Top 5 Principles to Boost Your Sourcing Productivity

[Irina Shamaeva]

Does sourcing seem hard to you sometimes? I'd like to share five sourcing hints that will make it more efficient. (I also post hints on my blog). 

1. Use the advanced search dialog on Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and any other services – especially if you are new at this. This will guarantee correct syntax. Wrong syntax produces unexpected results, wastes the time, and lowers our confidence.
2. Missing some relevant results is inevitable. It’s not a problem though; we are looking to find a few great candidates, not to find everybody in the world with the given skills.
3. False positives in a search are not a big deal. If there are few, ignore them and move on. There’s no need to modify your strings to get only relevant results.
4. You do not have to use every important keyword in your search. Do not use tough keywords such as the state of Oregon or a Bachelor’s degree. You can always verify things when you look at the resume or the profile.
5. There’s never a perfect search string and no “wrong” strings either. It’s best to run many quick tries for any given search. Start somewhere and modify your string watching for the right results to show up. When they do, collect them. The start somewhere else and repeat. 

Happy sourcing! (Copied fromhttp://community.ere.net/blogs/irinashamaeva/2010/07/top-five-princ...)

[Edna Barone]

Irina, Reading this just relaxed me so much since at this moment I have had a couple of days with a search that has actually turned out to be a fustration to me, since I'm not getting anywhere.

Thanks,
Edna

[Irina Shamaeva]

I made some marketing changes as you may have noticed. Try reading again?

Edna Barone said:

Irina, Reading this just relaxed me so much since at this moment I have had a couple of days with a search that has actually turned out to be a fustration to me, since I'm not getting anywhere.

Thanks,
Edna

[Kameron Swinton]

One thing I would add to this is save all of your search strings. Organize, categorize, however you choose to store these, but you never know when you will have a similar search again. I've created a word doc for every search that I've been running going back the last few years. I call on these all the time when I'm starting searches, running into problems or want to remember what worked.

Good Luck!
-kameron

[Dave Galley]

Kameron,

Excel for me! Easier to sort/organize by job info. A little more timeconsuming to manage.

Also, I try to go back and append notes in our ATS under the relevant job order to include the best strings. When I get a new job, I can find older jobs w/ similar parameters and there they are.

Of course, being able to easily cross-ref strings to actual resumes/candidate info would be cool, too... no good options or budget for new tools on that right now though.

Kameron Swinton said:

One thing I would add to this is save all of your search strings. Organize, categorize, however you choose to store these, but you never know when you will have a similar search again. I've created a word doc for every search that I've been running going back the last few years. I call on these all the time when I'm starting searches, running into problems or want to remember what worked.

Good Luck!
-kameron