The Sourcing Savant

All hail the SourceCon Grand Master Challenge Champion, Michael Notaro! Oh, and check out his blog too. Today, he shares with us the secrets of his success. Something to do with Google Coop and Radiohead. Brilliant!

SourceCon Wrapup

When I left you last, the Grand Master Sourcing Challenge was in full swing. It was a great competition for those involved, but only one, the great Michael Nataro, would come out on top. Michael's only been a dedicated sourcer for a short time, but he certainly has a great future ahead of him. Congrats again to Michael.

A nice outdoor reception carried on to a Charity Poker Game that would last into the night. The game, which raised $1900 the Positive Outlook Foundation, was great fun, and all for a good cause. I played some great hands, but was knocked out by the eventual winner, Jeremy Langhans (who seems to win at just about everything BTW). It turned into a late night, but the continuous networking and collaborating made it all worthwhile.

A very groggy Thursday got off to a rousing start with a energetic and entertaining presentation by Danny Cahill. I had heard of Danny before, but had never heard him speak. If you ever get the chance, don't pass it up, he is fantastic. Why? More than being entertaining, he's real, he's honest, and in most cases, he's dead-on right. Treat your prospects and candidates right, with respect and honesty, and you can't lose.

The day continued with mind-blowing presentations by Shally and Eric Jaquith. I love listening to these guys as I always get some great takeaways. They are truly two of the best around.

Marc, Constance and Denny from ExecuQuest followed with The Anatomy of a Successful Sourcing Organization, once again a highly relevant, and very informative subject relating to my mission in attending SourceCon.

Amybeth Hale (congrats on her new role!) educated us next with what the value of a Researcher is. Amybeth has been leading the charge to gain more respect for this very valuable niche specialty, and once again did a fantastic job.

I only got to see about half of Dave Copps' presentation, as I had to head off to catch my flight home (which ended up being delayed 2 hours, grrr). Dave is attempting to change the world of online search, can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

In reflection, I'm amazed just how well this conference went. For a first-time conference, it went off for the most part without a hitch. I got what I hoped to get out of it, and more. Great content, great learning, great networking and collaboration. Big thanks to Leslie O'Connor for having the vision, energy and passion to see this through. I hope to make it again next year!

Last Time I Was In Atlanta...

There is no greater experience as a sports fan than to witness in person YOUR team win it ALL. I was honored to have that experience on April 1, 2002 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.



Will my experience in Atlanta this week be as great as my last time there? We'll have to wait and see. Do check back often this week as I'll be providing daily recaps from SourceCon.

Props from Copps

Yesterday, a promotional email for the upcoming SourceCon conference was sent out, complete with an interview with one of the scheduled presenters, Dave Copps. I met Dave at the Virtual Edge Power Summit a few months back and was blown away by his ideas and work in Semantic Search. I'm thrilled to see that he'll be presenting at SourceCon next week, but am disappointed that I'll only be able to see a portion of his presentation, as I'll have to leave a bit early to catch a flight home.

In the interview with Dave, he was kind enough to mention me, although his quote was a bit inaccurate:

The first three things you should do are - network, network and network. Many answers are already out there right now and being talked about by your peers. If you haven’t already done so, set up a feed reader and subscribe to recruiting blogs - make sure you add Jimmy Smith and Ben Gotkin. Ben has even created a Ning social network of recruiting blogs at http://www.recruitingblogs.com/.

Of course, Jason Davis is the creator of Recruitingblogs.com, Dave might of meant that I had created a private subnetwork off of Recruitingblogs.com, which I have to admit, I haven't done much with lately. Again, thank you to Dave for the very, very kind words, but I also want to make sure the record is set straight too.

At any rate, if you are attending SourceCon next week, do be sure to seek out Dave and network with him too. I've seen what he is developing, and it will, IMO, revolutionize Internet sourcing as we know it.

SourceCon Questions

A week to go until SourceCon, and already Sourcing is starting to consume my every thought (well, except for our launch of Virtual Edge, but more on that later). As I mentioned in my prior post, I have a singular mission and goal in attending this conference. So what do I need to come away with? It's not a definition of Sourcing, I believe that I have that already.

(My definition: The process of identifying and engaging talent that is not coming to us, and that we are not finding through traditional recruiting sources.)

No, what I need to learn includes the following:

- Where to begin? Most all of our recruiters want sourcing help, but we are not looking to drink-the-ocean here. How do we prioritize?

- Is a centralized or decentralized structure more appropriate in our situation?

- Inhouse? Outsourced? Offshored? A Matrix of some or all? I'm pretty sure that something will be in house, but what model will be most effective for us?

- Full-time? Part-time? Flexible-hours? Virtual employees/Telecommuters? Contractors? For those that we do 'hire', what works best? How many sourcers per recruiter?

- What costs are involved and how do we justify these costs?

- Should sourcers do both name and candidate generation? Can sourcers have equally good phone and online skills, or is better if they specialize in one? Does it matter?

- Sourcer Job Market. Am I too late into the game. Lots of opportunities out there right now for Sourcers, are there enough qualified Sourcers around? And going back to cost, what's the going rate for great sourcers.

- What tools do we need to provide them. We already will have an outstanding CRM tool (VE Pilot). Are there other essential tools they need (i.e. Broadlook, Infogist, etc.)

- How have others successfully built a business case for Sourcing in their organizations?


I'm just getting started with this list. If you will be at SourceCon next week and think you can help, I'd love connect with you. I'm sure I'll have more questions coming up too. This is a complex subject for sure, lots to learn, just a week away. Yea!

Sourcecon Or Bust!

Two weeks from today, I'll be off to Hot'lanta to attend SourceCon. Now I've been to a number of HR & Recruiting conferences over the past several years, but this one will truly be unique, both in content, and what I hope to get out of it. As a bonus the timing of this conference could not be more perfect. I need to build a business case for a sourcing function, and two days of total immersion in Sourcing should do the trick.

Typically, when I attend these conference, I'm looking for best practices, for new tools and tricks of the trades, and new friends and colleagues. What's different this time? A singular goal. I need to walk away from Sourcecon with a better understanding of what a sourcing function could and should look like at our firm. What would the structure and scale be? How much of any of this would we outsource? How do I sell this to those who have no clue as to what Sourcing is? How much will this cost and how do I justify that?

Of course, it will be great to reconnect with a number of colleagues in the industry (Tracey Friend, Rob McIntosh, Shally, Mendoza, and Glenn Gutmacher, among others). I also very much look forward to meeting a couple of fellow bloggers (Jim Stroud, Amy Beth Hale) for the first time.

I know what Sourcing is, I know we need a sourcing function, I'm hopeful that I leave SourceCon with a better understanding of how to craft this critical need for our firm. If you read this post and will be attending SourceCon yourself, let me know. I look forward to seeing you there!

It's Going To Be A Great Fall!

I'm starting to get excited about what should be a busy and exciting Fall season. Fall is my favorite time of the year usually anyway. Football is gearing up, Baseball is winding down, and for a very brief time, Basketball and Hockey even overlap. The temperatures here get right around where I like it (60s and 70s), and the colorful foliage makes everything look nice.

In terms of Recruiting however, there's going to be alot going on over the next few months, including:
- Conferences: ERE Expo (see the shiny new badge over on the right sidebar!), SourceCon and a CareerXroads Colloquium event.
- RIMS: We are scheduled to launch Virtual Edge next week. The excitement and energy is building, we will all be in a learning mode this Fall, but the payoff for this investment should be huge.
- Surveys & Metrics: New surveys and new data from RIMS. Can't wait to sort it out and make sense of it all.
- New Business Cases: I'll be spending alot of time this Fall building business cases for a Sourcing Function and an Alumni Program.
- ERP: We'll be morphing our ERP Theme in a few weeks, can't wait to see the results.
- Travel: In addition to the conferences, I'll be paying our Recruiters in the field a visit on various trips around the country.

Of course I'll be writing about all of this, hopefully more often too. In the meantime be sure to click on the ERE Expo badge over there---> and sign up if you haven't done so already. See you there!

SlouchCon!

Mega-congratulations today to Jason Davis and ERE! ERE has brought on Jason to help build The Fordyce Letter. This connection seems so natural to me, especially since the only time I have ever seen Jason has been at ERE Expos! So move over Fordyce Forum and SourceCon, a SlouchCon/Charity Poker Tourney will be coming to your town soon! :-)

400 Connections

Time goes on and my LinkedIn network continues to grow. I just hit 400 direct connections this week, adding one of the organizers of SourceCon (which I plan to attend), and who also happens to be local here in the DC area.

So as of today, in addition to my 400 direct connections, I have 77.7K 2nd Degree connections and 2.6M+ 3rd Degree connections. Although I have expanded the diversity of my network some through some recent proactive initiatives (see here and here), I clearly haven't done enough as my 3rd Degree connection numbers continue to grow slowly.

My motivations with LinkedIn continue to be primarily exploratory and collaborative in nature. But even more than that, I continue to preach the value of LinkedIn to our recruiters, attempting to educate them as to why they need to be power-users of this great social networking business tool.

In the past, I have discussed my feelings around the integrity of one's social network, and why Open Networking wasn't a strategy I subscribed to. With that in mind, I went ahead and analyzed my network to see who I really 'know', defining 'know' as someone who I had met in person, sent an e-mail to, spoken to on the phone, or had any relevant connection with prior to connecting with them on LinkedIn, and anyone who I have connected with outside of LinkedIn since we connected networks.. My analysis revealed that I 'knew' about 70% of my direct connections, not bad IMO. I'm still looking to connect with those who I 'know', but also those who feel there may be a mutually-beneficial reason for connection. If we haven't connected already, let's connect today!