SourceCon Digital makes history as an interactive online conference! Were we the first? Probably not, but it sure felt like it! Especially with everything going on right now. This massive undertaking was a crazy project of scheduling, platforms, people and technology. For more info on the first day, check this post out.
Day Two Begins!
After the whirlwind of the first day, we started the second day with a bang! Headbanging, that is. The crew was ready to go and worked out all the kinks! There was even time to eat breakfast (standing up over the course of 5 minutes, but still)! After recapping the day, we went to work with our first awesome speaker…
Speaker Sessions
The legendary Research Goddess, Amybeth Quinn got us started first. Amybeth had an awesome presentation that tied together the theme of the conference (which was a circus theme, BTW) and leading a sourcing team. The result was From Sideshow to Big Top: Becoming a Sourcing Ringmaster.
Amybeth talked about the good and the bad, the real and the imagined, and the journey to becoming a Sourcing Leader. There was great analysis of the job and we even got into the metrics behind leading a team (something she loved to talk about). Carmen Hudson was up next and talked about how she created a Chrome extension with no coding! The ease of this was very surprising and should help inspire future sourcers. She also talked about her tools page, RecruiterHunt, which collects and ranks different sourcing/recruiting tools. Carmen also hand-drew all her slides!!!! We’ll let the audience reach out to her and see if she’ll start doing that for everyone! 😉
The legendary Dean Da Costa talked about how to manage and work through all the tools and extensions that are out there. But more important, he talked about tool chains and processes for sourcing. One example was the “Research – Search – Scrape – Enhance – Outreach” process and the accompanying tools that went with each step. Dean also talked about lesser known tools that you could use when trying to find candidates that have very little information on their profile. There are many more tools on the SSaR page. How many? SO many:
Steve Bartel (CEO and Founder from Gem) was nice enough to do a sit down interview with us. We talked about the software product, how it integrates nicely with LinkedIn, how it can make your email messaging run smoother, and how it can play nice with your ATS! For many of us that try to use LI Recruiter as a CRM or ATS, this was good news!
Amy Schultz from LinkedIn talked about 3 important skills that we all need in order to future-proof our staffing team: Analyzing data, advising hiring managers, and engaging candidates virtually. Especially with times as they are, these skills are invaluable. Metrics are great, but don’t follow / focus on the wrong ones. New sourcing methods are also great, but don’t neglect the ONES THAT ALWAYS WORK! And finally: have empathy at the top of your mind throughout every step of the engagement process.
When it comes to tough req searches, we got a great presentation on how to find them by Kara Baskett. These were not your run-of-the-mill roles. They were Acoustic Engineers, Nurses, Manufacturing and Retail Workers. The methods used included groups, networking, alumni lists, hiring managers, team members and THE PHONE (oh no they didn’t)!!! Here are some of the ideas for one of these roles, an Acoustic Engineer:
Coral Zelachowski taught us “How to Be the Ringmaster of Your Schedule”. Planning, scheduling and automation were the keys here. These made so much sense and yet many people never use them correctly! Automatically planning your work week and auto-filtering emails are life savers! I used to do these exact same things when I managed a team of sourcers in an agency and I received 3 emails every minute all day!!!
The final speaker of the day was Blake Thiess. And it was only fitting that he talked about True Grit in sourcing. The fact that we are determined researchers and that we work with ever-changing requirements only makes sense that this presentation spoke to every sourcer out there. Blake talked about real life examples and then pivoted to his own. Great stuff:
The Roundtables
Normally, we have roundtables in person. But since this was SourceCon Virtual, we had to devise a solution that would work similarly. Enter: Zoom Rooms! Through trial and error with the SourceCon Team, we were able to get these working in time. And we had a great line up of speakers and topics. Don’t believe me? Check it out!
The roundtables let the attendees have a voice and they could ask questions of the presenters. The roundtables also ran 3 consecutive times back to back. The interface worked as well as could be, and the roundtable presenters stepped up when doing their talk. They really did well with the circumstances that were given to them. I really want to thank every single one for sticking with us during the changes in the event. Here is the infamous Amy Miller throwin’ down the knowledge in her roundtable session:
The SourceCon Team & Conclusion
The SourceCon team at ERE Media gets more kudos again! If it wasn’t for them working 15 hours a day on technical issues, scheduling, marketing, logistics, filming, communications, and content, we would never have pulled this off. So a special thank you goes out to them! As I said in the previous post, the attendees really helped make this thing a reality. Without their dedication, we would be doing a live stream conference for ourselves.
Well that is truly a wrap. Let us know what you think, if you have future ideas, or if you are bored talking to your cat and you want a real person to speak with. We are here! Thank you Sourcing Faithful. See you at the next (in person) event!