Ali’s Sourcing Techniques | ERE Blog Network

What did you do this Matin Luther King long weekend? - An innovative sourcing technique unleashed by Mohamed Ali

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:36:01 PST

How many recruiters in today’s world are frustrated by not getting results in user groups for those hard to find talents? I have lot of recruiters raising concerns on not being successful on their hunt for people in user groups.

When using user groups always keep in mind the search doesn’t end by finding the user group for a specific skill set. Successful recruiters know how to utilize them by thinking out of the box. In this blog I am going to share some of the secrets of user group recruiting. I have hired 40% of my candidates from user groups.

There have been days where I will use my entire time during long weekends by going through each and every message thread in a user group to generate leads. I started thinking outside of the routine search strategies. How many people take a day off before the long weekend? 30-40% of the workforces in a company do. All these people set an automated out-of office reply message with 1 or 2 backup contact details. This leads us to more names with contact details and we know that they will have the same skill sets as the employee registered with the user group.

I adopted a strategy by sending a generic requirement email to the user group mailing lists the day before the long weekend. In less than 2 hrs I will have at least 30-40 out of the office replies with their backup details. That is 30 X 2 = 60 names generated with contact details with no effort.

Here are some of the mails that I got a day before the Martin Luther King long weekend with the names masked for privacy:

From: UXXXX, WXXXXXX [mailto:WXXXX.UXXXX@amd.com]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 6:53 PM
To: Sadakathullah Mohamed Ali (mohamali)
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: [SI-LIST] Cisco Systems - Sr. Signal Integrity Engineer position

I am currently out of office without any access to my email. I will be back in office on January 24, 2008. If you need immediate assistance please contact MXXXXX FRXXXXXX at 408-XXX-XXXX or SAXXX SANXXXX at 408-XXX-XXXX

-----Original Message-----

From: fXXXX_gXXXXX@emc.com [mailto:fXXXX_gXXXXX@emc.com]

Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 7:05 PM

To: Sadakathullah Mohamed Ali (mohamali)

Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: [SI-LIST] Cisco Systems - Sr. Signal Integrity Engineer position

I will be out of the of office until January 21st and 22nd. If you have any questions or concerns that require immediate attentions please contact MXXXX RoXXXXXXX at mXXXXX_rXXXXX@emc.com.

Imagine 30 out of office mails like these in less than 2 hrs. This is a great way to source by getting quality candidates

Here is another tip to draft a requirement email for mailing lists:

My message was drafted in a way to entice candidates interest by just writing this line “ Hi Guru’s, I am sending this email on behalf of the Director of Hardware Engineering at Cisco OR I am sending this email on behalf of Embedded system software manager for Ethernet switch product that Cisco is developing”. I would also notify the represented people in the mail and explain them why I was doing this.

Always note passive candidates do not like recruiters. But by drafting an email in such a way to make the candidates think that this mail is coming directly from the Director of Hardware Engineering at Cisco or Microsoft or Google , the candidates start thinking that the job position looks very appealing and the position comes directly from the technical team and respond immediately.

Mohamed Ali

Inventor of Passive Recruiting search engine www.big5hire.com

Career services manager, Cisco systems – San Jose CA

mohamali@cisco.com

510-402-7625

21st Century Recruitment Strategies - Recruitment using Youtube, Jobinpods

Sun, 1 Apr 2007 10:00:01 PST

Recruitment is becoming difficult day by day and only the best Recruiters thrive in this competitive field. Recruiters have been employing different strategies to get to the candidates first before some other company hires him/her. To recruit a high demand Candidate in this Job Market has become very difficult with old recruitment tools and job boards.

So wake up folks!!!! Well, its 2007 and there is a new generation of job seekers coming your way. They require a different approach to recruiting. They don’t like dull, corporate-speak. They require unique and creative methods of communication. Here are some innovative ways to approach your top notch candidates. Give him some more to think and get your trust.

Jobinpods:

Jobinpods a marketing tool that targets the ipod generation of job seekers. Jobinpods advertise your jobs & promote your employer brand through audio podcast interviews which they conduct over the phone with your employees.

During each interview they ask questions that job seekers want answers to.

What’s it like to work there?

What kind of perks do you offer?

How do you encourage employee growth?

You’ll then tell Jobinpods what kind of jobs you’re hiring for and how to apply. Then they publish the interview on http://jobsinpods.com and broadcast it to the places where iPod people go…iTunes & Podcast Alley to name a few.

Jobinpods will even give you a copy of the MP3 Interview that they recoded with your employees to use on your own web site. In short, they broadcast your jobs. It’s called jobcasting.

Heres a Job thats posted through jobinpods http://jobsinpods.com/2007/03/21/career-path-series-executive-assistant/

Youtube:

Youtube not only gives a voice to broadcast your jobs but also gives a video preview of the work environment and a video of what present employees think of that company. This would be the right approach to target the candidates who are in youtube community. Youtube also gives you a URL to post in your own website. When these resources are available why not use them.

'Youtube gives you more than a voice in the job market'

Check out the different branding that top companies gives to the aspiring candidates.

CIA recruitment

LAPD recruitment

Sun Microsystems

Google (This explains how it has to be done. A very concrete way of branding)

Internet is full of resources and recruiters should think innovatively to use all the resources available in finding the right match that the company needs. Hope this was helpful and I can see that whoever read this blog would have already started to make their Branding video's.

Good luck folks!!!

Read for more article and blogs from me at http://saddyrecruit.com in the near future.

Sadakathullah Mohamed Ali

Sr. IT Sourcer / Recruiter

Are you breaking your head to find the right match? Source top notch candidates with ease. Sourcing Techniques in Detail. By Sadakathullah Mohamed Ali

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:57:01 PST

Is There more to Internet Sourcing - Sourcing Techniques in Detail. By Sadakathullah Mohamed Ali

Internet recruiting is slowly but surely catching on in this part of the world. Time is not far off when we will have to increasingly employ internet search/sourcing techniques for finding resumes, but of course this is besides the traditional method of sourcing.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on the net and managed to compile some of the most commonly used techniques for internet sourcing and am glad to share this with you.

Before we try and understand the techniques for internet sourcing let us first understand what are the search engines that are mostly used by experience sourcers.

Some recommended search engines on the Web:

http://www.Google.com

http://www.live.com

http://www.Yahoo.com

http://www.MetaCrawler.com

http://www.Atlavista.com

http://www.Dogpile.com

http://www.MSN.com

The search strings for each of these search engines will vary and therefore to maximize your search please do read the tutorials in advance from the respective search engines site.

What techniques to use and when and under what circumstances to use will depend on how well you master each techniques. To achieve optimum success one must also have a fairly good idea about the recruitment industry, the specific job requirement, the key words within the requirement and also differentiate the 'mandatory skills' from 'good to have skills.'

Some of the most common internet search techniques are as given below.

X-RAYING:
A method of looking inside a specific web site to find what's there. Using this technique, recruiters can find documents and web pages that aren't directly accessible via links on the main public home page. When you 'x-ray' a website, you effectively get to examine every document that resides there so long as they are not behind firewalls or password protected.
Example: To find any “software engineer” - could be a document/file or a word/phrase within a document that resides within the website Google.com.
In Altavista search - host:google.com AND software engineer
In Google search - site:www.google.com AND software engineer

FLIPPING:
Flipping is an effective method used to find the relationships between web pages based on how they are hyperlinked together. This search is especially useful for finding people who have links to the company or have worked for a specific company.
Example: To find any “software engineer” – could be a document/file or word/phrase that links back to Microsoft.com.
In Altavista search - link:microsoft.com AND software engineer
In Google search - link:www.microsoft.com AND software engineer

PEELING BACK:
As the name suggest Peeling back is the process of “retracing the path” of the url especially when one gets an Error 404 (File not found). This process is engage so as to locate the information elsewhere on the site or locate the specific “root” folder where one can find similar or additional data specific or related to the search.
Example: By peeling back or keying backspace starting from the point where the url ends we can then access the people link from the ce.uta.edu homepage and find the names of all the faculty members.
url: http://www-ce.uta.edu/people/faculty/hoyos/research.html

HARVESTING OR MINING:
Harvesting involves reviewing a document, such as a resume or home page, and finding key words, links, references and locations that assist with subsequent searches.

SEARCH STRINGS USING BOOLEAN KEYS:
By constructing complex search strings and conducting the search in major search engines one can hone in on the exact information/resources with great accuracy.

Some of the commonly used key words for a search string are given as below.
Common resume Words: Resume, Homepage, CV, Vitae, Bio, Qualifications, Objective, Experience, Education, References, 'Work History', 'Technical skills', 'Project duration'
Common words to avoid: Submit, Opening, Recruiter, Send, Benefits, Requirements, Opportunity, Apply, Job, Jobs, Careers, Eoe, Reply, 'my client'.

Example on how to construct a complex search strings:

Requirement: A project manager with PMI certification or a 6 Sigma black belt having atleast 5 years of project management within an Investment bank in the areas of Equities connectivity or trading software development. Must have good technical skills in J2EE, EJB, Websphere, XML and DB2.

Google:
(intitle:~cv OR inurl:~cv OR intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) 'project manager' Java 'investment bank' ('equities connectivity' OR trading software) -inurl:~efinancial*
Search result: 87 pages

Yahoo:
(intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) “project manager” Java 'investment bank' 'equities connectivity' OR trading software -eoe -opening -post -preferred -reply -send –submit
Search result: 1,740 pages

Live Search:
(intitle:cv inurl:cv intitle:resume inurl:resume) prefer:resume “project manager” Java 'investment bank' 'equities connectivity' trading software -job -jobs –careers
Search result: 10,038 pages

The search results from the above three searches gives us different amount of results and the task of sieving through the hundreds of pages sounds rather a dauting task. However, the strings above could still be further refined so as to achieve a much more specific results. For example by including SCJP or Sun certification or SDLC, etc I believe one can derived at a much more accurate results.

Caveat:
If you, by applying the techniques as discussed above expects resumes to pop out every time you hit the search button you might end up disappointed and even frustrated. The internet is a storehouse of information and is just an augment to a recruiting process vis-a-vis bigger and better hunting ground and not a complete substitute.

*** Happy Sourcing folks! Look for more articles and Blogs from me. Check out http://saddyrecruit.com in the near future***

Sadakathullah Mohamed Ali

IT Sourcer / Recruiter