look, smell, sound, and feel like. You have to find them where they are, not where you think they ought to be. It requires excellent listening skills and the ability to pay attention to details and make connections.

Many recruiters still subsist on job boards, though that is beginning to change. I like to think of the "job boards" as zoos with captive animals on display. (No offense intended to anyone with a resume on a job board) But those captive folks have put themselves out there for all the crowds to see. They are easy to find because they are all in few places, but that easy access is a double edged sword. If you can find them, so can everyone else, and the fact that they get poked with so many sticks (many of which are pointless and embarrassing)can make them surly, cranky, and very difficult to handle. That doesn't mean you can't find a great catch on a job board, you can, but you have to be nimble, good at establishing rapport very quickly, and able to add value fast. You can't bumble with folks who are on the job boards, someone else will snap them up before you know it.

While the zoos are less interesting from a candidate perspective, they are useful from a research focus, because in many ways job boards are a partial employment directory representing a cross selection of workers and companies. You can see what skills, perspectives, and approaches live at particular companies if you pay attention, and to a recruiter/profiler paying attention is everything. You can gather quite a lot of raw data on the boards that will help you draw a good map for when you venture out into the less controlled areas of the internet.

This may come as a surprise to some people, but the internet is not a database of candidates for us as recruiters to find. You don't log in to the internet and access it like a job board. I think of the internet as a crazy universe of activity, datapoints, people going about their business, subcultures of almost any commonality, and evolving stuff that absolutely has a life of its own. One should approach it as a potentially unfriendly jungle where one must tread lightly in in order to stay safe. Anyone who has accidentally opened their mouth in the wrong place in the wrong way on the net can tell you that the internet can bite, and bite hard. There is treasure, but you don't want to jump into the jungle without studying up on it first.

A great example of relatively safe haven in the jungle is Linkedin. Lots of recruiters have jumped into Linkedin, and there is a tremendous about of information out there on how to use it from a recruiting perspective. Shally Steckerl, Jason Alba, Dave Mendoza and Glenn Gutmacher all have a lot of valuable things to share about this tool and online networking in general, and they give concise tips for using these tools daily. But I just want to bring up a few things I have noticed as a recruiter on Linkedin. As a recruiter, why would you limit your network on Linkedin? I come down very clearly on the volume side of linking, but I believe have value as well as volume in my network. I use Linkedin as a research tool more than anything else, and I want to access to every bit of data I can. Don't you?

Shally Steckerl and Glenn Gutmacher have more tips to taming the wilds of the internet through smart search engine usage than anyone I know. Regardless of how smart you are with internet search, they will teach you a thing or twelve hundred. Take the online seminars, and if you want your head to explode sign up for the home study course. Following those search techniques will lead you to a vein of gold in the internet jungle from which you can extract many valuable candidate nuggets.

One of Shally's most important points in constructing a search - whether it be using a search engine, or using Linkedin, is that you have to know what prospective candidates look like in the wild. This is actually the key to any kind of recruiting research. In the zoo of the job boards, candidates are behind bars and wear resumes with keyword tags. In the wild they might just be talking about solving a problem, sharing ideas or talking about a conference where they have presented. For example, on Linkedin, many people write nothing more than titles and company names in a profile, and if you search for a lot of key words, you will not find much. However, if you know what companies have those skills, you can probably generate a decent list by searching on that company for a variety of relevant job titles.

Once you have identified the traits you seek and how they might manifest in the wild, you need to know how to contact potential candidates effectively. If you post a job ad in the middle of a technical discussion folks might not just be annoyed, they might write a blog post about yet another stupid recruiter interaction. So, just like a canny hunter, when we find those places where good performers live and work online, we need to study them and learn the local customs before we take aim and fire.

Again, Linkedin provides a cautionary example regarding approach. I get a lot of forward requests from recruiters to candidates, and while I am happy to help anyone, even my competition, I wonder why any recruiter would put a first interaction with a potential client, candidate or contact in the hands of someone else, especially when those hands quite possibly belong to someone you do not know. I love and respect my Mother, but I would not let her call, email, or set the stage for my first contact with anyone. I think that whole forward thing is probably not the best way for a recruiter to make first contact, ever. Again, just my opinion, but it is just as annoying to get unsolicited (and often irrelevant) job requirements from someone on Linkedin as it is to get canned spamlike emails from Monster. Taking the time to learn something about a potential contact will always get better results than random stick poking.

Once I needed some assistance with software for my mobile device. I searched on the web for some assistance and stumbled upon a discussion forum for mobile developers. I did my research, fixed my problem, and went to the miscellaneous section to post a thankyou for the help, and offered to assist anyone who wanted to talk with me with any career questions as a token of my appreciation. Instead of a flame in response, I made some really swell contacts with scary smart folks. Yes!

Twitter is another fascinating tool, and it is growing fast. Think of it as constant eruptions of 140 character thoughts into space. Streams of consciousness from an unidentified number of consciousnesses. Random thoughts, pointers to pictures and articles and interviews and what someone had for dinner. I think the last count showed just over a million folks using twitter. This tool crystallizes all of the lessons of profiling, tracking, and hunting on the internet. You can choose to follow people you find interesting, or you can search for folks that suit you and follow them. Of course a technology centric tool with be best used for techie types, but if you are at all into social media (or if your clients are and there are few who aren't) you'll be surprised what you can find.

Tweetscan is one of the search tools for twitter, and FriendFeed will aggregate all your online activity and let you keep folks you are aligned with up to date on your virtual world. This is powerful stuff for recruiters. You can search for keywords, but you won't get far searching like you would on a resume. Knowledge is power in the twitterverse, so knowing things like conferences or groups or online hangouts or what folks doing the stuff you are looking for talk about can find you the folks you seek. You can also save searches so when people post about topics in the future you are notified.

Once again you have to think about search terms. Results for Java (a software development language) were mixed up with favorite coffee spots. Agile (a type of development methodology) was great fun and led me to some excellent contacts. Localities, hangouts, conferences all yield discussion. As usual, it is not what people do, it is what they talk about (which is really part of understanding a resume as well).

Once you find people to follow, shut up and listen for a bit. Get to know people by watching them, and doing some research. Most folks on twitter link to a website or profile. You can search for even those who do not to find out more about them before you begin tweeting out to the masses. And the most important thing to remember on twitter - it is not who follows you that matters, it is who you follow.

That may be the most salient point of any online recruiting focus. It really is who you find, who you track, how well you profile, and how effectively you listen and make connections that will always land you the best prize.