Given my sourcing orientation in the talent acquisition space, nuances are always key when it comes to configuring search strings, and with customer service representatives many characteristics tend to be observed first hand from full-cycle recruiters; i.e. demeanor, conversational capabilities, aspects related to recollection and attention to detail, etc.

Granted, my audience will find the subject matter of Customer Service Representatives to be unfamiliar territory for me, but after several experiences related to the holidays and given the high percentage originating from over seas call centers – it is in fact, timely.

I recently discussed generating leads for tech support reps with Glenn Gutmacher , Group Manager, North America Recruiting at Avanade and founder of Recruiting-Online.com.

“You can search for people who have learned other related terms – lots of synonyms or alternate keywords mean more results. If you only need tier 1 support, then you probably aren’t paying a premium, but you should be able to train people. If their history shows they’re good enough to learn a new product, system, etc., then it is worthwhile to proceed to interview the candidate …”

As with all sourcing efforts, this type of job family tends to have their particular set of pros and cons in the identification process. Glenn elaborated on factors to be considered.

“Pros: high volume of candidates; cons: if co. is in a remote location, but shouldn’t require on-site personnel if their technology is good enough (call center reps can be virtual)

The con tends to be whether the location is remote. If your targeted talent needs are willing to accept virtual environments, this eliminates a major obstacle on the front-end.”

Being a customer service representative can be both a stressful and thankless job. Even when an agent is fielding customer service queries, the customer does not readily go out of their way to thank the phone representative. This reality, coupled with a high-stress work environment results in a high turnover rate at call centers worldwide.

It’s important to emphasize that identifying talent is always a first step. The most critical exercise is in taking care of your customer service reps. In fact, most call centers experience a turnover rate of over 50% of all newly-hired customer service representatives. The keys to motivating and retaining agents is in reducing the overall work-related stress level as much as possible, and in rewarding good work.

“Customer service trainings must cover many different topics and skills. Some companies may consider holding trainings in multiple short meetings, or they may decide to dedicate an entire day to training. No matter the time structure, companies should remember to make sure that the retention of customers is emphasized and that the tools to accomplish this are taught effectively. Having an effective training will ensure that customer service representatives can properly handle a variety of customers and customer problems.”

Here’s how:

1. Celebrate Successes as a Group: Offline and Online

As your call center team grows, you should seek to implement team-wide production goals. When these goals are reached, celebrate this success as a team. This not only motivates your team, encouraging them to do even better work, but it also builds a sense of community within your workplace.

Thanks to today’s technologies, community can go beyond the office and reach the virtual landscape by setting up an internal wiki, or even a Facebook group. By creating an online community, employees get the opportunity to know each other and the company better. Supervisors can use this space to congratulate exceptional employee performance as well as to post news and updates regarding events and company achievements.

In today’s workplace everyone wants to feel included in and outside of work. It’s easier than ever to do this thanks to social networks and social media. This will also help you stay on-top of recruitment. After all, everyone wants to work for a company who is “in”.

2. Update your Software: Be a Leader in the Industry

It seems like we never stop updating anything! Well, that’s the world we live in these days! (Welcome to 2011). Just as you update your browsers, computer hardware, and so on it’s only natural that you would update your call call center software solutions for the sake of your employees, customers and business! Think of it like this: why would anyone want to work for a company who still uses dial-up when we all know hi-speed is the best? They don’t. Not having the most recent software for your call center will cause headaches amongst your employees, which in turn will reduce their work ethic and as a result ruin your customer base.

It’s important that employees work for a top-notch call center that has the latest software to help them feel that they’re meeting job expectations. What’s more, you’ll attract more candidates by being a modern call center that takes pride in their systems! People like things that are easy and work.

3. Be Fun and Social: Work hard, Play hard

While it’s great to show your appreciation for individual team members, it’s also important to show appreciation for your team as a whole. Try to do things like getting the team together for “work wing night” or ordering lunch for your team once a month. These small gestures can go a long way to keep your representatives motivated to perform on the job. Again, use the tools that your employees are most familiar with outside of work (i.e. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter). Everyone wants to feel ‘liked’ and being liked inside the workplace surely spills out of the workplace and beyond.

The more fun an employee has at their job, the more likely they’ll show up 5 minutes early, stay later and want to help out. Not only that, having “fun” (let’s keep it within the work spectrum) will actually stimulate competition amongst your employees – everyone wants to be a part of action! Try to turn work activities into interactive goals. This keeps your team motivated to out-perform each other, which will result in higher overall productivity for your call center.

Since most service reps are operating in a high-stress performance-based environment, the slightest negative remark or action can send even the top-performing agents into a tailspin of discouragement. Make sure you’re promoting a positive environment that’s fun, modern and innovative for everyone on the team.

A great attitude coupled with some new Facebook friends from work wing night will surely have your employees telling their friends to apply. As a result, they’ll trust you, and want to do great work for you.

SixDegreesfromDave was renown for passing it forward with it’s Top Ten Linkedin Features. At one point, nearly 1,000 invites per person featured were sent in a single 24 hour period! In today’s ever changing social media world, we make changes to reflect that evolution with emerging technologies. As of today we now start the ever more viral means of sharing best practices with a series of TOP TEN TWITTER for the staffing industry. We will feature people I know first hand, respect, and genuinely believe are making a difference in our industry as practitioners, innovators and Thought Leaders. This is by NO means a random listing series. Our listings are always carefully reviewed and vetted by prior contributions. We begin our first in a series featuring the Sourcing Apprentice program made famous by Shally Steckerl’s Mentor Program.

1) Set up a Twitter Account. It takes 2 minutes, tops. Fast & Easy. Login
2) Click each of the names listed ABOVE in the top ten and click “Follow”
3) Done!

You can follow the endorsement ethic similar to Linkedin by recommending Twitter accounts For example, here is a common format to consider:

@davemendoza strongly recommends @carolmahoney #mrtweet as the leading corporate #staffing #talent acquisition expert. To infinity & Beyond
OR
@davemendoza strongly recommends @shally for his genuine passion for community, #recruiter leadership contributions, brotherhood & hands-on mentorship.

We have three very special features to share, Two former corporate Talent Acquisition Executives at Yahoo! and the other by a fellow recruiter who understands relationship skills is not a single transaction. In the Twitter spirit feel free to ReTweet each of the following articles: RT @davemendoza (!)

SixDegreesfromDave Reflections: #recruiter Brian Kevin Johnston is Hands-on Client Relationships http://tinyurl.com/y8lqbvh

Thought Leader, Carol Mahoney ‘Is’ Talent Acquisition On Demand
http://tinyurl.com/ykuol5u

Libby Sartain, Chief People Officer Yahoo Interview – http://bit.ly/b8cOCg

Who is Dave Mendoza? A Reminder with my BIO

Best Wishes,

First confirmed 100 to register will be featured in SixDegreesfromDave Mega Day Networking Event!

NEW MATERIAL!

JobMachine Webinar Series Presents: Glenn Gutmacher,
“Social Network Recruiting Beyond LinkedIn” – BRAND NEW Techniques
What: Webinar Class with Conference Call
Start: Wed. 11/05/2008 – 1:00pm
End: 11/05/2008 – 2:30pm
Time: 1-2:30 pm Eastern/ 12-1:30 pm Central/ 10-11:30 am PacificPrice: $99.97
REGISTER HERE TODAY: http://jobmachine.net/social_networking_webinar_11-5-2008
OR
http://tinyurl.com/4tl65k
After you click above, Register and Proceed to http://jobmachine.net/cart/view

LinkedIn may be the #1 professionally-geared social network, but if that’s the limit of your Web 2.0 recruiting involvement, then you’re not tapping other far larger networks (in terms of total talent) that are largely free to search, network through, and build your employment brand. And if it’s younger or more tech-savvy workers you seek, what about all the recruiting methods possible over mobile devices? It’s an even larger talent pool than PC users!

In a fast-moving webinar, JobMachine sourcing guru Glenn Gutmacher (who’s also our new VP of ACES – Arbita Education & Consulting Services), will cover many of the currently effective methods and a couple of promising emerging ones. He’ll share both the strategic and the practical how-to information that will allow you to create your own blueprint to build targeted pools to address your pipeline pain points. It’ll be a well-spent 90 minutes that’s sure to open new sourcing possibilities for you.

This webinar is for corporate recruiting as well as third-party staffing professionals regardless of size or budget (almost everything Glenn will show is free) who want to tap this large potential pool of talent but don’t know where to dive in first, given the dizzying range of options.

Some topics he’ll cover:

* optimize your main website and create themed microsites to use them to drive people to you with search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM)
* utilize social networking platforms like Ning to create your own community/communities
* leverage existing networks to market and build your own pool
* how to approach the people you find and who find you
* obtain target audience peer contributions within your organization to generate compelling content for e-newsletters and blogs that safely straddles the line between professionally-useful content and a subtle recruitment message
* free or low-cost viral content like video, widgets and virtual career fairs, and more!

You will receive the Powerpoint slides in .pdf format by email the next business day after the webinar.

Endorsed by SixDegreesfromDave.com
Webinar Series Brought to you from Shally Steckerl and Glenn Gutmacher at JobMachine Inc.

Dave Mendoza
SixDegreesfromDave

ABOUT GLENN GUTMACHER
VP of ACES – Arbita Education & Consulting Services

Glenn is one of the industry subject matter leaders of Cybersleuthing techniques. Glenn is an author, an educator, a trainer, and I am proud to say, a friend. In all things he is innovative and personable. When I started my journey as a Cybersleuth, he was one I contacted when entering a new industry to gather suggestions on niche talent online. As Shally has stated, he is “… a builder, an innovator and a treasure trove of knowledge.”

Glenn’s areas of expertise extend beyond that of a sourcing guru, cybersleuth, he is also a “Go to” expert in areas of employment branding, corporate career site content, applicant tracking systems, talent management systems, recruiting research, webmaster, e-learning, employee referral networks, and he is an author of one of the leading Sourcing Research sites, http://recruiting-online.spaces.live.com

He also has the distinction of one of the few Ivy Leaguers in our industry. Glenn graduated from Yale University with a BA in Psychology, Organizational Behavior in 1987 – the year he won the Archibald MacLeish / Garry Trudeau Award for creative writing.

Glenn started e-sourcing at Microsoft in July, 2005 and was one of Microsoft’s legendary gurus at its famed Central Sourcing Organization where he helped Microsoft find those hard-to-find candidates for those hard-to-fill SW developers as well as marketing / evangelist positions, assists with Special projects (backend recruiting functionality, online training for recruiters and employer branding) and Speaking engagements on behalf of company. On a day to day basis, his focus is developing talent pipelines of hard to find software development engineers with C++ (.NET framework a plus) & exp. working through the SDLC (sw lifecycle) developing 1st party software products that actually shipped, esp. related to: Dev Tools, Distributed Systems, Drivers, Embedded Systems, Grid Computing / HPC, Kernel, Middleware components, Mobility, Search, SQL Server, Virtualization, Web Services, in addition to Marketers and Evangelists with deep technical chops (e.g., former sw developers) in any of the above, or at makers of CRM / ERP sw.

Glenn has been a panelist and speaker at many human resources and recruiting conferences (e.g., featured industry analyst at Monster.com’s quarterly off-site meeting, 6/02); frequent guest on “The Job Show” (WABU-TV/68), an official Internet recruiting certification instructor for NEHRA.com (2000), Jobfind.com / Boston Herald (2001) and BostonWorks.com / Boston Globe (2002) and as a Co-Presenter at the Masters Session at ERE San Diego’s Advanced Sourcing Workshop. He surrounds himself with quality people, in fact, his direct manager was Shally “Elvis” Steckerl, himself

In his spare time, Glenn extends his prowess as an entrepreneur. He created one of the world’s 1st 100% web-based e-recruiting/sourcing courses in ’97 after founding greater Boston’s first regional career portal, JobSmart, in ’96 for Community Newspaper Co. (later TownOnline.com then acquired by Jobfind.com Boston Herald). After starting Recruiting-Online.com & years of training seminars, I’ve happily put it into practice sourcing at major corporations.He founded Recruiting-Online.com which provides Research, develop, market and presents Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques seminars and e-courses in varied formats to associations and recruiters from hundreds of companies of all sizes and industries.

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

LinkedIn | Bio | MSN | Skype

Arbita, a provider of recruitment marketing technology, media and services, has attracted three industry all-stars to their executive team in recent weeks.

> Shally Steckerl joins Arbita as executive vice president
> George LaRocque joins as executive vice president of sales and marketing
> Glenn Gutmacher joins as vice president of Arbita Consulting and Education Services (ACES)

Steckerl, LaRocque and Gutmacher are new additions to an executive management team recognized by the talent management industry as a source for recruitment marketing innovation and an advocate for virtuous recruiting. The team is led by Arbita’ss CEO and Founder, Don Ramer.

Arbita is a force to be reckoned with, said Ramer. Shally [Steckerl and Glenn Gutmacher are known to recruiters as two of the most valuable minds in our space. And everybody knows George LaRocque is among the best sales and marketing executives around – look at his track record. Together with our existing team, these folks comprise the most effective management group in the industry. We’sre all very excited about what we will accomplish in 2009 and beyond.

Steckerl joins Arbita via a merger with JobMachine earlier this year. Steckerl, who was JobMachine’s founder and Chief Cybersleuth; has emerged as one of the most respected authorities on sourcing and reaches tens of thousands of recruiters on a regular basis through his popular seminars, onsite workshops and webinars. As executive vice president for Arbita, he will focus on growing the company’s recruiter development services

Larocque is a seasoned industry veteran with more than a decade of sales and marketing leadership for some of the most recognized names in the talent management and recruiting market segments. As executive vice president of sales and marketing for Arbita, he will lead the quest to connect companies with the recruitment marketing technology, media and services that are right for them.

Gutmacher is a leading innovator in online sourcing and brings more than decade of experience as a consultant and recruiter development expert. He has raised the sourcing skill level of thousands of industry professionals in his many public and private live seminars and webinars. Gutmacher is also a prolific writer for recruiting trade publications, portals and his own highly-regarded blog, Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques (http://recruiting-online.spaces.live.com).

HR and staffing professionals will have a chance to meet all three new executives at the upcoming Human Resource Executive’s 11th Annual HR Technology’s174; Conference ‘s38; Exposition (http://www.hrtechconference.com), October 15-17, 2008, at Chicago’s McCormick Place.

About Arbita

Since 1993, Arbita has been connecting companies like General Dynamics, eBay, Pfizer and Cox Communications with the best candidates on the Internet, all over the world. Our recruitment marketing technology, media and services have been developed with the belief that every client deserves a partner with their best interests at heart. Arbita is based in Minneapolis, MN and on the Web at www.arbita.net.

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

LinkedIn | Bio | MSN | Skype

by Glenn Gutmacher

Q: Do you have any recommendations for skill sites to find LAMP, PHP and Python developers? I found a few but nothing great.

A: You will increase your possibilities greatly if you realize that you are basically talking about open source developers (what you mentioned are some of their primary tools/platforms – Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python). The ones who are skilled in this arena don’t need to promote themselves much (open source is hot, though don’t count Microsoft out yet so they don’t have to post resumes, and if they do, may not include the obvious programmatic keywords in their online footprint to minimize communication overload ("Funny, you are the 35th recruiter to call me today!").

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do standard resume/CV search strings, but there are other options if that doesn’t turn up enough of what you need. Your question was a bit vague – LAMP/PHP/Python developers are plentiful – so by skill sites, I assume you mean places that will let you search by number of years of a particular programming skill? I don’t know any free sites that offer that in the aggregate (an example of a big tech job board with this option is Dice, but requires a paid login). I imagine you have some other job requirements that would narrow the field (e.g, by industry vertical expertise, geography, etc.) which would help narrow your search string criteria.

In any case, here are my top 10 most fruitful categories of sources that will lead you to open source candidates (I’m open to suggestions of others that have worked for my blog readers – I’ll dig up a prize for the best one), not necessarily in this order:

1) Niche industry news portals: like OnLamp where you can find out about open source development projects. You can find other such sites simply by adding the word "portal" to a keyword/phrase string (e.g., python portal) on any major search engine.

2) Speaker/panelist lists: Find them from open source developer conferences (e.g., this was last week). They may be over-qualified, but querying their names on search engines will lead you to like people.

3) Blogs: On that note, also check out their blogs, because their blogrolls will link to other qualified folks and their posts will talk about interesting projects/people (e.g., look at this post – and don’t forget that the people who post reply comments are potential candidates!)

4) Certifications: search on some of the unique open source certification acronyms (can add it as keyword to resume/CV queries, too) like CMDEV for MySQL developers.

5) Training: On a related note, you could ping companies that offer such cert training to see if they’d promote your opportunities to their alumni (maybe this) or request their list to reach out yourself (you never know if you don’t ask!).

6) Discussion lists/forums: This is a goldmine for (READ THE REST HERE)

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

LinkedIn | Bio | MSN | Skype

REGISTER HERE: https://ere.webex.com/media/redir/index.html?siteurl=ere

The Sourcer’s Daily Dozen: E-Sourcing Methods from a Recruiting Research Guru
WHEN: June 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
Presented by: Glenn Gutmacher, Sr. Researcher, MICROSOFT

Glenn Gutmacher is one of the preeminent sages among the sourcing elite. He is an author, an educator, a trainer, and I am proud to say, a friend. In all things he is innovative and personable. When I started my journey as a Cybersleuth, he was one I contacted when entering a new industry to gather suggestions on niche talent online. As Shally has stated, he is “… a builder, an innovator and a treasure trove of knowledge.”

Join HR executives and other technology-decision makers for a one-of-a-kind webinar. There is no cost to attend this event. The event is free, thanks to the support of its sponsor, Jobscience.

This program has been approved for up to one (1) recertification credit hours toward PHR and SPHR recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI). For more information about certification and recertification, please visit the HRCI homepage at www.hrci.org.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

Do you know the fastest no-cost methods to find resumes outside of the job boards by geography, # of direct reports supervised, and other criteria? How to find relevant, unblinded LinkedIn and other social network profiles quickly, even ones beyond your 3-degree network? How to run complex strings without having to remember all the boolean syntax and special search engine commands, and get ongoing, new relevant results automatically? How to quickly find relevant companies beyond the top competitors everyone knows, and alternate job titles to find qualified candidates elsewhere who don’t use your jargon? Super-lookups for people contact info and other key data? How to gauge which search strings are most effective for a given kind of search? You’ll learn all that and more from one of America’s top sourcers/trainers in an info-packed hour of useful methods you can apply immediately.
back to top Date & Time

“The Sourcer’s Daily Dozen: E-Sourcing Methods from a Recruiting Research Guru” is an online presentation. All registered attendees will receive detailed instructions on how to access this event via email prior to the start time.

This online event uses WebEx technology, which should be functional on any platform. All that is required is an Internet connection and a telephone (for the audio portion of the presentation).

HOW TO REGISTER

Register HERE

There are only 7 days left to the start of “The Sourcer’s Daily Dozen: E-Sourcing Methods from a Recruiting Research Guru.” Registration is free!* To sign up for “The Sourcer’s Daily Dozen: E-Sourcing Methods from a Recruiting Research Guru,” click the button above or call (212) 671-1181, option 2.

ERE webinars are particularly suited for the following individuals:

* Staffing directors and VPs
* Recruitment managers
* Corporate recruiters
* Third-party recruiters
* CEOs and top HR executives in talent-driven industries
* Other HR professionals who are tasked with evaluating the recruiting process

ABOUT GLENN GUTMACHER

Glenn has been a lead Internet sourcer for Microsoft since 2005, and previously at Getronics North America where his work contributed meaningfully to two finalist nominations in 2005’s ERExcellence Awards. He entered the recruiting field in 1996 by founding one of the newspaper industry’s first regional job boards, JobSmart, which won the international newspaper industry’s two most prestigious awards in 1998: the EPpy Award (Editor & Publisher) and the Digital Edge Award (Newspaper Assn. of America).

In 1997, Glenn created one of the recruiting industry’s first Internet sourcing seminars, the online version of which has been continuously updated through today. He was the official Internet recruiting certification instructor in 2000 for SHRM’s Northeast Human Resources Association (NEHRA), in 2001 for the Boston Herald’s Jobfind.com and in 2002 for the Boston Globe’s BostonWorks.

Glenn remains a leading innovator in online sourcing methods and application of Internet tools to recruiting. He has trained recruiters and sourcers from hundreds of corporations from the Fortune 500 to small TPRs. Besides penning numerous articles for recruiting trade publications and portals, he currently writes the highly-regarded blog, Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques. He is a 1987 graduate of Yale University.
about Jobscience

Since 1999, Jobscience has been a market leader in human capital management solutions providing a comprehensive suite of web-based products and services that meet the needs of any sized business across any industry. Our software solutions map to your workflows, processes, and preferences; and our expert consulting services are available to help you design and implement the optimal solution to recruit, source and retain top talent for your organization.

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

by Glenn Gutmacher, Senior Research at Microsoft
glenn @ recruiting-online.com

Original Post dated: 10/26/2007

I believe audio/video search is only useful in recruiting and sourcing if it goes beyond metatags to full text conversion and searchability. On that score, there are already big distinctions between the major players. Two main players with millions of hours of video, PodZinger (parent company BBN is a general Internet technology pioneer) and Blinkx, compete (and sometimes cooperate) with the video search component of the major search engines.

Most players offer RSS feeds so you can track new matching results as they are added to, or spidered by, the site. However, in the results list, Podzinger uniquely previews the text around your desired keywords and lets you jump right to those parts of the video when those words are said. Likewise, Blinkx automatically parses all text within videos and makes it searchable, too. (I ran tests myself to verify that the search terms can occur deep into the video and not just in some introductory metatag.)

Unfortunately, unlike Podzinger, Blinkx does not index audio files currently, nor does it show where your search keywords appear in the video, nor can you jump to those points. But Blinkx’s special features are a preview mode that shows the first few seconds of each video and 2 lines of text captioning, which is nice for visually-oriented folks. Possibly more helpful from a searcher’s perspective is the ability to create a video wall — a series of thumbnail images tied to your favorite search terms (thanks for the tip from my colleague, Jim). Jim’s post linked to a story indicating Blinkx powers the video search on major sites including AOL, ITN, Lycos and Times Online, and recently added parts of Microsoft’s MSN and Live sites. It also indexes video for many major news services. That’s helpful in the momentum department.

Nexidia uses unique speech recognition technology that processes audio and video faster, and breaks speech down into 42 phonetic sounds. According to search expert Gary Price in a recent article, it’s "easier for an algorithm to tell one sound from among 42 than one word from among the millions in the English language." However, I have not found any public search engine/portal that uses their technology. To date, they seem to be selling to enterprises; I suspect this won’t last long.

The rest are way behind in that they only search the metadata (typically, title and introductory caption), but they have a few redeeming features that the two leading players might want to integrate:

• Pixsy, thanks to a large number of major content partners, is the video and photo search technology behind various sites, most notably PureVideo. The company claims its technology searches for both photos and videos by “relevance”, “category”, “provider”, or “freshness,” though the public implementations at their powered partner sites only let you search by keywords (relevance) and category (genre).
• CastTV has a unique approach to metadata, grabbing more context than the others below do, and in unique ways, which is promising but can’t be tested properly until it launches publicly with critical mass of content.
• Google lets you search for videos that can be purchased online by price range, video length and/or content genres (currently available in the US only). Unfortunately, relatively few videos are being genre-coded, so don’t depend on the usefulness of that search criterion. What’s better is Google video search lets you use some of its special commands (e.g., title: to search only within the video’s title), which goes beyond the AND, OR, NOT, exact phrase search capability common to all the video search engines (Podzinger’s interface doesn’t reveal it also supports Booleans, but it does.)
• This is also true for Yahoo’s Advanced Video Search, which also lets you limit results by video file format (multiple select checkboxes). Ditto for Microsoft, whose video search is in beta as is its Soapbox initiative to solicit voluntarily-contributed video. Google is ahead on the latter, but jumpstarted its repository with its recent high-profile acquisition of YouTube, the web’s largest dedicated amalgamation of contributed video, with a high percentage of amateur videos.

The impact on recruiting search of these grass-roots solicitation efforts are unclear, but I would still bet that true Internet-wide crawling for video would be better search results-wise. None of the major search engines seem to be spidering for video or audio as well as they do for text-based pages. AOL claims to be, but the results thus far are anemic.

BUT HERE’S WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT, AND MISSING …. READ MORE HERE …

by Glenn Gutmacher, Senior Research at Microsoft
glenn @ recruiting-online.com

Original Post dated: 12/11/2006

Q: I am an Internet-focused sourcer who sometimes gets primary phone sourced data to expand upon. However, there are times I get high-profile names from high-profile companies, and I still can’t find anything about them, whether I use major search engines and resume databases, ZoomInfo, etc. Why is this, and what can I do?

A: Aha! You have encountered the only quality problem in name-gen by telephone (a/k/a telesourcing): misspellings. Unless the phone researcher is being very careful to validate spellings, name errors will creep into their deliverables. Sometimes it’s because the source is providing names very quickly, has a strong accent or unclear speaking style. However, when someone is spitting out gold, the researcher may not want to interrupt that conversational rhythm, which asking for spellings might create.

In your case — since the leads are apparently high-profile ones who should have a decent Internet presence — searching online later just by the name that was least likely to be misspelled (sometimes it’s the first/given name, sometimes it’s the last/surname) along with the job title, function and/or company name info will typically turn up links with the proper spelling that you need to fill the blanks. Ironically, this is typically the opposite of most sourcing functions that break out sourcing specialties: the online researcher supplies the phone researcher initially with data. The online deliverables may contain more instances of dated information and thus need validation, but you typically don’t encounter the spelling errors that can cause the grief you cited!

The only other quality problem that sometimes (very rarely) occurs with phone sourcing is purposely-misleading information. In this case, the employees of a targeted company have been warned that researchers are after certain passive prospects. They turn over such calls to designated competitive intelligence (CI) personnel who will cleverly feed the researcher false information. A good phone sourcer’s radar will perk up when this happens, and cross-check the data with other sources to validate before submitting their deliverables. However, a relative newbie or a sourcer under a tight deadline to deliver a name-gen project may not take the extra step, and this shortcut comes back to bite them! Of course, this false info tactic can also be done online (e.g., posting false rumors to blogs, newsgroups, etc.) so every researcher must be careful to validate.

I do not want this blog post to come across as anything against phone sourcing. As anyone I’ve worked with knows, I have the utmost respect for smart name-gen phone researchers, and can’t imagine doing a comprehensive sourcing project without having at least one such person on my team. On a related note, I had the pleasure to meet a top third-party name-gen professional for the first time face-to-face last week, Krista Bradford. She participated with Shally and me as panelists for AOEP’s Challenge of the Sourcing Sleuths. Her information on phone sourcing was excellent, and she uses it in combination with online methods. Analogous to Shally’s excellent Google and LinkedIn cheatsheets, Krista has just created a cheatsheet of sorts for phone sourcing. Maybe some would call it a white paper, but it’s written in a very user-friendly way. She gave it as a freebie to the AOEP attendees (who paid to come), so I don’t know what she’ll do for others who request it, but I recommend you ping her and ask nicely!

NOTE: Glenn Gutmacher will be speaking at the Cleveland EMA/SHRM in October.

by Glenn Gutmacher, Senior Research at Microsoft
glenn @ recruiting-online.com

Q: I have a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with thousands of names of potential candidates. I don’t intend to blind e-mail them, but I do want to process them all over time.

The entries are all in a single column, and look like this:

name1

company1

e-mail address1

ID number1

name2

company2

e-mail address2

ID number2

etc.

I can’t find anyone who can tell me how to “rotate” this spreadsheet so that I’ll end up with 4 columns that look like this:

name1 company1 e-mail address1 ID number1

name2 company2 e-mail address2 ID number2

ANSWER: I’m glad you don’t plan to mass-email that many, which can get you in trouble with the US federal CAN-SPAM Act. But I do agree you need to change the vertical orientation to horizontal as you indicated in order to send even small batches of messages in any email processing program.

Fortunately, lists like this are easily fixable. The key to doing this simply is the INDIRECT function, which didn’t exist with earlier versions of Excel. (If you have Microsoft Office 2007, then you’re all set.)

Assuming your list is in column A, with the first name in cell A1, first company in cell A2, etc., put the following in the cells indicated (values beginning with an equals sign are formulas):

cell b1: =INDIRECT(“A”&F1)

cell c1: =INDIRECT(“A”&F1+1)

cell d1: =INDIRECT(“A”&F1+2)

cell e1: =INDIRECT(“A”&F1+3)

cell f1: 1

cell b2: =INDIRECT(“A”&F2)

cell c2: =INDIRECT(“A”&F2+1)

cell d2: =INDIRECT(“A”&F2+2)

cell e2: =INDIRECT(“A”&F2+3)

cell f2: =F1+4

The cells in B2 through F2 can be copied in one move all the way down (starting with corresponding columns in row 3 down thousands of rows as desired). This will instantly “rotate” (display) the data from column A as you desired.

If you don’t want the (now) extraneous data in column A and F, don’t delete them or everything in columns B-E will be messed up! Instead, click column headings B-E to highlight the content all the way down, and copy (Ctrl+C). Launch a new blank worksheet in the same file (or a completely new spreadsheet file) and press Paste –> Paste special (not the regular Ctrl+V paste). Select the radio button preceding Values and click OK.

You now have all the records in rows, with the formulas replaced by plain values, and won’t be messed up if you sort, move them around, etc.!

Thanks for the question, which was different than the usual sourcing inquiries I receive! If you have an e-sourcing challenge, feel free to send it to me (blog [at} recruiting-online {dot] com for possible inclusion.

By Dave Mendoza, Master Cybersleuth, an Affiliate Partner, JobMachine Inc.
Call Me Directly

Yesterday I hit 8,000 connections on Linkedin.

I am stating it not to boast – I don’t throw footballs in the end zone with creative knee wobbling.

I simply want to mark the occasion to publicly thank everyone who has connected with me.

I thought Glenn Gutmacher put it best, that I have been fortunate to stand “… on the shoulders of giants” and certainly, this would be an opt description for Shally Steckerl and Glenn. I live and breathe social networking and an hour doesn’t go by that I am not logged into my Linkedin account availing myself to fellow colleagues and varied passive talent groups.

To be a recruiter and not actively utilizing Linkedin as part of your daily resources is to proceed into the War for Talent unarmed. I encourage all of my colleagues to embrace networking by first and foremost reaching out to your fellow colleagues who sit next to you, across the nation and globally to share best practices and to mutually benefit from 2nd and 3rd degrees of inclusion.

To view my Linkedin Profile,

I’ve taken the liberty to likewise strongly encourage you to reach out and network with my colleagues:

** Shally Steckerl, his email: shally@jobmachine.net
** Glenn Gutmacher, his email: firstname.last@microsoft.com

Both Shally & Glenn are also open networkers.

As my colleagues would profess, there is value in sharing our contacts on LinkedIn. Here’s one of Shally’s famous articles written on LinkedIn if you are interested:

“Becoming A Promiscuous Linker on Linkedin“: http://www.ere.net/blogs/CyberSleuthing/5906A153A51141918B6697BF535C6A2F.asp

Reach out my friends. Feel free to send me an invite and be part of a broader circle within “Six Degrees From Dave”

Have a wonderful weekend with your families and everyone who makes life fulfilling.

Always strive to be part of something bigger than yourself.

PS: PS: Consider networking with recruiters and staffing leaders, fellow CyberSleuths I admire. I have provided Linkedin Profiles for each of the following:

* Amy Beth Hale
* Barry Geiman
* Carl Chapman
* Craig Silverman
* Dakotta Alex
* Dennis Smith
* Eric Jaquith
* Gerry Crispin
* Hilary Taubman-Dye
* Jason Davis, Founder, RecruitingBlogs.com
* Jason Gorham
* Joel Cheesman
* Jim Stroud
* Keith Halperin
* Krista Bradford
* Leslie O’Connor
* Mark O’Connor
* Maureen Sharib
* Michael Kelemen
* Otis Collier
* Ritesh Nair
* Rob McIntosh
* Russ Moon
* Sean Rehder
* Seth Williams
* Steve Levy
* Steven Rothberg
* Suzy Tonini
* Tim O’Connor

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