Telephone Names Sourcing Video!

We shot a video of real time telephone sourcing on July 26. It's called "Believe in Magic". It was kind of hard explaining to the camera crew what it was we did and how to make it translate on film but we did it! When the shoot was over (it took several hours) the production and camera crew offered their perspectives. I thought it would be interesting for all of you to read. By the way, this video will be a part of the onsite MagicMethod training that teaches telephone names sourcing. The FIRST TIME this video will be shown will be in Austin, TX in September so if you’re interested in attending or hosting the event, call me. Maureen 513 899 9628

Part of this video will also be presented at the ERE Pre-Conference Workshop "Telephone Names Sourcing: What is it and Why You Need To Do It" that I will be presenting on Wednesday, October 17 from 10 -1 at the Washington, D.C. ERE conference.

Craig: "I didn't know what to think. I anticipated it being difficult and that we would have to film a lot of lying and a bunch of calls to get successful examples. I thought it was going to be hours and hours of straight talking; I didn't think about phone banks, or research or the tools available and didn't realize the research would be as simple and effective as it is. Sometimes a simple google search can help provide a name or an inside number. I didn't realize you could bounce around on the phone and actually make something happen. I was really surprised how effective it was and how few attempts were made, that just about every call was a success and gave us something to use. When things looked grim, Pam would shoot right back in and get what she needed, regardless. We were really happy with what we got and there's an element to it that seems really kind of fun."

John: "When I first heard of it I thought it was going to be difficult, not necessarily deceiving people, but sort of tricking people into giving the names and information about their employees. I guess I thought this because I understood the gist of it is that the sourcer needs to make the other person feel very comfortable to the point where the other person is willing to share information. It’s a very interesting concept, and I was anxious to see it put to the test. I thought it would be a kind of bait and switch, kind of a con man kind of show. I didn't know what to expect. Then, after seeing it in action, it was incredible. These companies are willing to give out their employees’ information and not even think about it being out of the ordinary that someone would be calling and asking for names and titles and sometimes even phone numbers! The sourcer keeps calling into the company until they find somebody who’s willing to give up the information. It’s like a prank call but not. It's also like a puzzle, because the sourcer will talk to one person and get shut down and take that information and talk to another person and get a little more information. Then the sourcer may have to call another person using all that information from previous calls that gives the final person called a sense of security that allows them to fill in the remaining missing puzzle pieces. I was taken back by the process and how it all works. It was incredible!"

If any of you out there are looking for a fine and very talented production company that produces Corporate Videos, Commercials, Television Programs, Music Videos, Short Film, Feature Length Film, Sound Recording, Mixing and Post Production pieces, call Craig or John at Microbrewed Productions, Inc. at 770-596-1618


Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Monetizing Misery VI

Marketing Angry Women
We're comfortable with women who are comfortable with their own power, but we like to make sure they're still women.

“As more women are visibly in positions of control and authority, will the men begin to squirm? The "Good Ol' Boys" club on Capitol Hill may be biting their lips as they look across at Hillary at a conference on health care reform, but they know how to act in public (or do they?). There is a safety-net of political protocol to direct the lines of communication and keep any resentment at bay. What's at stake here isn't male anxiety over a female power backlash (pushing the boys out, the girls ride into town to have their own fun). Healthy communication between the sexes is the issue. And what about those of us in the cheap seats, the everyday folk, men and women with female bosses or supervisors? In law firms, police stations and construction sites, the terms of male-female interactions are now varied, but the style of communication is often inhibited.”

Monetizing Misery V

By Maureen Sharib

Are “assertive” women “aggressive” women? Does the appearance of "angry" come into play? Be honest! I happen to think all three “As” have the potential to be perceived other than they are.

"Assertiveness can be noticeable since a very early age. More assertive and socially more competent children can better regulate expression of their emotions, especially the negative ones, which reduces appearance of depressive and other psychopathological reactions. Furthermore, more assertive children are more skilled in asking for social support from others in situations when the close persons (parents, in the first place) cannot provide it."

"But, like in many situations, assertiveness can be differently interpreted depending on the gender of the assertive person. So, an assertive woman is more often characterised as a cold, aggressive, stubborn, unapproachable person, while an assertive man is described as intelligent, skilled, self-confident, the one who knows what he wants, etc."

ASSERTIVE BEHAVIOR CHARACTERISTICS:
1. Freely expresses their own needs.
2. Realistically assesses situations.
3. Has positive self-concept.
4. Achieve their wants through negotiation and compromise.
5. Reduces stress for themselves and others.
6. Can approach problems rationally.
7. Knows how to relax.

AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR CHARACTERISTICS:
1. Get their way at others' expense.
2. See the world only in terms of their own needs.
3. Achieve their wants by attacking the character of others.
4. Often feel guilty as a result of their behavior.
5. Have a lot of compulsive personal demands.
6. React defensively and suspiciously.
7. Create stressful situations for others.
8. Constantly stirred up and have problems relaxing.

~Assertiveness - Just what does the term mean?


Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Monetizing Misery IV

By Maureen Sharib

Back to the subject of what are we going to do “when the new wears off and the old shines through”?

What happens when a couple works together (either at home or out, in the world, somewhere) and they spend sixteen waking hours together (instead of four) every single day? Where do you go with that?

I did some research to find there are no small number of “help” (2million 310 hundred thousand google “hits”) pieces out there and the first one (at google) gives us seven “basic ground rules that must be followed to have a really happy long-term full-time relationship”. Before the author does that though, she tells us that she and her husband (coincidentally his name is “Bob” too!) have lived (and worked) together nigh on twenty years now. She also remarks on the fact that now with, an “increase in the number of small (often franchised) businesses being set up on the back of redundancy payments, and with a growth in the numbers of people who telecommute from home, more couples are living and working together. This trend echoes an earlier time, when, for most of human history families worked and played together. The concept of leaving home to work would have seemed absurd to a hunter-gatherer. It would have seemed equally absurd to go anywhere without your loved-ones.Even after we became farmers we still retained the idea that the family was an economic as well as social unit. Only with the arrival of the industrial revolution a few hundred years ago did we become a people to whom "home" and "workplace" were really different, each with it's own set of relationships, rules, taboos and conflicts. With this division, and the strains that it produced, came separation and the terrible isolation of those left at home."

She then goes on to ask:
“So how do we get back to happily being a family as we were designed to be?”

Her seven basic ground rules paving the way of the future are as follows/some of them may surprise you. They are:
Don't separate work from the rest of your life.
Work with other people.
Maintain a nexus of friends outside of the core relationship
Explore and maintain shared beliefs.
Develop relationship rituals.
Work out mutually agreed roles.
Be honest and concrete about what you need of each other.

What do you think of that?

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Monetizing Misery III

By Maureen Sharib

Bob calls me Misery. It’s one of the more endearing endearments he tosses my way on occasion and I think he takes it from the 1990 Stephen King movie starring James Caan and Kathy Bates.

Words used to describe that tale of terror are as follows:
dark, witty, brisk, taut, cynical, torturous, drama, thriller, horror, suspenseful, tightly tensioned, dread, scary, wild, bizarre

All that being said, Misery has been compared to Hitchcock’s achievements in "Psycho" in that it entertains without seeming exploitative. I believe THAT is what Penelope is attempting to achieve in her gran mal description of what’s going on in her marriage today – she is attempting to inform rather than entertain (but hey, the “entertainment” value is definitely there, let’s not ignore the guerilla in the room – if it’s too much for you to read, just look away) and in so doing she is being accused of exploitation.

Phooey with that! Her reporting of her basic situation she is faced with is what makes the retelling so serious and so compelling – by comparing the sometimes nightmarish, desperate scenario she finds herself in against our own “sometimes nightmarish, desperate scenarios”…well, I hope you get the picture. We all benefit from her disclosures - even her husband, though he may not yet see it, immersed in the situation as he probably is. Penelope brings us humor, not at his expense but at her own. It’s this ability to laugh that helps us survive our ordeals. And she has the sense God gave a mule to laugh at herself. Like I do, when Bob calls me “Misery”.

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Monetizing Misery II

By Maureen Sharib

Watching the responses on Penelope Trunk's (not her real name) Brazen Careerist (where career issues and life collide) I am struck by the divide between male and female responses to Penelope’s pain. July 20's "My own marriage and the myth of the stay-at-home dad" post has resonated with eighty some responses and Bob and I continued to talk about it over the weekend. Last night, sharing a pizza, we got to wondering about a related issue that’s going to be affecting the retiring baby boom generation and that issue is this:

What happens with stay-at-home-adults-who-work-together-who spend-like-three-times-the-ordinary-amount-of-time-most-couples-spend-together-and-how-do-they-get-along? and he remarked, simply, "You've got to learn how to live with one another". I'm not sure how people "learn to live with one another" (he didn't have any ideas when I pressed for more details) but there are probably handbooks out on it - any ideas? If anyone can capture this in a bottle and put it up for sale there's a big market for it out here!

The remark struck me both in its simplicity and complicity and I got to thinking that alot of approaching boomers who are about to become full-time "roommates" are going to be faced with this conundrum. Add to that the requirement that many boomers are going to continue to work out of necessity (will they be working at home? Hmmmm….)

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Monetizing Misery

By Maureen Sharib
I've been reading Penelope Trunk's (not her real name) Brazen Careerist (where career issues and life collide) blog for a couple months now and am amazed at the frankness and forthrightness she offers us. I read July 20's "My own marriage and the myth of the stay-at-home dad" in which she starts the riveting confession with:

"For those of you who don’t know what's going on in my marriage, please read My First Day of Marriage Counseling, and maybe you will want to leave a comment about how if you were my husband, you'd divorce me for blogging about my marriage."

"My husband, in fact, has brought up divorce for other reasons. I am not totally sure which ones, to be honest, but I think it is career related since I have a great career and his sort of stalled when he became a stay-at-home dad and then went to hell from there."

Within a day she had 62 comments, many of them affirming along with a few judgmental casts doubting what Penelope's possible motivation could be in writing about this part of her life. The reason I am writing about this here is that I realize Penelope (not her real name) is either in cahoots with a smart husband who realizes if he goes along with the ploy the two of them can make a million zillion dollars out of their "unhappiness" or this woman is truly a perceptive and amazingly willing contributor to our own "situations" in life and is keenly in tune to the misery of the masses.

Immediately I turn to Bob, my husband, and point out the opportunity. "Look, honey, we can monetize our unhappiness if you'd just let me write about how miserable we are…" I say, half-kiddingly.

"No way! See that eighth word in the first sentence of her second paragraph?" he asked. I had to count in eight words to see what he was talking about: the "D" word, as in "My husband, in fact, has brought up divorce…"

"Oh, stop," I said to him. "You know what I mean…" I trailed off as he again, and most excitedly, interrupted me.

"NO, I DON’T know what you mean. What do you want to write about our private life for? It’s gonna get you in a lot of trouble," he warned. "WITH ME."

Red flashing lights.

"How? For being REAL in what I write?" I snap back, sensing a gauntlet being thrown and taking his cue, feel myself flush. Suddenly, I could see that this was a HOT BUTTON kind of event and realized I'd better take a closer look at Penelope's responses. Doing so, I could definitely sense a gender bias in the responses - the women more affirming and the men more questioning of what/why/how of what she was doing.

In spite of what Bob (and some others say) I still believe we can all learn from this kind of extreme personal transparency. What do you think?


Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

How To Save One's Self

The Lady in the Wood found a couple of blog posts over on Slow Leadership and thought some of us might find them interesting:

Blog post about “hooks”
How to save yourself from being hooked again
If you ever say, too late, “It’s got me again,” this article is for you.
Hooks: Ego. Desire. Being a savior. Gossip. Boredom. Ambition.

How to escape being hooked:
Sit down and work out your personal hooks.
Recognize the physical and mental signs of being hooked.
As soon as you spot a hook, or realize it’s already in your mouth, stop.
Stop behaving like a helpless victim.
Explore what you did to let yourself be hooked (or get into a hook-able situation).
Resolve to keep avoiding the hooks.

******
Blog post about “time thieves”
How to win back large parts of your day.
The five least recognized thieves of productive time:
Holding grudges
Scoring petty points
Jealousy
The habit of gossiping
Showing-off

The Lady in the Wood
“O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.” ~ Mevlana Rumi 13th century sufi poet and mystic

Six Sigma Sourcing

By Maureen Sharib

There recently was a hue and pilloried cry over in a string on ERE connected to an article called “Seven Secrets of Sourcing”.

It was related to my casual use of the “six sigma” terminology and my suggestion that it be considered in sourcing applications. I’ve been thinking this over and have been asking myself, WHY NOT apply a “six sigma” methodology to the sourcing process? Others have applied it to the recruiting process – there are some articles below that do just that:

“Everything in business — including sourcing and selection — is a process. If you can break down the process, identify customer requirements, and understand what causes deviations from those requirements, you can work towards improving the process.” ~ Scott Weston SPHR, CQM
5 Part ERE series: Six Sigma in Recruiting Friday, September 27, 2002

Others:
This case study illustrates how a pharmaceutical company applied selected DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) tools to develop a new recruiting process for sales representatives. Tools and activities are described along the IDOV (Identify, Design, Optimize, Verify) phases, which served as a guiding roadmap through this process design project.

The corporate staffing department performs a critical gateway function in a company, bringing people from the outside world into the organization. As such, recruiting has a huge impact on the quality of the assembled workforce. Attaining quality in recruiting and deployment is therefore a natural aim of an organization. How do you pursue quality in hiring and placement? Let’s look to a highly influential school of thought in quality management, called Six Sigma, as a model. Developed at Motorola in the 1980s and practiced by large corporations such as GE, Dow and Honeywell, Six Sigma is a quality initiative that uses data and statistical analysis to measure business processes and their outcomes. The cornerstone of the Six Sigma methodology is the concept of a defect. A defect is defined as a failure to deliver what the customer wants. The central principle of Six Sigma is that by measuring the defects a process produces, one can systematically identify and remove sources of error, so as to approach the ideal state of no defects at all. The standards of Six Sigma are very high: a business process has attained Six Sigma quality when only 3.4 defects occur per every one million opportunities. Six Sigma was originally applied in a manufacturing environment, but its principles are applicable to customer service and even internal services such as recruiting. ~Alice Snell

Six Sigma in HR Embracing this discipline can help your company perform at a higher level, improve customer satisfaction, and identify and resolve all sorts of problems.
~ Ranjan Sinha

Wikipedia tackles the issue as it applies to supply chain sourcing:
The design of responsive supply chains is becoming a priority for companies who must continually reduce costs and streamline processes to remain competitive in a dynamic global market where companies that do not anticipate challenges and prepare for the unexpected can vanish almost overnight. This means that an organization today must pay more attention to the business environment, get tighter with its customers, analyze performance data better, and avoid disasters. Six Sigma, which defines itself as a relentless quest for perfection through the disciplined use of fact-based, data-driven, decision-making methodology, is one methodology that companies can use to make their supply chains more responsive, foster innovation, and improve quality across the board. When properly applied, this ultimately leads to lower costs, greater profits, greater customer satisfaction rates and earnings per share for the shareholders, which is why Six Sigma has caught on at a number of large enterprises. But it's no light undertaking - it requires massive commitment from the CEO down, considerable amounts of training and application, master black belts, black belts, and green belts, and operational changes across the board. In addition, it often requires new mindsets, new methodologies, new technologies, new performance metrics, and, most importantly, new incentives. Which leads one to ask, if an enterprise is not a large enterprise with a large spend, large budgets, and the time to transform, is it worth it?

If you’re truly interested in flexing your minds and learning more, go to these google pages and take your pick of many, many articles on the subject.


The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

Hubris and Devil's Advocacy

Dr Earl R. Smith posted an interesting question over on LinkedIn that has received 35 FAST answers in 5 hours! You can view the string here.
How do you deal with professional 'Devil's Advocates'?
The dictionary defines this behavior as “One who argues against a cause or position, not as a committed opponent but simply for the sake of argument or to determine the validity of the cause or position.” We all encounter this type. I'm not talking about someone who is good at brainstorming or out of the box thinking - but a reflexive behavior - always taking the other side of the initial position put forward whether they believe in it or not. My question is: How do you deal with them? What strategies have you found that work? ... that don't work?


He also asked another interesting question three days ago on LinkedIn that has garnered 36 responses - You can view the string here.
How do you deal with hubris? The dictionary defines hubris as excessive pride displayed by a character and often taking the form of a boastful comparison of the self to the divine, the gods, or other higher powers. It is most often used as a negative term implying arrogant, excessive self-pride. We all encounter these types of people. My question is: What strategies have you found effective in dealing with them? What do you do when you encounter hubris?

What do you think? How do you deal with the two issues above?

When the Dollar Hits the Deal

By Maureen Sharib

There’s an interesting article today in the NYTimes about the sale of the Dow Jones Company from the hands of the Bancroft family to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation which has offered $5 billion to buy Dow Jones.

It appears that the employees of the Wall Street Journal are alarmed at what may happen to their bastion of consciousness within Dow Jones, where there’s “a real culture of passion for the truth, for shining lights in dark places and making the mysterious understood,” said one reporter, who asked for anonymity, fearing a backlash.

“So a possible takeover by the News Corporation — the deal is now in the hands of the Bancroft family after the offer received board approval — has placed an unusual strain on the company and its employees. Tensions have risen…”

“We understand that for the Bancrofts this is a choice between getting much richer, and holding onto something because they believe in it,” a reporter said. “What they may not realize is that many of us in the newsroom have made the same choice. There are a lot of people here who could be traders or lawyers, people with M.B.A.’s, who could be making a lot more money. To us, this is not an abstract choice.”

It will be interesting to watch what happens in modern-day America.

Read the whole interesting article here.



UPDATEDow Jones Agrees to Be Bought by Murdoch
August 1
Rupert Murdoch has sealed a deal to buy Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion, ending a century of family ownership and adding a crown jewel to his global media empire, News Corp.

The companies said in the wee hours of Wednesday morning that they signed a definitive merger agreement after the deal won sufficient support to pass from a deeply divided Bancroft family, which has controlled the storied newspaper publisher for generations.

Read the whole thing HERE.




The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

Growth and Development/Biz Dev

The Ten Pillars of Leadership and Business Development

(1) Leaders must be willing to be highly visible during crisis.
(2) Leaders must be willing to take a stand- based on their vision and their values.
(3) Leaders must be willing to be fully engaged with the four focus areas of their being: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
(4) Leaders must be willing to build deep pockets of social capital by designing a network based on diversity.
(5) Leaders must be willing to overcome the growing tide of cynicism in the business world and define an upbeat style of leadership.
(6) Leaders must be willing to push the edges of innovation.
(7) Leaders must be willing to show their employees that they love and care for them.
(8) Leaders must be willing to listen to the grapevine and then build a sense of community based on what he/she hears in the grapevine.
(9) Leaders must be devoted to continuous improvement.
(10) Leaders must have a plan.

Read the whole thing here.

Top Five Hiring Mistakes Small Businesses Make

Gevity (Nasdaq:GVHR), which serves as the full-service human resources department for small and mid-sized businesses, today released its list of the top five hiring mistakes made by small businesses when recruiting and hiring employees. Developed from Cornell University/Gevity research and surveys of small business owners, the list is a handy tip sheet for recruiting and hiring top talent.

The top five hiring mistakes -- and how to avoid them

1. Offering candidates uncompetitive compensation.

2. Relying strictly on traditional recruiting sources.

3. Failing to market your company.

4. Waiting until someone leaves -- or is long gone -- to fill critical positions.

5. Hiring solely based on job fit, not organization fit.

Read the whole thing here.

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

Names Sourcing - the Devil is in the Details!

Part II
By Maureen Sharib


Names sourcing follows two distinct paths and we're talking apples and oranges here. Internet sourced names delivers a different product than Telephone sourced names. It is possible to up your return on Internet names though with the highly refined and honed skills of those pulling them - guys like Glenn, Steve, Shally and a few others demonstrate this to us everyday and companies realize this. In all probability, these guys aren't relying on names services to feed their hungry channels - they're going outside those boxes that are being used by the masses and creating unique results with their imaginative and deeply honed skills. Their results, in all probability, more than likely triple the casual searcher's finds. In other words, great Internet sourcers can deliver a more lasered and unique candidate than what is traditionally available from the "services". This is a complicated subject and we could go on for many more paragraphs discussing the refinement levels of Internet Sourcers. This is a subject that is better addressed by one of them.

I believe the numbers I presented in Part I below (25/100, 100/100) are the numbers that make ordinary Internet "services" sourcing tick and are the numbers that make Telephone sourcing tick.

Either set of numbers delivers immediate value AND ongoing value. I believe telephone sourced names delivers a different value than Internet sourced names and I believe Internet sourced names by great researchers delivers much higher value than research from a simple to ordinarily skilled Internet researcher. Of course it gets messy. It's hard to measure and someone said it well on one of the boards, names sourcing might be one of those things that can't be measured. As Richard Stack, President of RightFish recently noted, also on the boards, "there are various of other quality metrics that need to be considered, like uniqueness of candidate, qualifications/fitment, interview suitability, and competitor representation within the list itself, to name a few." I agree with him, again, when he says, "the residual value of quality name generation and candidate discovery typically goes unmeasured". I believe the voices that should be listened to on the subject are the voices that are actually in the trenches doing it.

Despite the hammering and yammering and jackknifing that is going on over this subject and all the current writhing commotion that is attempting to put names sourcing "in its place", and understanding there are other costs associated with handling these hires, think about it; what do even ten hires normally cost you in your organization? I offer that it's a whole lot more, and I mean a whole lot more, than the amount of money names sourcing costs you plus your costs of ownership.

From this point forward I can't really speak about the companies that are aggressively adding thousands of names per year into their pipelines because the projects (mine) really aren't much older than two years so to report what it is in the third year I cannot. But I can guess and my guess is that I'm going to be doing more of these large volume projects in the future for many more companies.

I can also tell you, once again, from my own experience, and for me, THIS is the real equalizer, I have hundreds of repeat customers and they would not be using me over and over again if what I was representing wasn't working. Names Sourcing has traditionally been the backroom secret everyone didn't want to talk about. Now that it's being discussed there are plenty of people howling. Interesting, isn't it?

"The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep." ~ Edgar Watson Howe

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

Names Sourcing: The Devil is in the Details!

Part I
By Maureen Sharib



There was a question on the boards early this month over on ERE that asked a very perceptive question:
“The thing is - if I am able to generate 50 names and profile those and we receive a hire from that great - however if we receive a hire from that and are able to generate relationships with the remaining 49 or so - how do you determine that value in terms of dollars, or can you? Say 6 months down the road one of those relationship benefits another job req and a another hire - how's that determined?”

All I can offer on this subject is my own boots on the ground experience. I have a few customers who use me for ongoing name generation for very large projects. Their needs are constant and pretty consistent and run into the thousands of names per year. What I am told, and what I can relay back to you, is that the pipelines they are building are delivering ever-increasing returns. In other words, if I give them 100 telephone sourced names on a particular project, they’re very likely to make 2-5 hires out of those names immediately, but the equally important component of this conundrum is that they continue to make more hires from those names as time goes on.

For instance, out of their initial investment of $4200, they can make three hires pretty quickly, in months 1 and 2. In months 3-6 they may make four more. In months 7-12 they may make a couple more. Let’s say they made 8 -10 hires in the first year (my hands-on experience tells me they make more than twice that number, but for sake of argument here and because the sourcing naysayers have such a strong and loud prejudice against these numbers being presented, much less accepted, by the recruiting community, I am offering about a third* of what I know is really possible) out of all 100 telephone sourced names pipelined in that space in that year. Even a third makes the numbers rock, which, in turn, makes the Industry rock. There are “potentially” 90-92 hires left in that batch, right?

Where do you think they go? What are the chances that some more of them might switch jobs in Year 2? Statistics show that a worker between the ages of 18 and 38 change jobs an average of 10 times. That works out to a job change about every 2 1/3 years. So put a pencil to it, what are the chances that those 90 plus remaining mighty change jobs in Year 2? Pretty good? Do you think that there maybe exists the possibility that another 5-10 out of that remaining bunch might be on-boarded as well in Year 2? My customers do. My customers are doing it. They are developing viable processes internally to develop these potential hires and they are “developing” them. The fish tanks are growing.

Today, there are 149 million people in our nation's workforce. Every year, approximately 50 million people leave their jobs. And approximately 50 million people find new jobs. That means one-third of our entire workforce turns over each year because of new opportunities. And, remember, the average American worker has had nine jobs by the time he or she is 34 years old because of new opportunities.

Now, there’s something being missed out there in the noun confusion between Telephone sourced names and Internet sourced names. If you “pull down” 100 names off one of the more popular Internet names services, like spoke, zoominfo or alwayson, there’s a good chance that the name is no longer there, the name’s title is misappropriated, the information is just plain faulty or the person is not suited to do what you need them to do. If you receive 100 telephone sourced names, you’re receiving, if you receive them from a names sourcer who knows what he’s doing, names and titles from specific companies, doing specific jobs, working specific verticals, holding specific titles. You just can’t get any more exacting than that. It’s what I am beginning to think of as extreme recruiting.

It takes far longer to hash through (interminably long, in my opinion) 100 names off zoom than it takes to sit down, fresh, at your desk in the morning and begin calling every single name with a guaranteed title, many of them with direct dials, from a “clean” telephone sourced names list that your telephone names sourcer emailed to you the evening before. If you find 25 out of the 100 off a names service like zoom, spoke or alwayson, that are "still there" AND able to do the job you need them to do for you you’ll be lucky. Out of those same 25, it’s a good bet, if it’s a challenging space you’re working to fill in, many of them will turn off to your approach because they’ve been approached over and over and over as a result of having found themselves landed in the file cabinets of those same organizations. In other words, if you can find them, and I’m referring to someone with “ordinary” search skills, don’t you think there’s a good chance they’ve already been “found”? What are the chances they haven’t?

Out of the telephone sourced names, and I’ve iterated this before, you’ll find all 100. Quickly. Easily. Efficiently. Smoothly. One reason for this is because a good names sourcer will assure you that you will find all of them; they will guarantee it. These names are custom sourced for you alone. They’re living inside the mortared walls and shuttered windows of companies and are usually very receptive to your novel approach. They are wildly fruitful.

The big elephant in the room here is this: what’s your time worth as a recruiter and, the even bigger elephant is, do you have the stomach to do the turnover that is required when “ferreting” out names? Few do and Time, my friend is the only thing in this world we can never get more of. It is truly priceless. Names sourcing is an incredibly time consuming process.

* Before the sourcing nay-sayers rush in screaming, understand that these greater results are wholly contingent in what space is being sourced and hired in. The claim, "I am offering about a third of what I know is really possible" is reflective of hiring in a relatively "average" environment (meaning the number of potential candidates in a space is not "challenged" as it is these days in, say, the defense or bio/pharm space or certain IT verticals) and the recruiters skill level in approaching and recruiting the truly passive candidate is very good.

Your mileage may vary. The early days of on-boarding a successful telephone names sourcing team will probably experience lesser results with strength growing in proportion to the length of time the group is in existence and the skill levels of your recruiters handling these unique and "truly passive" candidates.



Tomorrow: Part II

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

Compensation Trends for Recruiters

Bullhorn Report: Compensation Trends for Recruiters

This 2006 research report, sponsored by Bullhorn, covers trends in compensation for recruiters. The data in this report is based on responses from recruiters in every industry throughout the U.S. collected during the second quarter of 2006. The key trends outlined in this report are:
• Recruiter pay continues to outpace that of other jobs
• Average salary is $82,000
• Increases in variable compensation are more frequent than increases to base salary

The average tenure for a recruiter is slightly less than 5 years, which is better than average when compared to other industries. The national average for employee turnover is currently at 14.4 percent, so approximately one out of every six employees leaves a company each year. 5 Only 25 percent of respondents had been with their firm less than a year, reflecting above-average retention rates in the industry.

Read the whole thing here.

Do these numbers correspond to your industry experience?

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase! Telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com

An Ethics Test

If you were allowed to see tomorrow's stock pages, let's say it was lying on a magic stock market bench in your favorite park in your favorite city and nobody was around but you and you were the only one on the planet, in that city, in that park, on that bench sitting next to the fluttering pages, and you could see that the date on those fluttering pages were one week from today, and you sat down on that magic bench, in your favorite park, in your city, that was on this planet, and picked up and read the fluttering stock market pages, what would you do? Be honest...would you apply what you read in the fluttering stock market pages to your stock purchases over the next week. Remember, no one but you has this knowledge.

Would you? Be honest!

Anyone else "feel" this way?

I received a recent AlwaysOn Newsletter that included an article entitled “Lessons: How to be an Entrepreneur”. A subject I am keenly interested in as I believe this subject holds the secret to the new breed of worker that will bring innovation and stamina to the American workforce of tomorrow, I eagerly click on it only to be confronted with an opportunity to “view” an interview of Blake Krikorian of Sling Media give his take on the subject.

Immediately disappointed (and recognizing my first writing “subject” of the day), I was looking to read something; that’s why I have developed a voice in this medium – I like to read rather than watch, write rather than speak and, the most important part, be alone most of the time. Nonetheless (but slightly annoyed), I clicked on it to watch the short video to hear him say, among other things, the following very helpful advice about entrepreneurship, “There’s a million reasons why you won’t be successful. It doesn’t matter…don’t give up.”

I had to go back twice to get the quote right, and I think I did, but I’m not absolutely as positive as if I had been able to copy and paste his words into this post.

What’s up with this move to video on many of our pages? Is it the natural progression of the medium or is it just a shortcut to typin’ out a whole buncha’ words that might have to be grammatically formatted correctly with commas, quotes, etc., set with links, spellchecked and maybe rewritten? Is there something that stands to be lost in this transition or something more to be gained?

I know I sound like an old fuddy-duddy railing agin’ the times but I think there’s something at work here beneath the surface some may not have considered. Maybe it's my own reluctance to be seen in front of a camera - at 53, and as vain as I am, I know in my heart of hearts that the bloom is off the rose. Part of the charm of this medium, for me, though, is the ability to express myself in words, in private, in the quiet of my own envelope. At this point in my life the best place to be is at home, in front of the fireplace with my laptop in my lap. It was the noise and hullabaloo of the television that drove me out of that room in the first place. Now I get this creeping sensation that the noise and the havoc are returning, that my solitude is again going to be invaded and that there stands a chance voices like mine (as if anyone cares) and others much more highly valued will go, silently, into another dark night.

Can someone light the way for me? And oh, by the way, for those of you who read this as discouraging criticism from me, remember, “There’s a million reasons why you won’t be successful. It doesn’t matter…don’t give up.”

;)

“It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.” ~K.T. Jong


Recruiting.com. Talkdigger, Slashdot, Digg, Delicious.

The BOOK OF SCRIPTICALS is ready for purchase!
Safe telephone names sourcing scripts THAT WORK!

Looking for a talented Names Sourcer or for Trainers to teach you or yours how to names source? Look in the Database section of the Sourcers Guild!

“We will either find a way or make one.” ~ Hannibal

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer/Trainer and Sourcers Guild Guide
513 899 9628
maureen at techtrak.com\