As previously mentioned, Reddit presents a wealth of talent communities, but the user anonymity component creates a challenge. The real question is how do we bring the users out of obscurity and into an ATS?
Tools to Optimize your Search
In its current state Reddit maintains a platform that requires a minimum amount of information to be submitted from each user to open an account. All that’s needed is an email, and thus far I have not been able to discover any tools that uncover contact information from usernames. Despite the hurdles, the following tools can aid in your quest to source Reddit users.
Reddit Investigator – You may not be able to gain contact information, but Reddit Investigator can help you to learn some deeper insight into individual users. The tool crawls into Reddit data and analyzes it to tell you their interests, possible location, and give insight as to their browsing habits so you can reach out at a time that they’re more likely to be active. When I first discovered this tool thanks to Michael Crouse, I scanned a lot of Redditors from the React.JS sub. Something I found that I thought was funny is that every single React.JS subscriber I scanned also subscribes to r/thanosdidnothingwrong. If anything, this gave me an easy subject line when direct messaging possible candidates. I titled several messages as “Thanos DID do something wrong, change my mind.” This tool does limit searches to abide by Reddit’s rules. There is the option for a premium account which has no limits on the number of pages it scans and short wait time between scans.
Reddit Metrics – You can track and analyze the traffic on any subreddit, as well as find what is trending or new. Getting integrated into new and emerging talent communities close to their inception could work to your advantage. Sometimes in the early stages, they even look for admins who would give you the capability to allow modalities for job searching or posting. Reddit Metrics is not officially associated with Reddit.
Later for Reddit – The time and day of the week can affect the success of any posts you make. Reddit Later analyzes any subreddit and give you the best posting times, and you can even schedule your posts through this tool. Also, it provides you with a title word analysis.
Reddit Enhancement Suite – This is considered the unofficial Chrome extension for Reddit. Some of the features include the ability to switch between accounts, filtering comments to only those of the OP, style tweaks, subreddit management and many more. One of the biggest known issues to be aware of is that sometimes it doesn’t work properly unless you turn off all of your other extensions.
Now that you’re armed with insight and tools in one of the world’s fastest growing websites, you will be able to discover talent communities that are still largely untapped by most sourcers. I foresee that very soon in the future this resource will be discovered by many more talent acquisition professionals and what that means for the platform remains to be seen. Until then, dig in deep and see what you can find!