Where to start Narrow or Broad!!

Recently there has been a discussion of how you should start your search. Should you start narrow and then broaden or start broad and then go narrow. Everyone has their opinion and here I am going to layout reasons to go either way and then explain my choice.

So starting narrow and then going broad or expanding gives you certain good points. 1 you have a better chance of getting to what you really want faster. 2 the results are more targeted. The pitfalls are it requires a decent amount of up from research, and you miss out on potential information and or results that might be good.

Starting Broad and then narrowing has certain good points as well. 1 you do not have to do a lot of research first as you can do it on the fly. 2 you will see information you might not have seen before that might help you. Now of course there is a pitfall that being you will get some stuff that is just not a fit and not worth looking at.

So now which is best, well to be honest that depends on you. The things that come into consideration are: experience, ability to think, act and work quickly, being organized, and time.

For me I usually start broad and then go narrow. However that is only on searches I have never done before. If I have done them before like Java developer, I start narrow as I have already done this search and have the research done and have gone broad before. Now if it has been a while, say a year or so since I did this search I might start broad and then quickly narrow depending on what if anything new I see.

In the end it is a personal preference but hopefully this helps.

Comment by Nicholas Meyler on August 20, 2015 at 9:26pm: When I was first learning the business, I was trained to start local to the position itself, and then spiral outward. Nowadays, though, so many of my clients already know that the likelihood of finding a candidate who lives near them is very small, so I generally start very broad. The bottom line, though, is it would really be a mistake to miss any great local candidates, so searching close and narrow is really worth doing, anyway.

I swear by multiple modalities of search. I always use a multi-pronged approach and multiple techniques, and never rely on just one.

Comment by Glenn Gutmacher on August 21, 2015 at 10:48am: Excellent explanation for each approach, and agree with your reasoning, Dean. The less familiar you are with the search area (because you've never sourced for it or it's been a really long time since you've sourced for it), then the better case for starting broad. And vice-versa for those other reasons you gave.