Amybeth Hale - Research Goddess

The July issue of The Source is ready! Check it out here: July 2008 - The Source

Also, don’t forget to register for SourceCon 2008! It’s under 2 months away now, September 2nd - 4th in Atlanta, GA. Gather with your fellow researchers and sourcers, meet people you’ve known for years but never seen in person, and learn a ton about tactical and strategic sourcing. Don’t miss out!!!!

Yes, we mean you! Do you have a neat technology tool you’d like to share? An interesting perspective on research or sourcing? A recommendation for good teamwork practices within your staffing team? We want to hear from you in The Source newsletter. Even if you’ve never written a formal article before, we are interested in what you have to say. The Source is by you, for you, and we want to encourage as much reader participation and contribution as possible. Please email us if you’ve got a story idea or an article you’d like to submit, and keep your eye out for the June issue, to be launched on June 10th!

The new issue of The Source has been sent out to email subscribers and is also available for your viewing pleasure on the SourceCon website! Check it out, and let me know your thoughts!

Also, make sure to take a moment to fill out this month’s survey as well. Thanks!

Please take a very brief moment to fill out this survey on where your hand-off point is from research to recruiting! Answers will be available in the upcoming May issue of The Source, going live on May 10th.

Thanks!

If you haven’t taken a moment to fill out this survey in the first issue of The Source, please take a moment to tell us now!

Just saw this video on Jim Stroud’s blog this morning. Don’t forget that the FIRST SOURCECON CHALLENGE will be going live this coming Monday, March 10th, at 12pm Eastern Time!

To all who have been patiently awaiting its arrival, the new SourceCon website has made its debut! Make sure you check it out - the dates and location of SourceCon 2008 are up, so mark your calendars for this event!

Congrats also go out to Scott Hajer and Dan Harris for naming the new SourceCon newsletter - The Source. Both Dan and Scott submitted the name The Source and they will each be receiving a special prize!

Keep your eyes peeled as the newsletter rolls out VERY SOON!

Make sure you subscribe NOW to The Source RSS feed to get all the articles as they come out, or go directly to the SourceCon website and subscribe via email.

…or so I heard! Check it out…..
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It’s been whispered through the blogs, wikis, IMs, and discussion groups that SourceCon is getting ready for something new….

Keep your eyes peeled as 2008 begins. New website, new community, and new newsletter!

You asked for it, and SourceCon is bringing it to you:
A resource dedicated to the promotion, education, and advancement of the research and sourcing function.
A monthly news piece to quench your thirst for sourcing knowledge.
The premiere resource for the sourcing community.

Featuring researching tips and tricks, best practices, Q&A, and articles written by YOU, for YOU.

So what is this awesome newsletter called? WE DON’T KNOW YET!

That’s right – SourceCon has a fabulous newsletter ready to bring to you, but it needs a name.
We would like for YOU to name it.
And we would like to reward you for doing so!

To enter the Name the SourceCon Newsletter contest, please submit your entry here.

The top 5 entries will be featured on the NEW SourceCon website (so new it’s not even live yet!) and you will be able to vote for your favorite one there. The winning entry will have the honor of naming the newsletter, and will also receive a prize.

Please keep your eyes on the blogs! More will be available soon.

For additional information/questions, please send an email to SourceCon here.

Well, SourceCon has ended, and I have a serious hangover. Not from all the drinking of course since I don’t drink alcohol, but from all the knowledge! For those of you who were not there, I’m sorry to say this but you will be kicking yourself for the next year until SourceCon 2008 rolls around. If you didn’t go this year, make sure that you get your ticket EARLY and go next year. With all the information that was bestowed upon us over the course of two days, I would venture to guess that the knowledge would be worth at least $20,000 – easily. The amount of talent that was present was mind-blowing.

I will not go into a bulleted list of who spoke and how incredible their talks were, but I will mention three individuals who I feel have become fast friends of mine and who represent the future of Internet research – Suzy Tonini, Jeremy Langhans, and Mike Notaro - the three challenge winners. Mike won the Grand Master challenge and a great new laptop courtesy of Donato Diorio and Broadlook Technologies, so I’ll also take this opportunity to congratulate him.

I’m sure that all of us who were in attendance will be writing and talking about this event over the next several weeks. I would have to say that my biggest takeaway from the conference was the networking that was done. With the size of the group in attendance, I would say that I got to meet about 75% of them. My favorite moments were the intimate one-on-ones or small group conversations that were had, the ideas that were shared in those moments, and the new friendships that were formed. For a great number of us, this was the first time that we were actually able to connect live. We may have conversed over the phone or through emails for several years but never met in person.

I had the great pleasure of having a couple of meals with some people whose work I have followed for awhile, including the tremendous lady who brought us all together for the event, Leslie O’Connor. None of this would have happened had it not been for her, and for that I am truly grateful. Leslie’s not one for a lot of accolades, as she admitted, but I can’t help but give her some props at this time. She put on a fantastic event and I am certainly looking forward to next year’s event. I cannot stress enough that if you missed out this year, do whatever it takes to get there next year.

These last few weeks for me have brought about a lot of change. Not only do I think I got smarter last week, but I am also moving in some different directions career-wise. As you might have noticed, for the past three or so weeks my blog has been a little sparse in postings. There is good cause for this, and that reason came out publicly at SourceCon. This coming week, I will be starting a new position with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide as a Sourcing Strategist. W/E is a Pacific-Northwest based public relations agency, and I will be assisting the People Services team with research strategy and passive candidate generation. I am very excited about this new role as it is a relatively new position within the company, so I am going to be helping to define my own function. I will be joined by a phenomenal recruiter/sourcer named Kristin whom I referred to in an earlier post, and together we will be building this research/sourcing function.

While I am sad to leave the franchise owners I have been supporting at SearchPath for the past thirteen months, this was a very good move for me career-wise. I will be given the opportunity to do work internationally with our global offices in London, Paris, Munich, Brussels, Singapore, Beijing, and Hong Kong. I have already had the pleasure of meeting our staffing partners from a few of these locations and I am looking forward to collaborating with them to drive the research function.

It has been a whirlwind month for me! I have been home for about four total days in the month of September so far. I moved into a new place at the end of August and flew out to Portland for a global meeting not two days later, came home for a couple of days and took off for SourceCon, and I am leaving once again on Tuesday for Seattle and then Portland for a week and a half. My new place has not been unpacked, and I don’t even have my bedroom furniture yet so all of my clothes are lying around on the floor at the moment! However, with all of these positive events that have happened this month, I certainly cannot complain, and I am anxious to start implementing the things that I learned in Atlanta at my new position with Waggener!

To all the folks I had the pleasure of meeting in Atlanta, I am honored to have finally met you. I was flattered by everyone who came up to me and told me they were a fan of my blog. I will continue to do my best to bring good information and insight to our growing community. I certainly hope to see all of you again at the next SourceCon!

I just read Moises Lopez’s post on his meeting with Tim O’Connor and it reminded me that there are mere hours to go before the first ever all-research conference in Atlanta! Like Moises, and I would imagine everyone else who is going to be in attendance, I can barely contain my excitement. For five years I have been researching and I will finally get the opportunity to meet many industry luminaries in person. I won’t even begin to start naming names, but I’ve gotten some LinkedIn invites recently from other excited folks who will be attending SourceCon that I certainly am looking forward to connecting with as well. I was telling my new coworker and colleague Kristin Kalscheur this past week that it is going to be difficult to squeeze meeting everyone in to the few days that we have in Atlanta, but that’s why I’m going a day early and staying two days late so that I can meet as many people as possible.

Oops….I just let some information slip on some of my new ‘changes’….. Stay tuned, the whole story will be known next week!