Maureen S
5000+connects TopLinked.com Telephone Name Sourcer/MagicMethod Trainer-Names Generator
What is telephone names sourcing exactly?
There's an excited string going on over on ERE, in fact some are so anxious to say what they need to say they're saying it twice (and three, and four and five) times! You can read it here:
http://tinyurl.com/dg5hgu
It seems to boil down to what is telephone names sourcing exactly? Is it "garbage" as one claimant seems to state? Is it the build-out of a company's telephone directory without refinement on titles? Is it a product that is a "cut and paste from LinkedIn along with an Excel spreadsheet exported from Broadlook Diver" as another reported? Is it ruse calling? What is it exactly? Here's what I think it is, and this is taken partially from the first module of my MagicMethod telephone names sourcing training.
Names Sourcing is a little understood activity. Simply put, it’s the skillful finding of people who hold specific titles (usually) within (usually) specific organizations so that you, as a recruiter, may contact them and offer them your opportunity. It can be performed in two ways: by using the Internet or by using the Telephone. The use of the latter is many times preceded by the use of the Internet but the use of the Internet is not often followed by the use of the Telephone.
And that, my friends, is what causes so much confusion (and, apparently now, angst) in the profession. That is also the reason there is so much difference in quality of the products being presented today. By the way, TRUE telephone sourcing IS NOT finding the name on the Internet and then calling to see if the guy's "still there" and even if his title is "still the same" as it was when it was placed on the Internet. It's maybe "adding value" if you get the guy's email or direct dial for your customer but it's not really true telephone names sourcing.
Clarification added 8 months ago:
TRUE telephone names sourcing is when you call into a company - maybe you have a few names to get yourself started on the inside - and you find out who the players are cocooned inside that organization. MOST of the names you bring out will not and cannot be found on the Internet because you know why? They're NOT ON THE INTERNET in any capacity that would allow you to put their information together in any way that will quickly sort out and help to fill your open requirement.
That's what I think it is. What do you think it is?
Good Answers (1)
Steve D
Recruiter (6100+) (847)431-4681 resumes@sjdelaney.com
Best Answers in: Job Search (1), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
LinkedIn, facebook, jigsaw, zoominfo... all wonderful tools. But despite the impressive numbers of members, they barely scratch the surface of the full US and international workforce.
Aproximately 2.3% of the US labor force use LinkedIn, and of those less than 1% has more than 500 connections. That's not a whole lot of coverage. When you consider the large percentage of LinkedIn members who are in HR and Staffing (over 810,000), you get a feeling there’s a lot of people fishing in a small pond, not unlike the experience of trolling solely with Monster, CareerBuilder, or Hotjobs.
Telephone sourcing is often considered superior to internet sourcing in terms of the amount of time it takes to get solid verified results. Sometimes a phone call or two can reveal more results than hours of Boolean logic and database cross referencing. (Note as was mentioned above, verification of internet sourcing results is required and is typically done by phone. So there’s a bit of redundancy inherent in internet sourcing that telephone sourcing seems to eliminate.)
In a field that demands skill and effort in building relationships telephone sourcing provides opportunities to interact with candidates, clients, and the people they interact with daily. In a time of automation, people respond to a live person on the phone. It’s an opportunity to put yourself top of mind (TOM), make yourself known, and promote your personal brand.
Telephone sourcing provides information you typically don’t find on social sites or contact management systems. If LinkedIn were a resume, then telephone sourcing can become a first interview (though telephone sourcers typically don’t do formal interviews, they do pass along their first hand impressions).
Telephone sourcing is not old school recruiting or a dying art form – It’s not going away anytime soon. Savvy recruiters and salespersons know they must master the telephone. In conjunction with internet sourcing (Boolean logic, social networking, etc...), the ability to pick up the phone and get referrals is still the difference between average and exceptional results.
Links:
More Answers (4)
Tyler B
Reporting analyst
Best Answers in: Staffing and Recruiting (5), Employment and Labor Law (1), Internet Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Professional Networking (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
That's pretty much old-school recruiting right there. That's what people did before the Internet came around as the dominant tool. Knowing how to find/reach someone on the phone will always be one of the best ways to locate passive talent. It's not as easy as pulling a list of names and numbers from Jigsaw or Zoom and calling through, as it's more of an acquired skill, instead of a standard script.
Verifying information from an online source is not sourcing. It's verification. The actual sourcing bit has been done by accessing the resource from which the contacts were gathered. Essentially, I think I'm 100% in agreement with you, Maureen. Although I'm relatively new to the industry, that distinction seems pretty razor sharp to me. Perhaps some of the confusion comes from the fact that you can turn the rough telephone sourcing into a prescreen?
Claudia S
Director, Recruitment; Strategic talent research, recruiter
Best Answers in: Staffing and Recruiting (10), Job Search (1), Resume Writing (1), Personnel Policies (1), Organizational Development (1), Business Plans (1)
I'm with you, Maureen! The old fashioned way, you bet!
Vinay P
A specialist in business engagement, staffing and employment consulting – Ambition Technology – [@vinayp10]
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (2), Professional Networking (1)
Ahh phone sourcing, or 'creative recruiting' as some may call it. Agreed with the above, using the phone NOT internet then phone to find names.
Another example is when you have the name of one person in the team, and their extension is 3330. So you start calling 3331, 3332, 3333 to see if you can find the other people in the team.
Or your standard go through accounts receivable and play ignorant.
But I feel this tool is used significantly more with greater success by search executives and is a lot less useful for lower level roles.
A very good use for this tool is during growth periods when businesses are building new teams. if you find someone from a team in one particular business, you can be pretty sure that the other people in that team will be a good fit. Thus you go on a mission to find the rest of the names in that team. Unless they are all chronic social networks, lots of the time the only route is through the phone.
Hi Maureen - good question. As other terms have in the past few years, I think this definition has changed, although that changed definition has not been widely adopted or discussed.
Going before the days of Boolean logic and codes from Shally, RPO, outsourcing, etc - I would have said that it is the front end of old school recruiting. Get a list of say 50 names that have the right look for the client - usually based on title and company target. Call right into a gatekeeper to ask the question, use games to get referrals, and play voice mail bingo after hours to get that list built and verified. Not much has changed - our alliances still do that work because the majority of the world is not involved in social networks or have an easy to find online persona. In fact, our alliances list the source of the name, and the ones that are found using the cold calling tactics are cross checked on boards, common social networks, and so on, so our clients understand that those names could NOT be found using internet sourcing.
With the advent of internet sourcing, which is finding either the names or the resumes of leads, you have the simply skipped calling the gatekeeper or asking for the referral - very popular with our Gen Y and later recruiting brothers and sisters. You likely need to do the phone verification, but most of that can be done using voice mail or email. Occasionally, you do call that contact and do some front level screening, but that depends on what enables the corporate or commercial recruiter receiving the work.
Social networking, web 2.0, twitter, blah blah blah has blurred sourcing even more, as names that previously required the gatekeeper wooing and game playing have become more readily available. In those cases, you likely need to pick up the phone, do verification, and potentially rough screen ("do you do this in your job?").
My Definition - this work either supports an immediate hire, a future opening, or talent pipelining. "Sourcing" (telephone or otherwise) and the subsequent work product is not going to a hiring manager, but to someone in a recruiting service capacity. Traditionally this is a recruiter, but it could be a RPO team member, a HR manager, or whatever. Sourcing is a series of tasks that supports the recruiting agent charged with finding usually 3 to 5 candidates for a manager. Typically, that recruiter then takes the sourcing product (list of leads) and converts a percentage of those leads into qualified, interested, affordable and motivated candidates, and walks those finalists through the staffing processes.
Additional Notes on This Debate
There is some debate on the effectiveness, ROI, and reach of tools like LinkedIn or Google to find talent versus telephone sourcing or other methods. Fact is that before the telephone, we hired people. Before the internet, we hired people. Before Monster and CareerBuilder, we hired people - and in all cases, companies kept working and flourished. The access to talent from LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, etc has not miraculously saved the planet or radically changed how we hire people - and it likely won't without significant changes in employment law (because we still interview, background check, and abide by EOE, OFCCP, etc). See EU country labor laws as an international example.
What we have seen in our client base is that the "time to find" of candidates has increased in variability from one requisition to another thanks to all these different sourcing methods. Openings that previously took 3 weeks to find the 3 to 5 candidates may only take few hours or days. Of course the reverse is true, as recruiters use tools like twitter to find candidates in demographics that typically don't tweet, and thus waste time or post a job on a board that is completely ineffective for that demographic.
