Telephone Sourcing
From Sourcersguide
Names Sourcing Today - What Is It?
Moderated by Maureen Sharib
BUZZWORD: Names Sourcing What is it? Why do it? Who does it? How is it done? Why don’t I know about it? Why can’t I do it?
Back in 2005 when I first put my fingers to the keyboard to organize my thoughts surrounding the arcane subject of telephone names sourcing for the still-only-of-its-kind telephone names sourcing course, The Magic in the Method telephone names sourcing was a barely understood and spoken-on-the-down-low-about subject. Not knowing quite where to start or how to convey my thoughts I started where most successful names sourcing projects start – at the beginning! I've been asked to participate in this wiki project with some of my esteemed sourcing brethren and I am glad to do so - I owe much of my success today to the folks who have gone before me like [Barbara Ling and those who participate today in Sourcing. In this burgeoning personnel industry and the encouragement I find in their generous information sharing!
The following is my first contribution to this open source project and for those of you who have an interest in learning or helping recruiters and sourcers on sourcing and building sourcing strategies
- I encourage you to visit us here often and read many of the most talented voices in sourcing today. My following contribution is also a blatant advertisement of my telephone names sourcing course so if you are offended by advertising in postings, I suggest you skip the read below.
Strengthening professional talent levels was identified back in 2005 as a top recruitment issue by almost 80% of employers surveyed by [1] and developing an effective talent sourcing strategy was the most critical recruitment initiative identified by 70% of those employers in that survey. Almost 80% in another survey that year were dissatisfied with their ability to cold call and source passive candidates.
Herein lies the dilemma.
People are afraid of the telephone. There is no if and or but about it – people are afraid of the phone and it’s what lies at the heart of most failed projects. If you cannot talk to people your career is doomed to a dark watery grave in this time of technology; it is the single worst lack of skill one can have today in this age of communication. Not understanding how to communicate with another human bean today spells Trouble with a capital T and that is really why MagicMethod enjoys the popularity it does – it teaches the attitude and stance of telephone names sourcing. It also teaches hands-on techniques but more than anything it teaches the student how to talk to someone. It is an extremely simple premise clothed in a frightening and imposing standard – the TELEPHONE! It tries to remove that fear and guides you along on your journey.
“It’s not WHAT you say but HOW you say it.” Grizzled veterans who have seen considerable active service always laugh when I say this and answer me something to the effect “Isn’t THAT the truth!” Listen to those who have gone before and learn. Like we say over in the Yahoo! group Sourcers Unleashed, “Join us in unleashing the power behind (y)our eyeballs - fasten your seat belts and lose your prejudices - we're taking off into the sourcing zone.”
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 specific organizations (usually) so that you, as a recruiter, may contact them and offer them your opportunity. 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 apparent to the rest of the world. They may also be (Eureka!) the “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 likelihood is, when contacted, this passive candidate will be extremely flattered you took the time to find him and will listen to what you have to say.
On average, depending on the job title, fifty passive candidate names will get you five - ten resumes of those actually looking (in reality, the “active” candidate – they’re going to show up in these searches – can’t be avoided), another five or so resumes of those who might be tempted to consider your present proposal (the truly passive candidate – these are the big nuggets of gold) thirty to thirty-thirty five people who also have the qualifications you’re looking for (more passives – more gold-in-the-stream) and who may be interested in the future and are willing to talk with you now, and maybe as many as five not-very-forward-looking souls who just say “not interested” and hang up on you - a few passives but who wants/needs them anyway?
There are very few facts and figures out on names sourcing because it is only lately that it has gained much in the form of recognition. There are active groups dedicated to the subject and even a professional organization recently formed for members of the profession. 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 had been written on it (until recently). 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, stated a couple years back, “75% of the corporate recruiters and 98% of the managers I have worked with have never heard of [names sourcing]”.
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. The greatest majority of candidates are not looking. They’re not visible at first glance because they’ve left no paper/electronic trail behind them. Remember, they’re sitting at their desks, butts in their chairs, busy doing the jobs you need them to do! “Publish or perish” is not so true today with names sourcers on the trail. Telephone names sourcing takes you inside the brick and mortared walls of individual organizations to locate people that you have NO HOPE of finding otherwise. It’s the natural next step to Internet sourcing. Electronic sourcing (searching the web for names) yields extremely valuable and potent information but taking that information and expanding it into telephone names sourcing blows the roof off your research activities. I guarantee it.
How is names sourcing performed? It’s the $64,000 question, for sure! 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 there’s one thing that’s absolutely for sure - you cannot do it missing guts. You CAN do it with guts alone though and here’s what I mean: It’s not your ordinary recruiting skill-set/mindset that is comfortable doing this. If done as required, it needs all the hours in a recruiter’s day (and some nights!) and the hours are just not 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 for information from people, sometimes pressing, and some aren’t comfortable doing this. 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. Many, if not most people, when asked, will tell you they don’t like to names 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 first step in any recruiting process.
The MagicMethod series picks up where most e-recruiting manuals leave off - we concentrate on the nitty-gritty tips and techniques of names sourcing – the how, why, when and where of it. We discuss the very scary subject of telephone names sourcing. The telephone is your mightiest tool for this. Make friends with it – it can make you a lot of money.
You’ll learn how to get names from a telephone directory, how to title-identify those names, how to deal with scary 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. You’re going to learn to speak only when it improves that silence. In short, you’re going to be shown how to become an effective Telephone Names Sourcer and an extremely valuable asset to any organization!
If you have suggestions on how we can improve on what's offered in the course, send me an email! If you’d like to skip the spoon-feed, and jump right on the problem with both feet, consider signing up for the one-year subscription to the MagicMethod course! You’ll have immediate access to ALL the modules (six at present) that include a total of approximately 150 telephone names sourcing lessons and 30 or so scripts. You’ll also receive any additional modules that go up in your one year subscription – Module 7 should be up by the end of the summer or beginning of the fall and I usually put up three or so modules a year. Magic Method began in June of 2005. It is the ONLY-of-its-kind training available if you want to learn telephone names sourcing!
Maureen Sharib Telephone Names Sourcer August 2, 2007 maureen at techtrak.com
For those of you in TX, I hope you'll consider attending my September 7 MagicMethod presentation in Austin. Dell is hosting us and it promises to be a great time!
Upcoming MagicMethod LIVE presentations - CALL or e-mail for details: Friday, Sept 7 Austin, TX Hosted by Dell – open to the public! Weds, Oct 17 ERE Conference Washington, DC 10-1 EST Thurs, Oct 26 Kennedy Info Interactive Seminar; Online 1-2 EST Weds, Nov 14 Kennedy Info Expo and Conference Orlando, FL 11am EST
