5 Sourcing Hacks for Recruiters to Know

In going through notes and slide decks from our recent Global Conference, I thought I would share 5 sourcing hacks that I learned from various speakers and presenters:

• Effectively use News searches and/or Google Alerts
  • Looking for new clients? Try setting up a Google Alert using phrases like “plans to hire” in a specific location.
  • When you enter a search string, look at both the Web results AND the News results. You’ll find different information in each place.
• For tech recruiters, try running searches for patents, patent attorneys, or patent litigation
  • “Patent litigation cases” will bring up a list of current court cases as well as a number of databases regarding current/prior litigation.
  • “Patent litigation” with your keyword will show you possible competitors in the same space – if they are involved in a patent proceeding, it’s generally related to the same/similar technology.
  • Patent attorneys may know candidates (or clients) who work in the field where you are recruiting.
• Use Google Image searches to find people or resumes
  • Enter your search string, the click the Images tab
  • Click Tools
    • Select Type>Face to bring up headshots and other photos of possible candidates … right-click the image and open in a new tab, then click the redirect link to see the article/page where the image is located
    • Select Color>Black and White  to bring up resumes and CVs … some of these will be templates or samples, so you can either refine your search to exclude those, or just be prepared to do some extra digging
• Check out emailhunter.co
  • This is a Chrome extension that helps you locate email addresses … enter the domain name, and emailhunter.co will return the email addresses that are associated with that domain
  • There is a FREE version of the Email Finder available that gives you 100 free searches per month
  • Use the Email Verifier to determine if you have a deliverable email
• Look in places where your competitors are NOT looking
  • eTools.ch is a metasearch engine that allows you to exclude specific search engines from including results in your searches.
  • For example, you can exclude Google results or assign more importance to a different search engine to tailor your results

Thanks to Jim Stroud, Tricia Tamkin, and Jason Thibeault for the terrific training. If you have any sourcing hacks to share, please add a comment below.