Why getting past gatekeepers is just like Fishing

I’m a fisherman and it is said that the key to success in fishing are location, and presentation. 

In the fishing world this means, in which location am I going to find the best and biggest fish, and presentation, which means how an angler has to present the “lure” in such a way as to make the fish bite.  Does one let the bait sit on the bottom, or work it quick on top of the water?

Well……

In our research/sourcing world – location and presentation is also the key to success!!!

Location.  Which area/office is one going to gather the most information and which location does the person sit with all the information one needs.

Presentation.  Now one has found the location, presentation is crucial to success.  Do I kill the gatekeeper with kindness, or just blatantly come out and ask the question(s). 

What do you do for the best success?

I am the world’s most organized person. Well, it doesn’t hurt to think that way at least. Not until I’ve filed and catalogued so much I don’t know where the heck it all is anymore. Like a pre-schooler who does not like one food group to touch another, I diligently bookmark into categories all worldly pertinent info that catches my eye. Pertinent and important in my world of sourcing that is. Of course I bet you I have stuff filed from 5 years ago and the URL no longer even exists. Yep time for some cyber spring cleaning…..ah the sweet scent of springtime!

The sourcing masters from SourceCon have shown us so much. I bow to the great ones. I don’t do half of it I admit (though I’d like to be set up like ‘em all “slick and click” but I haven’t got to the “just do it” part yet) but like they say, “set-up and use what you are comfortable with”, and therein lies the golden key.

So I do my own home grown version with a little tweaking. I have my links grouped in a few main areas as a quick go to and would like to share.

1. Search Engines (includes the custom ones & some spider automation type tools)
2. Professional & Social Networking (boy is this group going crazy!
3. Locator Tools (all those yellow and white page types –Pipl, Whoozy, 123)
4. Job Boards & Resume Databases (paid and free)
5. Subscription sites (what we pay for other than job boards)
6. Sources – Biz Related (like Layoff Trackers and those snazzy Visual Mapping sites)
7. Salary & Compensation
8. Knowledgebase (for all the stuff I subscribe to enhance my self learning)
9. Find – my catchall category for various Glossaries, Patent search sites, campaign donor sites (yeah, can you get some names off there & I don’t care a hoot for political affiliations!) and any off the cuff really interesting stuff I come across.

So what’s the big deal?
Now I go one step further in my fairly simplistic common sense approach home grown methodology. Within a group I re-name the site urls. For example within the Search Engine Group I have several links that specifically search Twitter and yes, for the most part they have those names that start with the proverbial “TW-this” or “TW-that” but I re-name them so the file name becomes something like

“TWITTER – Actual Name of the Site – any other description info”

When I alpha sort my link, all my go to sources for searching on Twitter are all listed together. Power in team work!! Besides I make sure I am covering my bases

Perhaps some of you already do this (so indulge me) and some don’t (so hope this was somewhat helpful)

Some day, post all the spring cleaning, I hope to be super cyber slick clickety-click organized! For now this will do. Sorry what did you need? Oh shoot, now where in the world did I file…hmm…come out come out wherever you are!!

How can you stop sourcing in the HR world? Or researching? Or name generating? Or pipeline building? How can you say you never need to look for people or that you have enough? OK, I’m done let’s close shop? Not happening in my world!  

I love the JIT Sourcing concept from Glen Cathey (you’re my latest hot thing BTW Glen <smiles> ) and am all over the lean concepts which help you maintain that fine balance between efficiency and effectiveness (two different things in case you don’t get it) but in my holistic approach to HR, whether it is for a new company preparing to explode with good talent, a third party recruiter working a search assignment for an external client or just a really well established, been-around-for-ages firm, doing what they do best everyday; the “quest” for finding talent never really ends. Unless of course you get hit with a Recession BAM! like we did last year (the economy is still climbing out of the ditch mind you). But even in the deepest depths of a horrible last year, smart recruiters and sourcers kept going.  Even when working a search, the best recruiters know the search is not done till it is done and so the sourcing for fresh meat continues (my apologies Vegans – you can read that as fodder or grass).

Knowing where to go to get good talent is like having that quintessential little black dress in your closet. OK dudes, a suit and god forbid I ever get into a little black dress! The knowledge that it’s always there no matter what and that you can use it in any kind of emergency, formal or informal, is priceless! Keep looking, happy sourcing.

It was well over a years worth of hype that I resisted before joining the popular social networking site, Facebook.  One of Facebook’s top competitors, LinkedIn, has been my primary selection of social networking for a few years now.  Through my experiences with these two sites it’s been made certain to me that both have slightly different purposes that can make a huge difference to their users which should be considered when building a network.

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I am sure we have all heard variations of this story, legend, chain emails -  call it what you like. The author is unknown and Snopes makes several references to this story from its association with Royals to our fair neighbor Canada. It is a great tale of heart warming anticipation where you hold on to your fork because pie/dessert is coming next and therefore the best is yet to come.

Nice story and all and some may wipe a tear but what the heck does this have to do with you and me, all the unemployed people who have been despairing over the past months and the entire staffing/recruiting/HR bandwagon that has been hurtling downhill all year? You see, I’m the eternal optimist when it comes to new ways of doing things – Web 2.0, automation, spider technology,  semantic, Boolean, 3G, 4G, Artificial Intelligence  – better, smarter, faster, interactive, more intuitive, streamlined, and the fact that mankind is always improving on things.

Don’t get me wrong, there are days/times when I am down. But in spite of the fact that Nearly 16M People Can’t Find Jobs Amid Claims Recession Is Over  or the fact that U.S. Unemployment Rate Hits 10.2%, Highest in 26 Years I have eternal hope.

I and all my tribe are cheering for a quick end to the bad times. OK so shoot me,<gobble, gobble> but if we all don’t think that the only way out of this is up, we’re all toast, man. It is just a question of time.  Because in the midst of the doom & gloom all we need is more good news like Bay Area Tech Company Needs to Hire 200 Recruiters & Sourcers, One Year Contract .

A past Executive Admin once said to me, “The Universe, my dear, has a way of balancing it all out” as I pulled my hair out on a frightfully annoying, ongoing, “client kept changing the specs” search.  A lot of truth in that as I eventually found out.  So let’s celebrate Thanksgiving (I sure hope the more fortunate, still employed among us will invite at least one unemployed family to share the meal) and be “THANKFUL” for what has been and for what we have enjoyed (granted it’s been a while when the unemployment paycheck has been coming for months). 

The next time you reach down for your fork, let it remind you ever so gently, that the best is yet to come. Count your blessings and here’s to better times for all.  

Happy Thanksgiving y’all!