
SourceCon is one of talent acquisition’s biggest events, connecting influencers and practitioners to share their savvy on the state of hiring.
Over 700 attendees and 32 speakers from companies including Indeed, GitHub, and Lockheed Martin gathered in Anaheim last week for the conference. While the “two days of sourcing magic” have wrapped up since, we round up highlights from a handful of lucky attendees sharing their favorite conversations.
Understand which candidate data is the most meaningful for building a more efficient hiring process.
Love what I'm hearing at #SourceCon re: metrics."Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted!"
— Maisha L. Cannon (@talentgenie) September 22, 2016
Tracking recruiting and hiring data can be a work in progress for any org getting started with measuring candidate information. The goal is to gather the info essential to making smarter decisions driven by data. At first, you may be measuring too nitty gritty stats, but over time and through frequent alignment between your talent team and hiring managers, you learn what’s essential and what’s throw-away. Which stages of the hiring process take the longest to move on or reject candidates? How familiar and engaged are people with your organization and its working environment?
What you come out with in the end is a standardized hiring process designed to reduce the time and cost of each hire, and to showcase your org’s best self because the process is efficient, concise, and keeps people in the loop.
Reach out of the comfort zone and expand your talent network.
Facebook as a sourcing tool... 17x more active monthly users than LinkedIn. And free. Yep. (Try new things.) #sourcing #sourcecon
— Stacy Donovan Zapar (@StacyZapar) September 22, 2016
One of the pitfalls of falling in love with a network that helps you identify exactly who you’re looking for is that everyone else also eventually falls in love with it. In other words, these places get crowded and saturated over time. With sourcers and recruiters competing for the same people, it’s essential to continually refresh the networks and communities you recruit from and interact with. The human touch goes a long way in standing out from the other mass emails and learning first-hand what excites and turns off candidates.
Have conversations with people (quick coffee, drinks, lunch at the office) you’re interested in hiring to see where they are in their career, where they want to be, and how your opportunities can support them now or in the future. Meet in person, if possible. Face-to-face conversation flows much differently and is often more genuine and telling than an email exchange. On the flipside, meet with fellow recruiters and discover how they’re continually improving their own processes. You’ll expose yourself to best, modern tried-and-true practices from industry colleagues and potentially, a larger network of viable candidates.
Personalization still matters.
Why do #recruiters send non-customized "spammy" messages to candidates? #SourceCon @SourceCon #candidateexperience
— Allison Kruse (@AllisonAKruse) September 10, 2016
Death to mass messages. Without customization, how does your email engage candidates? Doing research on the people you’re interested in hiring remains a crucial aspect of the recruiting process. Not only does learning about a candidate’s background and experience help you construct a clearly thoughtful email, it also helps you assess their fit for the role. Mass messaging candidates also taints your employer brand, and can give the impression your hiring process is entirely automated and the people you reach out to for roles are merely a number in the hiring game.
Nurture and maintain your employer brand.
Employer brand lives in more places than most people think #SourceCon pic.twitter.com/A8xWWIrRcV
— Glen Cathey (@GlenCathey) September 22, 2016
One of the most powerful messages you communicate to candidates is the one sent before they set foot into your office. Your employer brand is the middle person between you and your next hire, giving insight to how the team lives out its mission and values through the company culture, how employees interact and work together, and how that work impacts the world around them. It’s prevalent in every step of the hiring process, including the candidate experience. A strong employer brand draws in, engages, and educates people who previously might not have known anything about the org. Learn how to identify the successes of your employer branding campaign. Are you forgettable?
What got you the most riled up at SourceCon? Share with us in the comments! And if you’re headed to HR Tech, don’t forget – so are we.
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