Lockheed Martin: Research Comes First

I have always preached research comes first with regards to staffing, and sourcing in particular. You have to know what you are looking for and know what companies have what you are looking for. You need to be able to find and contact those people, know trends, perform talent mapping and basically find what cannot be found. Here at Lockheed Martin, this type of research stands front and center as not just a part of the process but an essential part of the organization.

Lockheed Martin has taken the innovative approach to not only perform research within the staffing organization but to establish a dedicated research team for staffing. As we have all heard “knowledge is power” and “forewarned is forearmed”, our job on the research team at Lockheed Martin is to find the knowledge and information no one else can find and arm our staffing team, HR, and hiring managers with it so they can make the best choices for the company.

The research team is not a sourcing team. We are dedicated people who find the things others cannot. We find contact information for the ghost candidates that just do not seem to exist except by name or reputation. We find the location for prospects with impossible skill sets, as well as the information needed to contact and close them. The deep web is that part of the World Wide Web not accessible through conventional search engines. This is the part of the web were few dare to go, that place where you need to be part sleuth, part internet forensics and part dreamer to find and utilize it. Simply put we make the impossible, possible.

However our duties and responsibilities do not stop there. We also look for, and test new tools, tricks, and techniques that can help our staffing teams become even better. We look for tools to do social searches, name generation, deep web searching, and more. Why us? Because we are the ones that find or create the tips, tools, and techniques, and if it can be broken or maximized we are the ones that can do it.

Research is where it all starts. Every staffing professional does some, but no company has taken it to the level that Lockheed Martin does. The majority of companies have not integrated a dedicated, highly specialized group to do research for staffing like Lockheed Martin has. The benefits are extraordinary as information is found that allows Lockheed Martin to not only succeed but exceed its requirements.

Comment by Matt Charney on December 18, 2014 at 4:07pm: Great post, Dean. Based off what you've told me, it sounds like a really kick butt gig you've got yourself. Appreciate the insight and reiteration here - very nicely written and a good example of what brand advocacy looks like in action.

Comment by Nicholas Meyler on December 18, 2014 at 5:46pm: Does anyone use "fishing" techniques (over the phone) any more? I used to be able to get 200+ names out of places like JPL when I first started in the business, and that technique even worked well in TS/EBI clearance areas, sometimes. I feel like this is a great technique (sometimes) that has really fallen by the wayside because of the internet making so much information available... but it still works!

As far as Lockheed goes, I am quite impressed with your description, Dean. I placed about 7 or 8 people (including the VP of Government Business) at a company called Nantero which was bought by Lockheed... they bought half of the company (i.e. the Government division). In order to do that, I had to recruit a VP candidate who had actually worked for the NSA, so a bit hard to find.

In my humble opinion, recruiting is 99% sourcing, because no matter how great your eloquence, persuasiveness and closing skills, none of that matters if you can't find the right candidates. I think researchers are under-rewarded in our industry.

Great article! Inspiring.