Sourcers and recruiters have the opportunity to elevate an organization through attracting top performers to their teams. One of my favorite ways to do this is through sourcing for Award Winners in the industry. In this article, I will share a few ways you can identify award winning talent for your organization through research, X-Ray Searches, and hashtags.
To do this, you will need to do some initial research on what awards and recognitions are given to leaders in the industry you are sourcing for. You can get this from your hiring manager during the intake, ChatGPT, and/or a Google Search.
My favorite place to start is associations. Many associations extend awards and recognitions to top performers doing amazing things!
To do this start with a simple Google Search:
From here you can then research awards: Remember to search for the full name and the acronym!
You can even ask ChatGpt for Help!
Once you learn what awards and recognitions you want to target in your searches, you can use Boolean to find them! I am going to use Daisy Award Winners later in the article.
You can look at their posts on social media and/or their site to identify a hashtag to search for too.
Below are some strings to play with (will show specific examples later):
- site:[insert site of the award winners] Keywords
- site:linkedin.com/in [#Award] Keywords
- site:Instagram.com [#Award] Keywords
- site:facebook.com [#Award] Keywords
- site:linked.com/in [award name] Keywords
Healthcare (Nurses)
When I used to work in healthcare, finding top-performing nurses always seemed to be a challenge. One of my favorite things to search for was Daisy Award Winners. “The DAISY Award is a recognition program to celebrate and recognize nurses by collecting nominations from patients, families, and co-workers. It is run by our partners as a way to thank nurses for the care and kindness they provide. ” – Daisy Foundation
You can do this in various ways.
Option 1 – directly on the website!
https://www.daisyfoundation.org/daisy-award/honorees#search-tool
My favorite part is you can search by a competitor (facility name), location, year (help you find various experience levels, and type (help you find specialty nurses).
Option 2 – X Ray
You can do this by using the site command and just a few keywords! In the following examples I am focusing on identifying ICU (intensive care unit) nurses who won a Daisy award in 2023.
This will focus my search results to only nurses who work in the ICU and not other specialty areas.
- site:daisyfoundation.org/daisy-award/honorees/ ICU 2023
Option 3 – Social Media Posts via hashtag searches
- site:linkedin.com #DaisyAward ICU KS
- site:instagram.com #DaisyAward ICU KS
- site:facebook.com #DaisyAward ICU KS
You want the best for your patients, so help your organization find the best!
Engineers
PE Licensed Engineers – this is a license that hiring managers often ask for
The National Society of Professional Engineers is a licensing board for Engineers (Non-IT). They have a NSPE Award. On the site they not only give you the current Award Winners, but also the past recipients.
Site:NSPE.org Award Civil Wastewater Kansas
In this string I am searching for a NSPE Award Winner who is a Civil Engineer with Wastewater experience in Kansas
I had to do some additional research to see how they are sharing the winners on social media.
From here, I was able to do some X Ray Searches.
Water/Wastewater Engineers Example:
Don’t forget local chapters of the associations you want to target! This can help you with some location specific hires.
AWWA is a great place to find water/wastewater engineers! Below I created a simple search string to identify AWWA Awards given to recipients in Iowa.
There are so many awards someone could win!
X- Ray search LinkedIn and you are ready to start sourcing!
Don’t forget to highlight their recognitions when you submit them to the hiring manager! This is key in helping them get past the hiring manager review stage, especially if they don’t list it on their resume.
One last example, Chief Information Officer
During some research on CIOs in the Kansas City area, I found the KansasCityCIO association. They have the Orbie Award.
They have local chapters in many cities
When you click on a name, you can see the URL for a profile
You can use this for your X Ray
Here I did an X Ray Search for winners in the Engineering Industry using the URL data above.
As you can see, after some brief research you can find ways leaders in the industry you are sourcing for are being recognized and start searching for them for your roles.
Help your organization hire the best talent out there!
You have names, now what?
There are many ways you can go to find contact information for these top performers in the industry.
Here are just a few I use
-
- Check your ATS OR CRM! Have they applied before? Are they in your system already?
- Look them up on LinkedIn and other social media sites
- Free people search sites
- Thats them.com
- Hunter.io
- Thats them.com
There are many more free and paid tools out there you can use to help you find contact information!
Happy Sourcing!