Jeff Eveler was a Cryptographic Field Engineer before becoming a technical recruiter. He has been working in this field now for over 30 years and has applied his background in cryptology to the art and science of sourcing. So how does cryptology fit into this world? We learned how during Eveler’s presentation on Tuesday afternoon.
Cryptology, by definition, is the practice and study of hiding information. A good cryptologist is not only good at hiding information, he/she is also good at uncovering it. It is imperative to pay close attention to details when sniffing out hidden data; it can be a tiring task and is not for the faint of heart. Eveler mentioned the word “vigilance” when referring to what makes a good sourcer. This means watchfulness, the process of paying close and continuous attention. As a way of being vigilant in sourcing, he shared with the room a way to map out talent intelligence, broken down into eight categories.
- Internal resources – these are people who are already in your company’s ATS, CRM, or other internal databases.
- Web resources – these include resources such as job and resume boards, web crawlers, social networks, and various search engines.
- Connected job roles – this can help sourcers learn job titles that are similar in nature. Understanding that different companies have different titles for the same job function will help you to find people in related jobs.
- Industry conferences, associations, user groups, and job fairs – learning which events your target audience attends, you will be able to pay attention to these events and discover potential candidates by researching attendee lists or monitoring social streams during these events (example: anybody been following the #sourcecon hashtag??)
- Target companies and contracts – keeping an eye on competitors and related industry leaders is always helpful – you can learn their current moves by watching their hiring activities.
- Colleges and universities, degrees, certifications, and trade schools – learn degree program names and/or knowing what universities produce excellent professionals within your industry.
- Search and find tools – these are your basic Boolean search strings that can be plugged into an search engine or into an RSS feed.
- Search terms and keywords – these, again, can be monitored via search engines and RSS feeds.
By monitoring your industry using these eight resources, Eveler showed how you can develop an intelligence map for each job on which you search. The important thing here is knowing, inside and out, what you are looking for. In fact, each SourceCon presenter today described in various ways the importance of keywords and understanding different ways of saying/describing the same thing. Simply semantics – a trend here at SourceCon apparently!
Stay tuned for more SourceCon coverage on Wednesday, and make sure to check out the live stream which will appear at the top of the SourceCon website!