When Gerry Crispin was a boy hiring was so easy. There was lots of talent just lying all over the place.

All you had to do was put an ad in the paper and hire a secretary to open the resumes.

But, now, things are different.

You have access to everyone in the world because they all have profiles online but there's not enough skilled people to go around. And that's a problem, eh?

So, what are you going to do? Well, if you're fishing for trout you have to go where the trout are.

Back in 2006, Shally told me that he started out recruiting techies by hanging out in online groups where the techies talked shop.

He also told me that he used Peer Regression Analysis to find companies that turned out good people. If he found that 3 or 4 good people in a certain field had come out of a certain company, he knew that it was a good sourcing ground.

That was a smart use of a small data survey. But now we've got lots of data -- Big Data from social media -- so what are we going to do? Dave Mendoza has the answer and he's written a white paper to prove it. 

It's called FUTURECASTING: How the Rise of Big Social Data is set to transform the Business of Recruiting.  And all I can say is, "Look out, trout!"

First of all, you've got Customer Relationship Management software that lets you capture candidate info online and communicate directly with the good ones.

Then you've got the API. That's a link to a good site that lets you transfer data from there to your own database. Hot!

And the candidate's themselves are gathering data for you. They can go to a social media aggregation site and set up an account that gathers all of their social media existence in one convenient place. Whew! Hot-diggety! This is too good!

Because once you know so much about people you not only know what they do, you know what they're going to do. And if you know the future, you can get there in time to change it.

Really, this is like giving every electrical engineer in the world an air miles card. They swipe it every time they make a move so you know all their habits. You know what they do as individuals and what they do as a group.

And, even more important, you know what all the good guys do: what schools they went to, where they've worked and where ex-employees go after they leave you.

Now, most companies are slow on the draw. They're not hip. They're square. And they don't collect this information. Or if they do they are doing it all wrong. And their software stinks too.

For example, it doesn't have the right default fields so they shove URLs and hashtags in Notes. And it should be able to generate an area code for mobile phone numbers so you can do a texting campaign but usually it can't.

And here's something I forgot to mention. When you have your database connected to a site like Linkedin thru an API, it keeps the data up to date. Or, at least, it's as up to date as the online profiles.

So, look at what Brad Cook the Global VP Talent Acquisition at Informatica said about Dave.

“The work Dave has done to embed the key nuggets of data into our CRM is the game changer for us.

"Previously, we had no repository that would allow for unstructured data to be housed and retrieved.

".... we now have a central databank of very specific competitive intelligence that has the ability to withstand time with its social and mobile aspects built in for future proofing.”

Does that sound good to you. Dave tells you exactly how he did it in the second half of his paper which you can access here.

Dave is a finalist for the HROA's 2013, North America Thought Leader of the Year Award

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact him -- he's a super-networker. Here's his contact information.