After being in the staffing industry for over 15 years and training 100’s of Recruiters, I have learned to love “sourcing” or searching for candidates! My passion for sourcing continues to increase as I learn new tricks and Boolean Operators.
Boolean logic was developed by George Boole in 1854.
It is a form of algebra and was originally used for mathematical logic in which values are reduced to either True or False. Boolean logic is a way of comparing individual bits, it uses operators to determine how the bits are compared. These operators are used to refine the determination of system status or to set or clear specific bits. Some common Boolean operators include: AND, OR, NOT, “”, (). Think of operators as boxes with multiple inputs and one output. Feed in various combinations of Boolean logic and your output will be high or low depending on the type of operation. When using this logic for searching candidates on the internet and/or within databases, you can create search strings that will look for someone with specific traits, comparable traits, or not or traits. For example, when looking for a project manager that has manager an application development project you may begin your search with a basic search string like this: “project manager” AND application NOT infrastructure. Then depending on your results you may add additional skills or take out some items.
It’s like playing detective and finding clues here and there to help you zero in on what you are looking for.
There is no better feeling than that ahhh moment when all your clues add up and you find that resume you were searching for.
Recently, I have had the pleasure of having some representatives from Monster come into our offices and provide our recruiters with a refresher course on “Sourcing”. For me, it was especially nice to learn some new tricks as well as having some old ones reinforced. During this training, I learned five tricks that can really take your sourcing to the next level:
1. Freshest is not always the best: When you are sourcing, calling the person who just posted their resume within the last week is not necessarily the best strategy. I like to go back a few pages and look at people who have posted their resume a 6 + months ago. Yes, they may have found a new job but they may not like that new job. Also, why do I want to call the person that all the other recruiters are calling?
2. Start Basic then add: Sourcing is like baking to me, start with the most basic ingredients first then slowly start adding additional items one at a time. If you add all the ingredients at once you have a big mess and it’s hard to take items out without restarting the process.
3. Find the person doing the job: When I start sourcing for a position I am unfamiliar with, I like to type in the customer or competitor name and title of the position. That way I can view the resume of someone who is or has performed in that role and I can then get a better understanding of what I am looking for.
4. Think like the job seeker: When you are souring you have to make sure that the key words you are searching for are titled the way the job seeker uses / explains them. The customer job description can be very formal and the candidates may use acronyms to explain the tools they are using such as ProE or ProEngineer. Also be aware of misspellings from both the customer side and the candidate side. Something I recently learned is that the word Manager is one of the most misspelled words; if you are looking for a project manager you might type something like this: “project manager” OR “project manger”
5. Constantly refine: This goes along with the tip above, as I source I am continually refining my search string to get what I am looking for. I like to start with a very basic search string and then slowly start narrowing down my selection choices with more skills, shorter mileage, specific industry experience, etc.