Online sourcing has become part of the daily lives for most recruiters. Statistics show that 75% of hiring manages Google candidates. There are new additions to our bag of tricks that have been introduced just in the last few months.

Google has added the options panel (take a closer look if you haven’t). All major search engines show real-time results. There are new social search engines. This is exciting and satisfying for those of us who use the Internet to source candidates and do company research. I love new tools and share my knowledge online and in webinars. However, many recruiters I have talked to seem to think that getting “the right” results in the searches is what matters most. I think that successful sourcing is much more than that.

If we run many searches, it is quite possible that we get lost in the large amount of information. We may miss that “right” result if it’s beyond the first 2-3 pages with the results. If we tighten the searches to get fewer results, we might be missing on some good entries.

Also, it’s not really the goal to get every possible result. This is especially true if what we are looking for is quite common, and if matching candidates happens not at the level of keywords, but rather at the level of screening resumes and talking to candidates. A good example would be my current search for Java engineers in the Bay Area. We have access to thousands of Java resumes but most of the candidates are not a fit for the job level or for the company culture.

To successfully source online, we need to be able to be efficient and productive. That requires having a sourcing strategy and following a sourcing process. Here are some areas to explore, to see what your process is like. When you get the job description, how do you decide which keywords to use? How do you learn about similar titles and synonyms to the required skills? How do you decide which websites to use? When you run the searches, do you have to click through every result? Or do you use some tools that help you collect them first and then sort and filter? What are some ways to cross-reference potential candidates on different sources and social networks, so that you end up being on the phone with the right people? All of this is important if you can make only so many calls a day.

Having a sourcing strategy and using productivity tools on top of being fluent at tools and search strings is your key to success.

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Irina Shamaeva, Grand Master Sourcer, is a partner with Brain Gain Recruiting in Palo Alto, California and is a leading Internet thought leader and instructor specializing in search engine and social network sourcing techniques for recruiters. Visit her Boolean Strings blog for links to webinars schedule, DVDs, articles and groups dedicated to Internet sourcing and recruiting.

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