Lesson 3 Names Sourcing: What Is It?

Why names source? Why phone source in particular? Almost all employers regardless of the times usually identify strengthening

professional talent levels as a top recruitment issue.

Developing an effective talent sourcing strategy is the most critical recruitment initiative identified today by many employers. Fortifying your company’s sourcing skill-sets can be demonstrated to add directly to your company’s balance sheets. It’s a very easy sell to your CFOs once they see the magic in the numbers!

Names Sourcing is a little understood activity.

Simply put, it’s the finding of people who hold specific titles (usually) within (usually) specific organizations so that you, as a recruiter, may contact them and offer them your opportunity.

“Active” Candidates They may be an “active” candidate, meaning their information is “out there”

- they’re currently looking for another opportunity or their name may be generously spilled across the Internet for reasons usually well-known to them and pretty transparent to the rest of the world (think LinkedIn).

“Passive” Candidates They may also be the truly “passive” candidate, the one (usually) of more

interest - the one not currently looking for an opportunity; the one busily going about the daily routine of the job you need to fill.

The very high likelihood is, when contacted, this truly passive candidate will be extremely flattered you took the time to find him and will listen to what you have to say.

How many names? On average, depending on the job title, fifty (telephone sourced) candidate names

will get your position filled.

There are some areas where it will take more - many more. Areas like defense, high tech and bio/pharma are very names-costly.

Those fifty names generally will garner five - ten resumes of those actually looking for a new position at that particular time.

In reality, these “active” candidates will turn up in your search - it can't be helped if you’re doing a thorough phone sourcing effort. They’re going to show up in these searches because about 20% of the population is looking for another job at any one time.

The real gold nuggets. Out of that original fifty, another five to ten or so will tell you they 're not

looking BUT could be tempted to look at your present opportunity.

These are the truly passive candidates.

"Hmmm… that sounds interesting! Tell me more,” they’ll say.

The rest of the pack. Twenty-five or so people who also have the qualifications you’re looking for

will surface and these additional “passives” are those who may be interested sometime in the future but are willing to talk with you now.

Also emerging in the pack will be maybe two to three not-very-forward-looking souls (we all know them) who just say “not interested” and hang up on you - a few passives but who wants/needs them anyway?

There will also be a couple who you won't be able to reach within your fill timeline because of sick/vacation/maternity leave or some other such reason that is keeping them from work.

There are very few facts and figures out on telephone names sourcing because so few (still) recognize its existence. Given that it’s an art form with a teeny-tiny bit of science thrown into the

mix (human nature and statistics), it’s easy to see why so little was originally written on it. It’s been estimated that the average recruiter spends less than 10% of an average day sourcing and generating names. One esteemed recruiting expert, Dr. John Sullivan, has stated, “75% of the corporate recruiters and 98% of the managers I have worked with have never heard of [names sourcing]”.

That was a few years ago but still, not much has changed except they may have now “heard” of it but they still don’t (really) understand it.

How is phone sourcing different from Internet sourcing? Phone sourcing holds the possibility of identifying everyone in a particular

field of potential candidates who are appropriate for your open position.

Internet sourcing is limited to only those potential candidates you can find online.

Less than 10% of the available talent pool is “findable” online.*

*In a capacity that links them to your open position. This is true for most industries. IT is an exception because these people are Internet savvy and seem to most understand the possibilities of being “found” online.

Most candidates are NOT on LinkedIn! Telephone names sourcing is performed to “dig out” that great candidate. By

concentrating on companies that hire the same types of people you require, (usually companies within your own industry), you’re more likely to raise persons for your jobs with the closest and best skill-sets for your requirements.

This is important: The greatest majority of candidates are not looking.

This also is important: Most potential candidates are not online in a capacity that allows you to find them for your open position. Remember, they’re sitting at their desks, butts in their chairs, busy doing the jobs you need them to do!

Remember, for most positions, less than 10% of the available candidates suitable for your open position are online. Really.

Read this.

http://www.ere.net/2011/12/15/fishing-in-a-small-pond/

You’ll go where nobody else is going. Telephone sourcing takes you inside individual organizations to locate

people to contact.

It’s the natural next step to online (electronic) recruiting.

Electronic recruiting (searching the web for names) yields extremely valuable and potent information. Taking that information, using it for “starters” and expanding it into telephone names sourcing blows the roof off your research activities.

How is telephone names sourcing performed? Simply put, it’s done with tenacity, knowledge and guts.

You can do it with guts and tenacity; you can do it with guts and knowledge, but you can’t do it without guts.

You can do it with guts alone, though.

Not everyone can do phone sourcing. It’s not your ordinary recruiting skill-set/mindset that's comfortable doing this.

If done as it requires, it would need all the hours in a recruiter’s day (and some nights!) and the hours just aren't available to the average full-cycle recruiter.

Research, calling, asking, probing, more research, more calling, more asking, more probing.

It’s like putting a puzzle together – some people enjoy this kind of work and some don’t.

It means asking questions of people to garner information and some aren’t naturally comfortable doing this.

We live in a society that prizes privacy. Asking questions is perceived to be just plain rude (in some circles).

WARNING: Simple doesn’t mean easy! Telephone names sourcing sounds simple and it really is. It’s how we view it

that makes the difference.

It really is very simple – if you understand the steps.

Like a puzzle, it’s easier if you set a framework out first.

“I don’t like to phone source. It’s scary.” Many, if not most people, when asked, will tell you they don’t like to phone

source.

We think it’s because they don’t understand it and/or don’t know how to do it.

We hope to shed some knowledge on this little-understood activity and help you better perform this fun and very important early step in any recruiting process.

In the MagicMethod course we pick up where most e-recruiting manuals leave off – we concentrate on the nitty-gritty tips and techniques of telephone names sourcing – the how, why, when and where of it.

You’ll learn to speak only when it improves the silence.

Most of the course addresses the very scary subject of phone sourcing. The telephone is your mightiest tool for sourcing. Make friends with it – it can make you a lot of money.

The course shows you how to get names from a telephone directory; how to title-identify those names; how to deal with menacing gatekeepers; how to fill your internal pipelines with skilled, valuable passive (and active) candidates and make it run like Niagara; how to read “between the lines” and hear the clues in the silences.

In short, you’ll be shown how to become an effective Telephone Names Sourcer and an extremely valuable asset to any organization!

The MMPS designation At the conclusion of the Magic In the Method telephone sourcing course you’ll

receive your MagicMethod Phone Sourcer certification. For more information on the MagicMethod telephone names sourcing curriculum

go here: http://www.techtrak.com/training.html

If you have any questions contact the author of the course, Maureen Sharib at 513 899 9628 or email her at maureen at techtrak.com