Amybeth Hale – Research Goddess

Last Wednesday, I wrote a post about how I believe that sourcing is not dying, but evolving. I ended the post with a teaser about what I believe sourcing will evolve into in the coming years. I certainly don’t think the need for the skills which sourcers possess will go away, but I feel like other aspects of a sourcer’s repertoire will become more in-demand as our communication methods continue to change.

As I mentioned last week, human interaction is an integral part of any profession that falls into the same classification pool as sourcing, talent attraction / acquisition, recruiting, HR, etc. To ignore the fact that our jobs are very ‘high-touch’ would be foolish, no matter how deep into the technical aspect of sourcing we may be. In the coming years, and I think especially over the course of 2010, I see sourcing taking on a huge role of proactive communication. Since the accessibility of information via social networks keeps getting easier and easier, I believe being a good relationship-builder is going to go up in value. Please note: I do not believe this means that sourcing will inevitably equal recruiting. The reason I know this is because not all recruiters know how to build relationships. You all know what I’m talking about – we all know at least one recruiter who is a script-reading robot with the interpersonal skills of a rock.

Sourcers who are good communicators are going to be the goodwill ambassadors and (I hope Glen will forgive me for this) the talent pipeline builders. Sourcing is going to take on a very proactive marketing-type role, involving such things as interaction in discussion forums, posing questions on LinkedIn, writing for and selecting content for a company blog, getting involved in the Chamber of Commerce, attending networking events, and getting the word out about either their companies or their clients.

We have seen throughout the history of recruiting how important building true relationships is, and sadly I feel that recruiting, and thus sourcing, has become more transactional in recent years. Sourcing of the future will move away from the transactional and more toward the strategic, as people become more web savvy and numb to blanket messaging. Sourcing, I believe, will begin to take on more of a proactive than a reactive role. Since more of the technical search aspect of it can (and will) be automated, this opens up a window of time to start being proactive. Consider this: traditionally, sourcers wait to research until they receive a search request from a recruiter. I think the future role of sourcing will be for sourcers to continually have their ‘antennae’ up for good talent, and to also take the opportunity to start developing those initial relationships so that when timing is appropriate, the recruiters can approach them warmly with job opportunities.

There is no cookie-cutter mold into which a sourcer fits. At SourceCon 2007, during my presentation about what true research is, I stopped for an interactive portion and polled the audience of researchers for their educational and professional backgrounds. I asked 5 people to share, and not one of them had the same educational OR professional career path. So, when thinking about who would be the best types of people to hire for this future sourcing role, two in particular come to mind. They might surprise you a little:

• Public relations specialists: In the ‘entry level’ years of PR, traditionally individuals will conduct research and create ‘pitch lists’ for their companies or their clients. While they’re honing these research skills, they are also taking lessons on pitching, managing campaigns, and client interaction from their senior coworkers. Translate this into a sourcing role: you’ve got someone who knows how to find the right people, and then who knows how to interact with them professionally and get them excited about a company or a job opportunity.
• English majors: I am the daughter of an English teacher, and I used to help Mom grade her students’ grammar papers. But earning a degree in English goes well beyond knowing proper grammar – you learn to master the high standards of accuracy, clarity, and finesse of the language as well as information synthesis, summarization, and analysis of literature. As search engines strive toward semantic comprehension, a person who has studied sentence mapping and understands the historical progression of the meanings of various words and phrases will be able to pair this with searching a social network to find the right people. And with the increasingly lackadaisical attitude toward proper grammar and punctuation in communication due to spellcheck and text message abbreviations, someone who has mastered these skills will be highly sought-after in a role where good communication is so crucial.

I have mentioned the PR job description in a couple of blog postings, discussing the similarities between its and recruiting’s job duties. English, on the other hand, I would guess is a bit of a surprise to some, but I truly believe that will be a sought-after major in the coming years.

As we observe and experience the change in our job functions, let’s not forget the importance of knowing the basics. Understanding Boolean will always be key to successful sourcing. But understanding the rising value of strategic proactive relationship discovery and development will help you evolve with the position. Work on GOOD networking skills. Start learning about semantic search. Educate yourself on professional communication skills. Study the people who really know how to cultivate relationships. And don’t believe for a second that sourcing is dying – it’s just getting a facelift.

I’ve seen the topic “sourcing is dying”, written in a couple of different forms, in a couple of articles over the last year. Without any disrespect to my colleagues who have penned these writings, I must disagree with your sentiments. Here are some of those articles:

• Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.08: The Death of Sourcing (February 2009)
• Is Sourcing Dead? (March 2009)
• The Death of Sourcing (November 2009)

Sourcing is not dead; it’s not dying; it’s not even on a respirator. It’s simply evolving.

Where sourcing over the last several years has been about finding the hard-to-find folks by manipulating complex Boolean strings, with the growing popularity of social media technology, finding profiles, resumes, and contact information online has gotten easier. But this absolutely does NOT mean that sourcing is dying. All it simply means is that information availability is changing and the role of sourcing must change with it. This is not unlike any other job function – when certain aspects of a job function become automated or simplified, it means that other aspects of that function grow in importance. Hence, leading to job function evolution.

Sourcing is not just about digging up information, regardless of what some (including myself! yeah I admit it) have said over the years. Any profession that falls under the umbrella of recruiting, talent attraction, talent acquisition, HR, or however you want to classify it, contains an element of human interaction. Thus, communication plays a role, with varying degrees depending on where you stand. With the automation of SOME parts of sourcing, the communication aspect of the role is being amplified. Notice the emphasis on “some”, because you cannot, and SHOULD not in my opinion, automate personal touch.

With social media technologies becoming more mainstream tools in a sourcing toolbelt, the difficulty of finding people is diminished. However, as Glen Cathey states in his article, finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is hard. We’re not just sourcing for a needle in a haystack these days. With the economic downturn and unemployment in the double digits now, we are all of a sudden searching for a needle in ten haystacks. Though finding people in general has been made easier, we still must find that right person.

With that being said, I believe that over the next several years, sourcing will evolve into a new role – retaining of course the technical elements of Boolean search, but to a smaller degree. With tools that can automatically generate complicated Boolean search strings and query multiple search engines or networks at once, much of the technical knowledge needed to be a successful sourcer can be automated. I will stress here that knowing advanced Boolean as a sourcer is still, and I believe always will be, a must. You wouldn’t want a teacher who didn’t know her ABC’s, or a physician who couldn’t pass basic anatomy, would you?

So, what will sourcing evolve into? Well – in the interest of encouraging you to come back and read more, and just because I love the suspense, I’m going to leave you hanging until next Monday Stay tuned for part 2 on the Evolution of Sourcing.

There was a LOT of great feedback from my post on why recruiters should care about marketing, advertising, and PR. I hope that everyone who read it got some new knowledge and possibly some ideas on how to improve your overall recruitment strategy by grasping the functions (and the benefit) of each of these important components of running a successful business.

There was one particular comment I wanted to pull out and focus on, because it takes the importance of marketing and ties right back to my original love, which is research. The commenter, Steve, is a former executive VP of Sales and Marketing for a Fortune 500 company (and he’s also my boyfriend’s dad!). Here is what he said:

“…I am only going to touch on the marketing phase. The true function of marketing is research. The job of the marketing department is to search for products or services needed by the end user(the customer). It is their job to work closely with the engineering and sales departments, giving these the departments the proper research and data needed to have a successful launch of a product. Of course there is the glitz of coming up with the proper slogan, packaging and promotional items, but these are very minor compared to the mountain of research which must be done first if a product or service is going to be successful.“

You can’t read this assessment and not fit it right into recruiting! The glitz of recruiting is building the relationships with the candidates and the clients, and ultimately making the hire, but there would be no candidates if there were no research done to find them. Anyone who functions as a researcher knows and can absolutely relate to the vision of a mountain of research, whether for leads or for industry knowledge. These are both vital for a recruiter to perform at his/her peak potential and match ideal candidates to their clients. Having said this, we know that the research would be worthless if it weren’t put to good use, such as a recruiter turning it into a hire. Researcher needs recruiter as much as recruiter needs researcher. So, as Steve observed, all parts of the business operation must work closely together and in harmony in order to have a ’successful launch’ – i.e. a new employee.

Thanks for your keen observation Mr. D!

I was going through some of my old blog posts when I stumbled across one of the very first series of articles that I wrote, discussing the role researchers and sourcers play in their companies. I have decided to update and re-post them over the next few weeks. In this final week, we’ll discuss and dispel some common myths associated with the role of the researcher/sourcer on a recruitment team. Enjoy!

So, I’ve talked about what a researcher does and doesn’t do. I’ve given you some of my thoughts on where to look for a researcher for your office, and what qualities in an individual might lead them to be a good researcher. I’ve also given you some insight into the day in the life of a researcher. What’s left? How about some fun things: some common misconceptions of what a researcher is. Yes, I believe every researcher has beaten this topic to death at some point or another. But now, it’s my turn! The goal of this is to shed some light on some of the things that are incorrectly associated with internet research, and hopefully offer some suggestions on the correct way to classify this increasingly vital part of a recruiting operation.

Myth #1: “The researcher will find you candidates.”

You may think, ‘How is this incorrect? That’s what researchers do isn’t it? Source candidates?’ Not exactly….as I’ve mentioned in prior postings, a researcher’s duty is to source leads. YOUR job, as a recruiter, is to turn them into candidates. Now, there are times with this does apply; for example if you have a researcher who also pre-screens the contacts/leads they source before passing them along to the recruiter. But for the most part, we researchers generate the leads, and you recruiters qualify them and turn them into candidates. Call this a simple play on words or whatever you like, but I felt it needed to be included here.

Myth #2: “Just find me resumes.”

Sure, your researcher will find you resumes. Some of the time. But depending on what resources they are provided, the majority of the leads that your researcher can and will provide you with might just be a name, title, and method of contact. Perhaps also a short bio. When doing high-volume searches, I do use pay-for job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, etc.) for portions of the search, however when working on one-off searches, I will typically start with social networks. Most (good) researchers do not rely solely on resume boards. Should I even go so far as to say a good researcher will not only also use professional networking sites like LinkedIn to source? I might get some hate mail for saying that, but it’s true. Researchers will from time to time come across an HTML resume or a personal website with a resume posted on it. But most of their leads may be simply names and contact information. Just be realistic, and get excited if your researcher DOES give you a resume! Don’t get salty if ‘all’ they give you is a list of 50 names and contact information. Get pumped about all the networking you can do when you call those people!

Myth #3: Being an internet researcher is a ground-level starting point for becoming a recruiter.

Not in every case! Recruiting professionals across the board talk about this concept of the “junior recruiter” – some stating this as correct and others calling it a false assumption. This label is as dumb as thinking that all tall kids want to grow up to be professional basketball players. I for one have no desire to recruit. I enjoy the thrill of hunting down leads. Other researchers I know partake in some of the recruiting process and yes, they would aspire to be a recruiter one day. But don’t pigeonhole your researcher into being fast tracked to the divine status of “recruiter”. Take a few moments to find out what excites them and encourage them to develop their skills and pursue their own career goals.

Myth #4: I can do my own research. I don’t need to waste money on hiring a researcher.

Um, I’m curious how you successfully keep up with your own industry and not work 24/7 if this is your attitude toward research! In a conversation I had with a recruiter who had taken some time off, he mentioned that for two weeks prior to getting back on the phones he spent at least 10 hours a day researching the latest news in his industry. Yes, you read that correctly – 10 hours a day, for two weeks. And this recruiter still uses researchers on a daily basis! I presented this question to my LinkedIn network and was shocked at the number of responses I got that said “No, I do not use a researcher; I do my own research.” In my personal (honest) opinion, this is very cocky and I can’t imagine that many of those recruiters are big billers (as I prepare to be sent more hate mail for saying so!). As a recruiter, your bread and butter is earned by being on the phones during the day, not searching news sites and conducting research. I’ll bet the majority of those who do their own research do this on their own time – in the evenings and on the weekends – thus sacrificing family time and any resemblance of a personal life to do so. So, tell me again that research is easy and doesn’t take much time and that hiring a researcher wouldn’t be beneficial? Okay then…

Myth #5: 23 ways a researcher will help you make more placements in less time

I don’t think any explanation is needed here. This post is ALLLLLL kindsa wrong, IMHO! Please just read the list of what duties the author thinks a researcher can be responsible for and see if it doesn’t steam you. My favorite in this list has to be “watering plants”…

Myth #6: Researcher = data entry/PC troubleshooter/anything-I-don’t-feel-like-doing person

Yes, I think most researchers have a love for technology, which predisposes them to being good at all things computer-related. However, know that the more you ask your researcher to deviate from their research duties, the less time they will be able to spend on what you hired them to do – research! The last thing in the world you should be asking your researcher to spend a great deal of time on is data entry. This is a job for which you can hire someone at $8/hour. While it’s definitely part of what the job entails, using your researcher to do a large amount of data entry is, quite honestly, wasteful of your payroll dollars. A good friend of mine and former fellow researcher stated once that his job description was “All duties that no one else in the office wants to do.” Turning your researcher into a gopher is a gross misuse of talent and will inevitably turn your researcher off.

Remember – research is a vital part of your recruiting operation. There are four foundational parts of a successful recruiting office:

• Process (Operations)
• Client Relationships (and/or Business Development in agency settings)
• Recruitment
• Research

Eliminating any one of these components will cause your recruiting operation to run inefficiently, and research is an especially vital part of this foundation. Research is the backbone of the recruiting body; it supports and facilitates necessary information to reach the rest of the parts.

Don’t let the myths of what research is cloud its importance in the functioning of your recruiting practice. If you’re unsure how research will play an important role in your office, I urge you to contact someone who does use research and talk to them. Or you can call or email me; I’ll be more than happy to share my thoughts with you!

I hope this series of articles has helped you get ‘warm and fuzzy’ with research. My intent was to help the recruiting community better understand what research is and also learn about the thought process that goes behind it. Remember: researchers are real people too, and real important in the recruiting process! Even though we’re not actively generating the dollars, you really can’t put a price tag on the value that we bring to a recruiting operation.

I was going through some of my old blog posts when I stumbled across one of the very first series of articles that I wrote, discussing the role researchers and sourcers play in their companies. I have decided to update and re-post them over the next few weeks. This week, the article is about some of the daily activities that keep us researchers occupied. Hope you enjoy!

Bob: You see, what we’re actually trying to do here is, we’re trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work… so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late; I use the side door – that way Lumbergh can’t see me…and after that I just sort of space out for about an hour. I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

Sound like what a lot of people think you do as a researcher? Well, don’t feel alone! There are a lot of people out there in the recruiting community who have no clue what a day consists of for a researcher. I’ve had people ask me if I just stare at my screen all day or surf websites or just sit there and basically do nothing! While I do ‘stare at my screen’ a lot (been known to go cross-eyed on occasion!) what I do all day is not simply surfing websites. It’s more complicated than that, and in this posting I would like to walk you through a typical day (if that in fact even exists!!) of a researcher.

First of all, I think that it’s worth mentioning an article I wrote on my own blog, Effectively Managing Your Research Projects, at this point. The reason I think this is worth mentioning here is because it provides a rough guideline of how I actually (attempt to) organize myself each day. Now, as any researcher knows, you can plan the activities you want to do as much as possible, but there is always going to be something new that crosses your desk every day that will need your immediate attention. So – I think it’s a good idea to plan as much of your day as possible; but you must be willing to be flexible and take on new tasks as they come to you. Here are a couple of suggestions on how to determine what takes priority for new projects based on what I do personally:

1. Who has given you the new assignment, and what is their track record? If the person giving you a new/urgent assignment is someone who does so on a regular basis, you may want to question the actual urgency of what they need. If it’s from someone who normally follows your procedure for submitting search requests, then it’s probably something that does require your immediate attention. Also, if it is a request coming from the person who makes out your paycheck, you should probably do it first.
2. Is the client expecting results within a given timeframe? If the client company has been promised certain results by a certain time, then it might be a good idea to bump the new assignment to the top of your list. Now, if the timeframe is a bit unrealistic, it might be a good thing to speak to the recruiter about setting realistic expectations with their clients. But if your client, who will be the one cutting the placement fee check should you find them a good candidate, is expecting results, best to get them some.
3. What is the amount of time you’ll need to complete the project? If someone hands me an urgent project that is going to take 15 minutes or less to complete, then I’ll usually do it right then and there. If it’s a search assignment or another project that will take more than 30 minutes, then it gets FIFO’ed (first in, first out). There is no reason to put a bunch of 5-minute assignments in sequential order; you might as well just do them and get them out of the way.

OK – now that we’ve dealt with the ‘emergency projects’ which will more than likely be a daily occurrence, let’s move on to what is actually on the plan of attack to begin with. Here’s what a normal day is like for me:

1. I read through my RSS feeds. This gets me up to speed on today’s goings-on. I have an RSS feed specifically for recruiting/researching topics. I also have several other RSS categories for business, social media, telecommunications, and new technologies. This way I can not only stay on top of industry news and forward my coworkers good articles, but I can also find good passive candidates who might be quoted in a press release that comes through my feed.
2. I check my emails. I check to see if any new searches have come in since the previous day or if there are any responses to questions I may have asked of one of my associates. At this point, a lot of people like to close down their email and not touch it again until lunchtime, or the end of the day. I personally check my email periodically all day long due to the nature of what I do. It’s personal preference here. If you think you’re easily distracted by returning email messages, then I’d shut it down. But for most researchers, email is a main method of communication so it stays open all the time.
3. I look at my weekly project log. What did I decide last week that I needed to complete this week? How far have I gotten, and have the most important tasks at least been started?
4. I look at my Search Request Forms in my inbox. I use FIFO to complete my assignments. On a good day when I have very few interruptions, I can complete 2-3 search assignments. A lot of this is dependent on the difficulty of the assignment and/or the other activities I have to complete over the course of the day.
5. I check my search agents and saved searches. Currently I am working on several high-volume searches, and I utilize AIRS SourcePoint to manage search agents for my high-volume searches. I check these as well as several of my saved LinkedIn searches for new matches to my jobs, and to make sure they’re still yielding results. If the results have fallen off, I’ll take a moment to tweak the search.
6. I check in on Twitter and Facebook. Since AT&T has both Facebook and Twitter accounts that I help out with, I monitor these each day to see who’s been interacting with us. I’ll send replies as necessary, post interesting articles, and update our employee spotlights when needed.
7. I work on organizing my own research database as well as coming up with ways to keep our company databases in working order. This in itself could be a full time job! My goal is to spend a little time each day on database organization since in large quantities it is a pretty daunting task. Breaking it down into bite-sized pieces makes it a more manageable daily task.
8. At least once a week I try to learn something new in the realm of research. This could either be through a webinar I sign up for or perhaps a conversation with a more experienced research mentor.
9. Other random tasks that come up from time to time: email marketing campaigns, introduction to new employees, non-recruiting related research projects for my manager, corporate organization brain-storming sessions, reviewing and recommending new technology products, etc. These are not typically daily tasks but they are worth mentioning as they do come up frequently.

So, for those of you who thought your researcher just sits and stares blankly at their computer screen all day, think again! There are A LOT of things that researchers do on a daily basis, not the least of which is conducting search assignments. This is just one of many tasks for which a researcher is responsible. So the next time you think you catch your researcher “spacing out” at their desk, they are probably just trying to re-focus their eyes after having gone cross-eyed from looking at too much information.

I recently received a phone call from an old colleague of mine at a company we both used to work for. It was great to hear from him and to get caught up on the last several years. In our discussion, I discovered that the company has had a difficult time finding (and keeping) researchers who produced any kind of quality for the recruiters. There have been at least 3 researchers that have come and gone since I left and unfortunately they haven’t lasted long. I asked a little about the researchers and discovered that they were all fresh out of college when brought on. Which got me thinking about a couple of things…

This post is not to say that people who are fresh out of school can’t do recruiting research. They certainly can, and they can excel at it as well. But there are a couple of considerations that must be taken when you are looking to build your internet research team, the most important of which is this: you WILL get what you pay for. I have 2 suggestions for making investments in your research and ensuring that you don’t have a revolving door of researchers in your organization:

• If you need research and you need it now, hire for experience. Invest in a seasoned, experienced researcher who comes with knowledge of resources, procedures, recruiting tools, and industry. This will cost you however; good researchers typically command anywhere from $50,000 on up for base salary, based on how experienced they are. The return on your investment is that you will have a person who needs little training and who can hit the ground running upon being hired.
• If you need immediate cost effectiveness, go ahead and hire the new college graduate. But you will need to provide them with proper training, tools, and resources in order to protect your investment. Without proper training, you are setting a newbie up for failure from the get-go, and you are starting a revolving-door process that will end up costing you more in the long-run than if you invest a little initially to get your new researcher up to speed. Sending a soldier into battle with no armor will almost guarantee them not to return alive.

Sadly, a lot of what I have seen over the years is the cheap hybrid of these two: hire a new college graduate, and expect them to be a great researcher with just a cheat sheet and a free LinkedIn account. While one in a million will find a way to make it happen (and if you have that individual – they deserve a raise or you’ll lose them fast), most will flounder without appropriate training and resources. You really can’t have your cake and eat it too in this situation. Research is not, and should not be, an afterthought on a recruiting team. It’s not something that, upon signing up for a free LinkedIn account or running someone through one free “Sourcing 101″ webinar, will yield much quality. If you care for the success of your researcher, and your company, you need to invest – either by hiring experience or investing in appropriate training for your brand new researcher.

I was going through some of my old blog posts when I stumbled across one of the very first series of articles that I wrote, discussing the role researchers and sourcers play in their companies. I have decided to update and re-post them over the next few weeks. This week, the article is about some of the skills a good researcher/sourcer should possess and some ways to determine a good researcher in an interview. Hope you enjoy!

One of the most common questions I get asked by recruiting firm owners is “What should I look for when I want to hire a researcher?” As I outlined in my first post, I would like to go through some details of what I believe to be good qualities an excellent researcher might have. This will not be a complete list, however I think that as you conduct your search, you will find that your most qualified candidates will possess several of these particular skills.

Before I get into this, I would like to first give you a couple of examples of the kind of value that can be derived from hiring a researcher into your office:

• Many recruiting offices have accounted for between $200,000 – $800,000 in placements in a given year from candidates sourced through research
• Researchers I have spoken with have told me that their total billing dollars made up between 20% – 60% of their total office billings.

In 2005, I myself was responsible for over $400,000 in billings for my office at the time which was about 33% of our total office billings, so you can see the value that can be brought to your office by having a full time researcher. Keep in mind these numbers do not even reflect the billings that come about from 2^nd and 3^rd degree candidates which could account for millions more. Please keep this in mind as you’re considering bringing on a full time, dedicated researcher.

On to the meat and potatoes: What should you look for when screening potential sourcers? Everyone has their own opinion on what makes a good researcher; these are simply what I have seen as common qualities in the good researchers whom I know.

1. Paralegal or Library Science background. I have found that some of the best researchers have these kind of backgrounds – why is that? Well a colleague of mine is a graduate of Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science. I looked at some of the courses offered in this program, and they include such things as ‘Organization of Knowledge’, ‘Reference and Online Services’, ‘Subject Analysis’, ‘Online Information Systems’, ‘Searching Electronic Databases’, ‘Collection Management’, ‘Research Methods’, and the list goes on and on. In my opinion anyone who has studied the Organization of Knowledge at the collegiate level would probably make a good researcher. From a paralegal perspective, you’ve got to know how to research and be thorough to be a good paralegal; both qualities carry over into becoming a good researcher.
2. Speed reader. I don’t necessarily think that ‘speed reading’ is the important factor here, but someone who can scan and summarize an article quickly would make a great researcher. What I do all day long is….read. So in order to maximize my efficiency, I must read quickly without missing important information. Bottom line – a good researcher scans quickly but knows what buzzwords to look for.
3. Addicted to information. Almost all good researchers that I’ve talked to have RSS feeds that they read on a daily basis. Someone who loves to learn and loves information will certainly excel as a researcher. RSS feeds have made it easy for us addicts to get our daily fix without spending all day looking at blogs, news releases, and article reviews. A person who likes to read books in their spare time would also be included in this category. I’m not talking about Danielle Steele novels here – I’m talking about industry related reading, success principles, history, technology, etc. Constantly in the learning mode. One of my favorite quotes is “If you’re not green and growing, then you are red and rotting.”
4. Can “connect the dots”. I also like to call this ‘following the White Rabbit’. Sometimes as a researcher you will be given incomplete information. A good researcher will be able to take the bits and pieces they have been given and create a complete picture from it.
5. “Outside of the box” thinker. Yes, incredibly cliché, I know. But, when you consider that researchers will have to rely sometimes on crumbs of clues to find the perfect candidate, they must have creative minds in order to find what they need. Let’s take a look at the definition of “outside the box”: according to Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, the definition is ‘beyond conventional thought or practice; creative and unorthodox in thought or practice’. We are an odd bunch, aren’t we? But that’s what makes us excellent at what we do – we can look at a resource and see things that others cannot.
6. Familiarity with current technology, especially technology pertinent to recruiting and/or sourcing. Good research candidates will not look at you like a cow looking at a new gate if you mention the words LinkedIn, social networking, blogosphere, technorati, etc. Let’s face it, everyone is familiar with Google, so if you ask anyone if they know how to ‘Google’, they will say yes. They will tell you that they typed in a word in Google once and ‘conducted research’. WRONG!! I made the mistake of asking this in an interview, and after the lady got hired I had to show her how to bring up Google in a web browser. Needless to say, she did not last long.
7. Well networked. Good researchers know everybody. They have a friend who mountain bikes with this guy who works at a company that manufactures XYZ and he reports to…you get the picture. Not only do they know everybody, but those they don’t know, they know where to look to find them. Using public records, white pages, Zoom Info and similar resources, or simply going to Yahoo, they can find the unfindable people. These folks will typically have over 200 people in their cell phone as well.
8. Good data entry skills. I look forward to the day when misinterpretation of research responsibilities is squashed forever. Even though, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t believe that it is the sole responsibility of a researcher to do data entry, this is a skill that needs to be present. It would behoove a researcher to have better keyboarding skills than the classic “hunt and peck” method.
9. Prior experience in recruiting OR human resources. Not at the top of my list, but I think a potential candidate should get a couple brownie points for having prior experience. This was not the case for me of course: the job I held right before I began researching, believe it or not, was waiting tables. I always considered the ‘must have experience’ clause in a job description to be a bit of a Catch-22 – how am I supposed to gain experience if no one will give me the opportunity to earn it? But if your candidate has been in a recruiting environment or has worked in human resources before, they at least know how the operation works.
10. Specific certifications and/or training. AIRS has a ‘Certified Internet Recruiter’ designation. Anyone who has taken this certification course should have a good beginning foundation for becoming a researcher (however, experience speaks louder than a certification!). If anyone else knows of other specific research-geared certifications, I’d love to know about them!

A lot of you at this point are thinking “Well this is all great stuff, but how do you find out in an interview if a candidate possesses these skills?” Here are a couple of quick suggestions I can offer for some good screening techniques:

1. Ask for specific examples of information they stay current with – what interests them, what they enjoy reading (if they like to read, that is!), etc.
2. In talking with a fellow researcher while writing this, we came up with a great test to give potential research candidates: give an article, maybe two pages in length, and set a time limit in which it must be read, and then ask the candidate to summarize. The catch in this exercise would be to put a vital piece of information buried in the middle, and perhaps another at the very end, so that someone who could scan quickly yet pick up important details would see it.
3. Give them a simple search task. Either ask them to verbally walk you through their course of action, or give it to them to complete while they are there, or as a ‘homework assignment’.
4. Ask them what they think would be the most interesting aspect of conducting internet research.
5. Find out what the breadth of their social media presence is – what networks are they part of, and how active are they in online communities.
6. A fun screening technique: Rob McIntosh and Jim Stroud each put out a challenge for sourcers to “find their dog”. I know that Rob used his puzzle back in 2005 to help identify potential sourcing candidates for his company. (by the way, I did find Jim’s dog, and no, I won’t tell you how J)

I speak from experience here: finding the right candidate to be a researcher can be a daunting task. I’ve had to interview potential research candidates in the past and there’s no one “cookie cutter” type of candidate you can look for. These listed skills however should help you in looking for the right mix of skill and experience that will work within your office. Just keep in mind that as researchers, we don’t really carry a ‘book of business’ or have a set educational path or really even a universal job description, so it may be tough to gauge from just one interview if your candidate would work. You may even consider asking someone you know who already employs a researcher if you could borrow that person for a telephone interview.

Regardless, for those of you out there who have been teetering on the fence about whether or not to hire a researcher, I hope you will consider it more now. A dedicated researcher can bring a lot of revenue to your office – you just have to know what to look for!

In my next post, I would like to walk you through a typical day of a typical researcher (if one were to exist!). I will do my best to tackle the job description aspect of internet research – we don’t just stare at our computer screens all day like a lot of people think. Honest!

I was going through some of my old blog posts when I stumbled across one of the very first series of articles that I wrote, discussing the role researchers and sourcers play in their companies. I have decided to update and re-post them over the next few weeks. This week, the article is about some of the job duties for which researchers/sourcers should and should not be responsible. Hope you enjoy!

There seems to be a mysterious fog surrounding the responsibilities of an Internet Researcher. We are viewed as anything ranging from a “junior recruiter” (man I hate that misconception!!!), a data entry person, a “computer person”, a web surfer, and sometimes I’m sure that some of us feel like personal slaves to one or two recruiters with whom we work.  While we know in our minds the countless functions for which we are responsible, sometimes it is hard to help others understand our duties and the fact that we need more than 30 minutes to search for the perfect candidate. So my goal with the coming articles is to:

1. Give some insight as to what the majority of Researchers/Sourcers are originally hired to do and what they end up being responsible for;
2. What qualities make up a good Researcher/Sourcer when you are ready to hire your own (in my opinion);
3. What comprises a typical daily routine of a Researcher/Sourcer; and
4. Some common myths about Researchers/Sourcers and my personal clarification on some of them.

As I have been a researcher for over seven years now, I have been responsible for a lot of different functions within the offices for which I’ve worked. I have also had the opportunity to be acquainted with many other excellent researchers around the world. When I worked at an MRI franchise, I helped moderate a research discussion group that was unbelievably helpful for me, and one of the most commonly asked questions came from the owners of the franchise offices, wanting to know what we did on a daily basis. The typical person asking this question was either thinking about hiring a researcher or trying to figure out how to get the most out of his/her current researcher.

At my first job as a researcher, in my first 4 or so months that’s all I did – research. However, as I displayed strengths in other areas, my duties grew. While I am not saying that I did not enjoy other aspects of my job besides researching, one has to draw the line somewhere. If you’re not careful, you can become a ‘jack of all trades and a master of none’. Here, I would like to list out just a few of the responsibilities I had when I began researching to cite some examples of how quickly things can get out of hand:

• Researching and sourcing candidates – This was supposed to be my primary responsibility. When I was first hired on as a researcher at my first job, this is all I was responsible for. I believe that since we are given the title of Researcher (or Sourcer) that this should be our main focus. However, a lot of times a person in this role has other technical skills that become known, and this may cause their employer to utilize them for other technical operations-type activities. What ends up happening is that your Researcher does less and less research, and gets more into…
• Internal network administration and computer maintenance (passwords, setting up new user stations, troubleshooting, etc) – as the office grew, I learned more about server maintenance and setting up workstations. I became the in-house technology consultant. Since the other folks in the office knew that I was good at this, they stopped doing maintenance on their own computers and relied on me to take care of these things. I began managing our internal network – running reports, setting up Exchange accounts, monitoring use, etc. All of these activities are certainly important! However, if you have hired a researcher, then why not outsource these tasks to a good IT consulting firm. It is their sole responsibility to monitor these things, and that way your researcher can get back to doing what you hired them to do – RESEARCHING.
• Technology purchases – this is something that I think your researcher can give you some good ideas on, but not something for which I believe your researcher should be responsible. While I believe I am a pretty darned good negotiator (I was able to talk Dell down about $1700 on our purchase of a new server) this took me away from my primary duties of conducting research.
• Project management for offshore search assistance – at my first job, when we decided to use offshoring services, I ended up spending at LEAST an hour every afternoon putting together search requests for our researcher in India, only to have results returned the following day that were virtually identical to the results I had already found. I found communication difficult and the results unsatisfactory, plus the ramp-up time for our guy to learn our industries was unreal. I will add a little disclaimer here that this was just my experience and I know that several of you reading this have had excellent results from 3^rd party overseas research vendors – but my personal experiences were less than stellar.
• Technology training – this is one task that I think fits in with researching duties, especially if you use a SQL or MDB based database application. Not everyone is going to be familiar with your database ATS so new recruiters and staff members will need to learn and understand it. I think as a researcher, you should know your database inside and out and also be able to share this knowledge with others. I thoroughly enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, the training aspect of my position. Added bonus to the researcher conducting database training (and this is a HINT-HINT to all the researchers out there) – if you are the one responsible for training on proper use of the database, you can teach it the way YOU want it to be used and the way YOU need information coded into the database. This will in turn save you a ton of time on…
• Database maintenance and/or data entry – while I knew that some of my time needed to be spent with key-coding and activity tracking, I do not believe that data entry should solely be the responsibility of the researcher. I think 1) each person (recruiters included) should be able to enter their own candidates into their own database, and 2) mass data entries can (and should) be handled by an office manager or data entry professional. Perfect example: several years ago when I was working in an office setting, one of the senior recruiters emailed me the name and contact information of a candidate and told me to put it into the database. I intercomm’ed him and told him that I was pretty busy at the moment and reminded him of a very simple way that he could enter this candidate into the database on his own. He emailed me back (notice, no verbal communication here) telling me that he was busy closing deals and making money calls and that he did not have the time to enter the candidate into the database, and reminded me that as the researcher I was there to help and support him. At this point I did not want to start World War III, so I added the candidate into the database, after which I notified him that it would have taken him less time to add his candidate into the database than I’m sure it took him to write and send me the email. (This situation is paraphrased so some of the actual verbiage may have been slightly different, but you get the idea). My point here is this: include data entry into your office manager or an administrative assistant’s job duties, not your researcher. Or, you can hire a part- time data entry professional. Why have someone on salary entering loads of data when you can pay someone $7.50/hour to do so? Not very cost effective if you ask me!
• Presentation creation – now I admit, I love making PowerPoint presentations. But do you honestly think that is the best use of time for a researcher? This again should be a job duty for an office manager or an administrative assistant. Presentations should always be proofed by their end user, but I don’t think this is a good use of productive research time.
• Website development – please see above comment on IT consulting. This is not something that a researcher should be spending time on. I think it’s a good idea to allow your researcher to have some input on the website, as they can help with search engine optimization and creating a good template for your internal job board, but this should be done by either a dedicated IT staff member or a 3^rd party web designer.
• Maintaining social media presence - I think this is a good use of your researcher’s time IF they are passionate about it. Often what happens is that the company owner decided the company needs to be on Facebook or Twitter or some other social networks from a corporate standpoint, and the task of maintaining those presences falls into the hands of the perceived least busy person in the office, which unfortunately usually ends up being the researcher. Now, most researchers that I know are happy to do this because we spend a lot of time utilizing social media from a sourcing standpoint to begin with. But not everyone is going to love the upkeep of corporate accounts. That responsibility really should go to the person in the office who has the most passion for it, because it’s more likely they will be thoughtful and consistent about updating and maintaining the company’s social media presence.

So what am I saying here?

For recruiters and office owners – use your researcher, absolutely! But use them for the purpose for which you hired them – RESEARCH! Give them the option, once they complete their researching duties (like that ever happens!!) to work on some other projects. If they truly have a passion to explore other areas of the office operations, they will force themselves to become more efficient researchers so that they can finish their primary duties early and get their hands into other activities.

For researchers and sourcers – don’t be afraid to say ‘no’! The WORST thing you can do for yourself professionally is allow people to walk all over you. Know your limitations and don’t be afraid to tell someone “I’m sorry, I just do not have time to do that right now”. Remember your primary function – research. Also remember, no one person in the office owns you (except the one who cuts your paycheck!) Don’t allow any one person to dictate your schedule. In an article I wrote a couple years ago, Effectively Managing Your Research Projects, I listed out some tips for making sure that you don’t spend too much time on any one project or person. Remember you are a valuable member of your recruiting team and don’t let anyone abuse you.

In my next article in this series, I will go over some ideas on what to look for when you are hiring a Researcher/Sourcer, or if you are currently researching, some tips on good skill sets to have to maximize your marketability!