So, I've been in recruiting for just about 5 years. Longer than some. Not as long as others. I've worked for an agency, a small startup, and now one of the biggest social media companies on the planet. During my time at these institutions, I've noticed one consistent theme when it comes to successfully building a quality team that meets the business need: passive talent is almost always more desirable than active.

I can say, without divulging too much granularity, that my current company hires an incredibly small percentage of the candidates who apply through the career site -- for engineering. I should preface this rant by saying that the vast majority of my experience has been in hiring software engineers. The non-eng and sales sides have obviously had a much higher success rate with the individuals who actively apply online. 

It makes sense though, doesn't it? Technology companies spending countless resources to ensure that their most valued assets are fat and happy, such that they'd never consider looking for another job? Because of this fact, the sourcing function has evolved a great deal just in the little time that I've been in the industry. I've graduated from basic boolean searches on job boards, to x-ray searching LinkedIn, Github, Stack Overflow etc., to learning programming languages to leverage web scraping and API queries.

Most emphatically I wish to say, that if your recruiting team is the least technical team in the company, catch up. Passive candidate sourcing was born requiring painstaking efforts to track down desirable individuals one by one, and creating customized messaging to attract their attention. These days, however, recruiters are scaling that process through automation via engineering prowess, and increasing their return on investment while reducing the effort required.

If you're interested in upping your tech game, I'd suggest starting by using tools like text expander, connectifier, outwit hub, yesware etc. From there, take a development class. I personally took a front end web course at General Assembly, and that was enough to get me started in understanding DOM elements, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Once you understand how websites are constructed, and how they store data, running scripts that automate all sorts of functions becomes an attainable goal. 

I'll also be speaking next week, November 4th, at HIREconf, if you want to hear this topic discussed more in depth. You can get a discount on admission with the following link: https://hireconf.eventbrite.com/?discount=FriendsofGreg

See you there!