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Show notes
We’re thrilled to have an expert in the talent acquisition field, Dan Harten, join us. With a storied career that spans across Amazon and Meta, Dan now brings his wealth of knowledge to HireEZ.
In this episode, we unpack the challenges of sourcing top talent externally and the crucial role of personalizing the recruitment process. Dan shares his experiences on how the best recruiters leverage market data, involve hiring managers early, and make each outreach count. He also sheds light on the potential pitfalls of AI, balancing inbound and outbound strategies, and the impact of personal branding in the industry.
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Links:
Dan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-harten-0542063b/
Crelate + HireEZ: https://www.crelate.com/integrations/partner/hireez
The Full Desk Experience newsletter: https://www.crelate.com/full-desk-experience
Transcription
Dan Harten [00:00:00]: Don't be an order taker. Are you going to influence the hiring decision based on data, based on your relationship with your hiring manager? Based on your relationship with your candidates? Are you in a position that you're influencing how that Rec is going to go? Yes or no? Kortney Harmon [00:00:18]: Hi, I'm Kortney Harmon, director of industry relations at Crelate. Over the past decade, I've trained thousands of frontline recruiters and have worked with hundreds of business owners and executives to help their firms and agencies grow. This is the full desk Experience, a crate original podcast where we will be talking about growth blockers across your people, processes, and technologies. Welcome to another episode of the full Desk Experience. Welcome to the full Desk Experience live workshop. I'm your host, Kortney Hartman, and today we have a very special guest joining us, Dan Hart. And he is expert recruiter, has been in the sourcing world, thought leader in talent acquisition space. And Dan has over a decade of experience in this industry and worked at companies like Amazon and Meta. Kortney Harmon [00:01:16]: And he now works for hire easy. He does the Speakeasy podcast. He's their host. He's their customer marketing specialist and outbound recruiting leader. And we're going to be picking Dan's brain today on the latest best practices and trends in the recruiting and sourcing industry heading into 2024. Even though we're already there, he's going to be sharing his insights from the front lines of hiring top talent. Whether you're a staffing and recruiting leader, operations focused, a recruiter, a hiring manager. You don't want to miss the knowledge that Dan's going to be dropping today. Kortney Harmon [00:01:48]: So let's get started. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. All the way from Minnesota for sure. Dan Harten [00:01:54]: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to embrace this opportunity just to impact the recruiting community and the sourcing community and really elevate your games to fill Rex faster, quicker, and for the agency world makes more money. So that's my goal. Kortney Harmon [00:02:09]: I love this. And like I said, this has been a much requested topic for the podcast. And honestly, based on our first conversation, there is no better person to be having this discussion with me. So based on that, to kick things off, do me a favor and tell our listeners a little bit more about your background and your experience and the whole concept of sourcing and recruiting. Dan Harten [00:02:28]: For sure. A little bit about my background is I've been in recruiting and sourcing my whole career and typically a lot of people fall into the career of sourcing and recruiting. I started out at an agency called Aerotech. I started off my career there where I really understood the grind of recruiting kind of smile and dial, understanding how to interact with folks, how to connect with folks. And then what I really wanted to do is get into a fang company, Big Tech, Amazon, Facebook, those type of companies in the world. And the more I did research and realized that they not only want agency background but also corporate recruiting. So I actually transitioned into a corporate recruiting role at one of my customers in my territory and they said, hey, why don't you just bring your services in house? So I did that for the next couple of years and then it was an aha moment of how do I get noticed by one of those big tech companies? We don't have big tech in Minnesota, so how do I bridge that gap? And I actually utilized some of the different partners within the industry and said, hey, can you coach me? Can you teach me? And reached out to some of the Amazon recruiters, some of the Facebook recruiters, and said, hey, how did you get to where you got? And I reverse engineered my LinkedIn profile to look at what profile they were hiring for. So I did a search myself of if I would have hired me, how would I find me. Dan Harten [00:03:59]: So I put all that information into the LinkedIn profile and then I started getting inbound messages from recruiters to have those conversations landed at Amazon and AWS. There I led a team of right around six sourcers as well as doing some of the sourcing myself, scaled out some different programs and systems and how to be the most efficient way to hire mass volume for really hard to fill roles that transition to working with some leadership there internally at AWS. And I got a call from meta and said, hey, do you want to go on the specific executive side only working on directors, vps, confidential searches? And it was a little different than what I was used to, but I wanted to take that opportunity to understand what that looks like from an executive search standpoint. And then I was doing that for the last two years, had an opportunity to come over to the higher easy side, on the customer marketing side, working with our customers to really impact the recruiting community, the sourcing community, working with cross functional partners that's in this field to really elevate that sourcing and recruiting game for everyone. So that's a little bit about my background. Kortney Harmon [00:05:13]: I love it. So you not only can speak to the high volume, hard to find high numbers, but then also the executive search. So you have the gamut of everything. And I am so excited for you to be able to speak to both sides of that throughout our conversation today for sure. Love. All right. We're entering 2024. Some say we may already be two full months in right as we are here and we look at the talent market right now, what are some of the biggest trends or changes you're seeing happening in the recruiting and sourcing side? Obviously, there's a lot of talk. Kortney Harmon [00:05:46]: People are hard to find. Give me your insights. What are the challenges? What do you see? Dan Harten [00:05:50]: I think in 2024, there is so much information out there like we have never had. Information about companies, information about different people, profiles with social media, anything and everything. If you need to find an answer, it's probably out there. I think as recruiters and sourcers, the information is out there. We just got to go find it. And then how do we utilize that information to put that in our current process of recruiting whatever company you're working for and really scale out the vision and the mission of what you're trying to accomplish? There's so much information out there. I think it gets overwhelming sometimes, too. But I think recruiters and sourcers, the best ones that do that, go find it and utilize information and then spit out a message to the candidates to really entice them to get them over to your company. Kortney Harmon [00:06:46]: Do you think sourcing and recruiting is harder going into 2024 than it has been in the past few years? We hear the comment of boomers are retiring in record numbers. People are like the gig economy. Give me your perspective there. Is it harder? Do you have to be more unique? Do you have to stand out? Where is it on the scale of when you were doing this and when I was doing this? Dan Harten [00:07:06]: Good question. I think there's two things. It's easier in the sense of there's technology out there that can scale out processes and help you with your outreach of cadence, how many times you're going to follow up with them. The information that you can really attack the market, that is easier than ever before. There's Chetchi, bt of how do I utilize that? But if you don't have a foundation on how you're going to utilize that information, that information is just information. And it's going to go back to what we've all struggled with of kind of spamming the candidates that you're trying to get a hold of. What I was always taught was there's two things that you need to do as being a very effective recruiter. It's figure out the profile that you are targeting inside and out, and that's gathering all the information, their LinkedIn profile, their resume. Dan Harten [00:08:01]: If it's in tech, get their GitHub profile. If it's another industry, have they put out any type of articles or post anything on social media, gather all that information. And then the second thing is, how are you going to reach out to the individual? And how many times are you going to reach out to that individual? The statistics show that typically what I did was there's four messages I sent to a candidate in a cadence. Four messages per candidate. What we realized when I tracked the data was 14% of the time they responded after the first one. The second message I sent was 24%. I got a response rate. The third one is 29%. Dan Harten [00:08:43]: I got a response rate after the fourth message. Right around 32% to 35% of the people that didn't respond after the first, second, and third message responded after my fourth message. Why is that? It's because you weren't just sending, hey, I got to fill a job. You're taking interest into the person in their career. I think sometimes there's some pitfalls of, we have all this information and we'll just do a campaign to a candidate, and then it's just a reoccurring marketing spam email that they get, and they'll hit delete, delete. And that's where the good recruiters and the great recruiters really separate themselves, because they utilize the information, they do the digging on the front end, and then show value in every single message that they have for those candidates. So by message three, you're still showing them value. By message four, you're showing them value. Dan Harten [00:09:38]: And the biggest takeaway that I've seen was, don't say in the second one, hey, did you see my first message? Hey, I sent you two more messages. Hey, I sent you three more messages. Did you see them? Versus, hey, here's some practical insights, whether it's showing them value if they're in the tech industry, hey, did you see about XYZ company? Or look at these earning calls, or whatever it may be, show them value in every single stage of that cadence or that campaign that you're sending out to candidates. Did that answer your question? Kortney Harmon [00:10:10]: It did. I love that. Katie, I'm going to let you. I just looked at Alden's comment. I don't even know if I have the same question as alden, but my brain is thinking, and I'm guessing based on maybe some comments, too. Whenever you do those four outreaches, are they the same avenue? Are you only emailing? Are you text messaging? What is it like? Obviously it depends on your industry, but what you have some great stats to go along with that. But talk to me about the avenues in which you're reaching out. Dan Harten [00:10:35]: For sure. Easy. I'm sure you guys do it, too. There's different programs out there that you can schedule out your email campaign. What I always like to do is if that avenue is not working, I want to try. And you did all that research on the front end. You have all their profiles up, you have all the contact information that you have. Try to find different ways and to connect with them. Dan Harten [00:11:00]: Whether it's okay, I shoot them an email. Maybe three days later I shoot them an email again and they don't respond. Maybe that third one is I go to their LinkedIn profile and I connect with them. If you don't have a LinkedIn recruiter seat, the best thing that somebody taught me was, hey, you shoot them an email, you don't get a response back. Go to their LinkedIn profile and connect with them. And in that message say, hey, I shot you an email. I'd love to connect. And it's going to do two things, is you can go to your LinkedIn profile and every I think week they tell you who viewed your profile, even if they haven't accepted your invite to be connections. Dan Harten [00:11:40]: You can see, okay, they looked at mine, and a no and a yes or I haven't responded to you are three different things. No means, hey, I don't want to pursue, perfect. Yes, they're going to accept it. Sweet. Let's get on the phone with them and schedule an interview process. And if that unknown of they haven't responded to me, that just gives you as a recruiter, what other way can I connect with them? And sometimes it's not even all about, hey, I have a role that you might be interested in. It's adding other value. Or if you see something on their social media and they're super into any type of activity, maybe shoot them like a little meme or a gif or whatever those things are about, specifically what they're talking about. Dan Harten [00:12:29]: To bridge that gap a little bit. If you send them a funny little meme, they're probably going to respond to you. If it's that second or third message because you're actively searching, I think there's a misconception of what sourcing is and you're really hoarding individuals to come work for your company versus, hey, I'm trying to fill a rack, go apply. You're targeting a specific group of individuals because you want them to work for your company and having a game plan in order to do that will increase the chances of you filling that role and having that mindset. Kortney Harmon [00:13:08]: I love that. And I love that you even talked about, whether it's a gift or not, just to connect. In my years of coaching, someone noticed that someone was into really old cars. That relationship of really old cars and going to the same college really relayed into an account that flourished where there was a consistent relationship. There was reoccurring open jobs, reoccurring revenue year after year, and it was all over old cars. So I love that. Thank you very much. And I think we kind of allude and really miss the concept of there's many different ways to connect that's not just transactional. Kortney Harmon [00:13:43]: So yes, love that. All right, what are some of the most valuable tools and maybe resources that staffing and recruiting leaders should be utilizing to source talent more effectively? Because let's face it, people want to do things faster, they want to do things better. What are some tools that they might be missing that it's like, must have? Hey, you need to be using this. Dan Harten [00:14:04]: Specifically talking about agencies. Sometimes you don't. Maybe you're a smaller firm, bigger firm. Everybody has a different budget and resources. So I'll just give you a specific free outlet for those that maybe doesn't have a budget to get the business that they need from a business development standpoint. So Apollo IO, they can give you a free version. And what it is, it's similar to like a crunch based platform where you can sign in, you can type in a specific company, and it's going to give you anywhere between 15 to 50 different contacts that work at that specific company. It's going to give you a title, it's going to give you their email, all that information. Dan Harten [00:14:46]: So that's a free option for those that don't have a budget to kind of build out a territory or build out a book of business. And what it really does, it gives you who's there. And then if you're really strategic, you can figure out who the company is around. Let's just say for manufacturing, I'm specifically working in a tool and die manufacturing company. What are the other manufacturers around? And if I can plug that information in, then I can create a prospect list and build out an.org chart of who I need to connect with and show those values. And then obviously specifically, every message is going to be specifically towards that industry and really brand yourself as that specific recruiter in that specific field. I'll tell you a funny story. When I was in agency recruiting, one of the big pockets that they really wanted to develop was kind of diesel mechanics and working with the trucking associations and those type of. Dan Harten [00:15:51]: I had no clue how to find that anything like that. But I branded myself, I went to these clinics, I went to the MTA events to really understand where the customers were coming from and what they actually look for. And then what I did in my messaging said I was the diesel mechanic recruiter when I was reaching out to these candidates. Because a diesel mechanic recruiter reaching out to a diesel mechanic is more impactful than I do anything and everything. A lot of recruiters, if they can say yes, you have to be specific niche in what you're really good at because it's going to come across to the audience way differently. So brand yourself, understand that knowledge. I was speaking their language, going out, understanding what all goes into it. And that's across the board. Dan Harten [00:16:42]: If you're in the medical industry, if you're in healthcare, if you're in manufacturing, if you're in finance, whatever it is, know what you're good at and then brand yourself as that. Because what happens is if you do that, the candidates you're talking to, referrals start get generated because you're the expertise of that specific segment. Did that answer your question? Yeah, sorry, I went on to kind of a tangent. Kortney Harmon [00:17:06]: I love that. I love the tangent first off, and I'm going to go back because there was the question, it was Apollo IO. Is that correct? Dan Harten [00:17:13]: Apollo IO, yes. Kortney Harmon [00:17:15]: Okay. People love that stuff. So all those things that you can think of that is amazing. I think you said two things that really hit home with me. Number one is meet them where they are. You were going to them where they were. When I was in the IT space, we had user groups that we provided pizza in the facility. We were providing a value to them. Kortney Harmon [00:17:36]: I got to meet all kinds of developers. I was searching for Sharepoint developers. Guess what? They came to my doorstep every Thursday for a user group. What better thing to do? So I love that. That is amazing. Diesel mechanics. I probably wouldn't have known where to start either with that. Dan Harten [00:17:52]: It's funny because people would call into the front desk and ask for, they called me diesel. I don't know how the nickname, but hey, can I talk to Diesel? And people are like, who the heck is this? And then they realized that that's what they started calling me, that. So then people would call in and they wouldn't want to talk to anybody else. Even though every recruiter in the whole office could fill anything and everything they wanted to talk to me because I was specifically in that market. Kortney Harmon [00:18:21]: You understood them. You were speaking their language. I love that. My next question kind of fits into that. So as an agency or an organization, how can we help leverage employer brand? Obviously it's important. You and I are in situations now running podcast. That's a brand. But how do we convey company culture that they stand out from competitors, attract best clients and candidates. Kortney Harmon [00:18:48]: Talk to me about how they can leverage that. Why is that important? Because your comment right there and just your wording really spoke to you as an employee, as your brand. How do organizations think of that holistically? Dan Harten [00:19:00]: I think first and foremost is looking in the mirror and figuring out what the company is really good at and what they need to areas of opportunity. I think that's first and foremost. I think sometimes we think we do awesome at everything, but if we don't have any pain points on what we can work on, we won't get better. Number two is doing your research on the front end of figuring out what your competition is locally, nationally, and figuring out who you are and who you're going to reach. I had a conversation with one of the vice presidents of recruiting and he always talked about there's three P's in interviewing or recruiting is you need to know the profile, who you're targeting. You need to know a process of how you're going to execute that. And then third one is price. Can you compete for that profile that you're targeting? Sometimes if people are baseball junkies, I always refer back to the movie moneyball and the Oakland A's is a small franchise. Dan Harten [00:20:07]: They can't compete with the Yankees and the Red Sox because they don't have the funds. Understanding where you're at and what you need as an organization, meet that specific type of candidates and really convey a message from an employer brand that's going to hit home to those specific people. A small one man shop, two man shop might can't recruit and source top level candidates at one of the top companies in the world. It's just apples to apples. You're not in the same playing field, so understand who you are, who's the right candidate for your organization. Budget has a lot to do with it too. So get that on the front end, do your research on who your competitors are and then convey a message in a brand specifically targeted to that bucket. And then give them and show them value every single step of the way. Dan Harten [00:21:02]: And it's before they apply to the job, it's creating that buzz, giving them, showing them value and get them connected. That extends farther than just a handshake or a rejection email or hey, come join this conference, whatever it may be, giving them value every single step of the way. But it has to be targeted on who you are and who you want to bring into the organization. Kortney Harmon [00:21:28]: I think that's great. And I didn't even tell you to make a baseball reference since I was a softball junkie, so I love that you made that on your own free will. Thank you very much for that. Dan Harten [00:21:36]: For sure. Kortney Harmon [00:21:39]: We talk about brands, and I think brands are going to play a big role in 2024, not only for companies, but people and even candidates. So talk to me about what role does social media play in modern talent sourcing? And how can companies effectively use platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all the things, or x, whatever you call it, to engage potential hires? Because I think that's a part of this. It has been, and I think there's probably a little more emphasis going into this year. Dan Harten [00:22:10]: Like I said, there's information overload and every person has their own personal brand. You have to convey what you're putting out to the world of attracting people and extending not just you, but your organization as well. If you have a good personal brand out there, you're positive people can feel that and they are going to attract back to you. Social media recruiting and sourcing is evolving like crazy because like we talked about before, on the multiple messages to a candidate, I'm going to be more inclined. A lot of people don't realize that LinkedIn recruiter, someone can put their settings off and on. So like a faucet. So if I turn my faucet off on LinkedIn, I can send Kortney a thousand emails. But guess what? If her faucet's off, she's not going to even know that I sent that message. Dan Harten [00:23:04]: She's not going to get an email that, hey, you have a LinkedIn email. You won't get that. So understanding that. But she probably is interested. Okay. After our conversation, she just told me that she's interested in softball. Okay, she's a recruiter that likes softball. Maybe. Dan Harten [00:23:22]: Is there a Reddit forum talking about softball and baseball? Anything and everything related to recruiting? I'm sure there is. So I need a camp where those type of people are. So then get in those conversations. And what I would always say, too, is you can't fake your candidates out. And I mean by that is they can look right through you if you're just going into those groups. Hey, I have a job to fill. I have a job to fill. I have a job to fill. Dan Harten [00:23:52]: You're not going to get the best response rates. But if you are a specific, for example, if you're a specific healthcare recruiter and I'm going onto these healthcare specific forums or Facebook groups or whatever it may be and showing value to them, you're going to get a lot more response rate. If you bring it up after the fact that you show value to them, you see a lot of I'm going to join the group and I'll just post my job and it's going to get filled like that because there's 5000 healthcare professionals in this group. Doesn't work that way. If you're not showing value first and then in turn start filtering your stuff in. But you got to show value first. You got to figure out where these people are. Show value and then you can reach out to them. Kortney Harmon [00:24:37]: In that sense, it's like you have to earn a seat at the table before you can sit down 100%. Dan Harten [00:24:43]: Also, with some industries like nurses, you're not going to be able to find them on LinkedIn, typically. So where are they? The trend is maybe you get a nurse emoji and you search it on TikTok and all those TikTok videos of nurses pop up. You figure out that username, who they are. Okay, you have all that information. Can you cross reference that and then have an outreach based on the information that you're receiving? You found that person and they're probably more likely to engage with you if you say, hey, that was super funny, or that was a great statistic that you sent on your TikTok video, they're going to be more open to communicate with you versus a specific email, hey, I have a job. Are you interested? Yes or no? Kortney Harmon [00:25:30]: I love that. Dan Harten [00:25:31]: So thinking outside the box, and you. Kortney Harmon [00:25:33]: Just gave ideas to people here that are in healthcare staffing that they haven't thought to go to TikTok and to use an emoji. It's about changing with the times and figuring out what the best thing is. Heck, LinkedIn changes for me on a weekly. I can't understand its algorithm to save my life. So I love that. Thank you. Great advice. Let's talk about some of the biggest challenges or pain points you see in the sourcing processes. Kortney Harmon [00:25:58]: I mean, it is a process for organizations. What do you see and how can companies overcome them? Dan Harten [00:26:05]: I think the biggest hurdle that companies have, if they have a sourcing department or their recruiters are sourcing and full desk recruiters is sourcing externally for individuals sometimes is the last worst case scenario. Hey, let's turn to the sourcing team. Can they fix it? Can they do it? Because we can't. Because the traditional methods is the internal resumes that are coming in, job boards, whatever it may be, are not filling it. So then we have to go to sourcing. I feel like when we get to that point, the sourcing team comes in, meets with the hiring managers, and if it's not done right and they're not fully equipped with the market data and specifically a plan or a process of how we're going to do that and hold themselves accountable as well as the hiring manager accountable. Sometimes we're order takers versus talent advisors. And the good to great recruiters go in with a plan. Dan Harten [00:27:13]: They talk business specifically to those business leaders of saying, without having this person, what are you losing out on? A lot of people don't want to bring up, what is your goals for this quarter? Are you going to hit those goals specifically if you don't have this individual for them? Typically they're going to say, no, I'm going to miss goal yes, we need to get filled right away. Okay, so justifying that and then coming up with a plan of saying yes, I get how important it is. Here's the data market. This is where we struggle, whether it's comp, whether it's time to fill what areas can we increase this? Or is it an interview decision? Like, you can't make that decision, why are you not making the decision? Unveiling what are the pain points in the whole process? And really be a driver for that and be a talent advisor. How I typically did it for me was I went in with a game plan. Here's the market analysis. All that I really honed in in my agency experience of selling the pain points to that hiring manager really hard, then having them speak. Yeah, it sucks I don't have this person in here. Dan Harten [00:28:26]: Okay, this is what I'm going to do for you. This is what the cadence is, what we're going to meet. I'm going to give you x amount of candidates per week that you need to review. Whatever it may be, have that process, but then it holds them accountable to do what you need them to do. And then it holds yourself accountable that that next meeting, you know that you have to come up with x amount of candidates to source to have that higher manager review those candidates, or that partnership is not there. It shouldn't just be a yes or no, yes or no situation. It should be constant communication with the hiring manager, but you really driving that. The best recruiters hold their hire managers accountable and then they hold themselves accountable because there's action items that need to take place. Dan Harten [00:29:14]: The second thing I would say is incorporating the hire manager as early on in the process as possible. And what I mean by that, whether it's a high volume opportunity or a specific exec vp search, at the end of the day, candidates don't want to talk to recruiters anymore. Know who they want to talk to. They want to talk to the hire manager and the decision maker. The best recruiters be able to do that as quickly as possible and as often as possible so they can make those decisions. So what I did was I work with my hire managers of saying, hey, typically this four message per candidate messaging cadence, I'm going to do the first one. If I don't get a response, you're going to send out an email to all those people that didn't respond. The third one, I'm going to follow up with the candidate and so on. Dan Harten [00:30:03]: Because how chat, GPT and all these other technology that people are utilizing, it's watering down the specific cadences and the campaigns and all that because they think a robot is doing it. And if you can incorporate your hiring manager in that outreach cadence, it's another human being that's involved in the there's. So I would say, hey, Bob, I'd love to have you. Me and Kortney were reviewing your resume. Kortney would love to chat with you over a call. If you don't respond, Kortney, you would reach out to Bob and says, hey, I don't know if he saw my message from my recruiter, Dan, but I would love to have a conversation. It's reassuring, that first message, because there's someone else involved and it's an actual real person. So you can scale that out a little bit and incorporate that hiring manager in the process. Dan Harten [00:30:55]: And what it also does is now the hiring manager can't say, oh, I don't have time to connect with that person. It gets them involved as quickly as possible. And if they're not going to proceed with that person on the phone, then there's an issue of why aren't you? You just said that we are, this is how we're moving quick. We're getting response rates and they're more invested in that process. And the more touch points that you can have with the candidate or get the hiring manager with that candidate, typically then they have a reason for them to push. Now you have a spokesperson of, yeah, I like this guy. I like this girl. Let's hire this person versus us trying to convince the hiring manager to hire the person. Kortney Harmon [00:31:39]: I love that so much. And you are absolutely right. These wonderful AI tools of generative AI are watering down the messaging. Do you see that being any more of a challenge besides watering down the watering hole at this point in time when it comes to AI for the future of sourcing and recruiting? Any thoughts on that? Dan Harten [00:31:59]: Can you repeat the question? Kortney Harmon [00:32:01]: No worries. Well, obviously AI is watering down our messaging, right? People go in and they look at their inbox every day. I can say attest to 30 before I even start my day. I can tell majority of them are written by AI, not by a human. Do you see any other challenges that AI is going to put on the sourcing and actual true recruiting and sourcing portion of our jobs moving forward in the future? Dan Harten [00:32:27]: I think one of the things that leaders need to look at, especially TA leaders, is what is the response rate in candidate engagement? Whether it's a yes, no, whatever it is, we just need a response rate and the thought process of if I utilize AI and I have a process and I can send exponential candidates, if it's watered down, that response rate is going to be super low. If it's not, it's going to be higher than the average message. That's one KPI that I would say to look at for recruiters is what's your recruiter's response rate and why is it high or why is it low? AI is going to be great to give you a good foundation. Take that resource. It's a foundation, but you got to tweak it specifically towards whoever you're trying to target and then incorporate other individuals in the process. I talked a little more about the hire manager get involved. There's another bucket of this too, of, okay, I'm working with the team specifically, if I'm working on engineering roles, okay, who's a software engineer on the team that I can leverage and having that same process. Can you send out some emails for me stating that I already reached out and then it's one more person involved and their response rate is going to be higher. Dan Harten [00:33:49]: So utilizing the framework, but make sure that you're doing other things to make it more personal. Kortney Harmon [00:33:57]: I love that you talked a lot. Well, not a lot, but you talked just a minute ago about the whole concept between inbound and outbound sourcing. It's a post and pray and it's okay. I got to go back to my laurels. I got to do the things. How can staffing and recruiting teams. Strike that right balance between inbound and outbound sourcing strategies. Dan Harten [00:34:16]: So I always do three buckets internally, externally, and then AI or some sort of process that's doing it when I'm sleeping. So what I say is internally is, you talked about the hire managers, referral drives, those type of things. When I was at Amazon, they have a lot of affinity groups, whether know black and tech or whatever it all. Everybody wants to be a part of something. They used to have what they call our phone tools. So anybody that graduated from the University of Michigan can join this group. So anybody has Michigan background, they join this group. So, utilizing all that information and say, okay, I have a role in Michigan. Dan Harten [00:34:59]: Let's download that like you would externally, but internally, download that list, send them a message of saying, hey, Michigan Wolverines, I need your help. Here's a job. Anybody have a referral and that's your internal resource that's coming in over and over and over again. You could do it, too. March Madness is coming up, so try to bucket. Everybody loves a couple of things in their life, where they work, where they went to school. So utilizing that and bucket, a group of people that went to a specific college, and then you can have one message that scales out to all those individuals referring back to the college, and then you're going to get response rates. People want to help alumni, and people thought, every time I did that, they thought I went there too. Dan Harten [00:35:47]: And I didn't even say that. I just said, hey, let's go, wolverines, or whatever it may be. And you get that externally, you have to do that. I would say a lot of people don't spend. I was always asked when I was sourcing and my goals sourcing, what did they hire me to do and what actually am I doing with my nine to 5 hours? Typically it was, I'm helping this project and helping this project and helping this project. But really, what did they hire me to do is to source candidates and get sourcing. So I would block off, I would say 60% to 70% of your day of specifically sourcing things that you're doing, whether it's internally, externally, and then obviously utilizing AI or job boards, that's a funnel that's always coming in of applicants that you can review. But if you're not doing the internal external, and then also the AI or the job postings, you have to do all three to be successful, because if one's not working, another will work, and you have to continue to do it and adapt. Kortney Harmon [00:36:51]: I love that. I think that's wonderful. And I love the idea that make sure something's working while you're not. It's a good balance in our industry, whether it's sales and recruiting or sourcing. Everything has to have a balance in order to be successful. I've been warned by Katie, I only get to ask one more question, so I'm going to do that and then we're going to leave it up to the audience. So, audience members, be sure. Make sure you put your chats in the question. Kortney Harmon [00:37:17]: So my last question, in your experience, what separates the best talent sourcers from the rest? What are the skills? What are the traits? What are the habits that top performers do in this role? What do they have in common? Dan Harten [00:37:31]: I'll give you two is can they influence the hiring decision? Don't be an order taker. Are you going to influence the hiring decision based on data, based on your relationship with your hiring manager, based on your relationship with your candidates? Are you in a position that you're influencing how that rec is going to go? Yes or no? The way to do that is obviously stay up on the latest trends. How I always frame it is the analogy is if you're in a race, let's just say a NASCAR race or Indy 500 or something like that, drafting is you're behind another car and they're going super fast. You're going super fast, but you go right up against them, behind them, and you draft them and kind of tail them. And what you're doing is you're picking up every little thing that they're doing in their momentum and eventually propel yourself to the finish line. I would always try to draft the best recruiters and sourcers in the industry, whether it's on social media, YouTube. I'll give you a little hint of, like I said, we're in the space of information overload and people love to talk about what they're doing and how they can impact. So if you want to do type in Google, start me and hit recruiting or sourcing or something like that. Dan Harten [00:39:00]: Essentially these pages are individuals and recruiters that are really good at what they're doing and they literally have tabs on every little thing that they're doing. So whether it's sourcing and recruiting platforms, presentation resources, research tools, Facebook pages to follow, anything and everything, if you do start me and then you type in recruiting, there's a lot of stuff that are going to pop up and it's literally a playbook for you. Not everything's going to work in a specific industry, but it's going to give you the knowledge and you're drafting some of the biggest industry leaders on what they're currently doing or how they're utilizing the next technology. So then you can bring it into your organization and help and be kind of the subject matter expert. A lot of people say that our fear of AI is going to ruin this industry. It might just change our workflow and how we utilize it. And if you're not changing with the times, then those are the people that are going to get eliminated. But stay up on the latest trends and draft the leading experts. Dan Harten [00:40:07]: And I'm not the smartest person in this field, but I know who to go to and know who to follow. Kortney Harmon [00:40:14]: I love that. That is such great advice. Very cool. And I would encourage people to do that. That is amazing. And you're not wrong. It's literally this industry isn't changing, but our workflows are and how we utilize the tools and the tech that supports us to be able to get all the information that we need. Information overload is absolutely correct. Kortney Harmon [00:40:35]: All right, Katie, does that mean you're coming back? That means I'm back, baby. Katie Jones [00:40:41]: Extra large cup of coffee this morning? Kortney Harmon [00:40:45]: Okay. Katie Jones [00:40:46]: Yes, Bindu, I'll go ahead and drop that link into the chat. And for those that are listening, any links that were mentioned today, I'll also include in the podcast show notes. So if you're listening on the podcast, when it drops next week, you'll find all that information in the show notes. What is the single most impactful thing my company can do to improve sourcing and recruiting efforts in 2024? Dan Harten [00:41:09]: I would say educate your recruiters and sourcers and how to be best business partners to the higher managers they support. A lot of people go into those intake meetings and they talk about recruiting. And just like recruiters throw up on these hiring managers and ultimately they really don't care. It's gibberish to them. But if you can teach your recruiters how to make a business case and how you can set business specific goals related to how you're going to fill that role, it resonates with them and they're going to be more in tune with what you're currently doing. I think that's the biggest thing. And then educating yourself on who to follow, what courses are out that are 100% free. But as budgets get restrained at companies right now in the TA space, you got to have different avenues on how to educate yourself to be the subject matter expert on that next big thing. Dan Harten [00:42:10]: So understanding that and then share your knowledge with other people. Kortney Harmon [00:42:14]: I love it. Dan, do you have Katie? I'm going to jump in. I just had a question come to my mind. I'm so sorry. Obviously you said Apollo. That was one tool that people use. We talked about being outside of the box for sourcing whether it's meet them where they are. Are there any other tools that you have in your little fancy drawer that you pull out all these candidates with that you would maybe tell people to go look at or to use? Let's see, it can be. Kortney Harmon [00:42:43]: No, it's perfectly fine. I mean, we have a lot of tools, end of story. Social is a tool. We have all of these wonderful things and you gave us quite a few. So I just was curious, I think. Dan Harten [00:42:52]: How to utilize chat GBT. It's a great source, great tool, but how are you going to do it and streamline your processes or that outreach message and get creative? I don't want this industry to rely on those type of technologies and limit their creativity that goes into this specific job. So figure out how to use it and don't lose that creativity that you're really pushing. Obviously platforms like hire easy, having that AI component helps a ton with insights because then you can literally dive in deep on what type of candidate I'm looking for. Can we afford them and do we have a process in place to actually scale it out? So those are some of the few ones. If there's a specific area of the recruiting process, there's probably a specific tool specifically. Really good at that. I know like Metaview came out with in the phone interview, it takes any specific AI notes. Dan Harten [00:43:53]: You could do this through Zoom too. They give you the transcript. But what are you going to do with that transcript notes after your phone interview? Maybe you take it, throw it into chat GBT. Then you throw the job description in there as well. And I say based on this conversation and based on this job description, write me three reasons why this person be a really good fit for that. I can send to my hiring manager, boom, writes it for you. Then you can click and send it to your hiring manager. You can do that with anything. Dan Harten [00:44:22]: It's how are you going to utilize it to really empower yourself, empower the recruiting team to influence the hiring decision? Recruiting comes down to influence and are you going to be a person to influence it or are you going to be an order taker? And that's how I would approach things in 2024. Kortney Harmon [00:44:41]: Establishing trust helps you navigate and change influence in our industry. So I love that. That was a great use case for CHA GPT as well. So thank you very much, Katie. Sorry. Katie Jones [00:44:52]: Okay, so I think we only have time probably for one more question, Dan. So this one is kind of taking everything that we've learned today and looking at it under a different lens, maybe. What are some signs that my current company sourcing strategies may need a refresh? Dan Harten [00:45:09]: I would say that if you're only relying on one specific tool or one specific platform and not getting the results you need, I would figure out how to branch out and then specifically monitor the results that you're having within a specific platform that you're utilizing. If there's no, like three months, six months, and justifying the tools that you're utilizing, I think it might be a time for a switch. And I would say, don't just throw money at something too, because that's the norm and everybody else is doing HR budgets. Hey, we'll just get another tool or we've always done it that way. Some platforms out there are turning more social versus actually like helping recruiters fill jobs. So if it's not working, pivot and figure out what works for the actual end user and that's us recruiters. And how am I going to fill Rex faster but then come with the data to back it up with your leadership and vice versa of what's the data on this and how can we improve and then set metrics and always continue to look at those to get better. Kortney Harmon [00:46:23]: Amazing. Thank you. Dan court. Katie Jones [00:46:25]: I think that wraps up our AMA section here. I'm going to go ahead and hop. Kortney Harmon [00:46:29]: Off and let you guys do your thing. Okay, I'll wrap up, guys. Dan was a wealth of knowledge and the chat is showing that here right now. A wealth of sourcing, recruiting, talent acquisition, wisdom all in all. So Dan, thank you so much for being generous with your time and your insights and your expertise today. Thank you very much. Dan Harten [00:46:48]: For sure, it was awesome. Kortney Harmon [00:46:51]: I know our audience walked away with tons of actionable takeaways stepping up their hiring game in 2024. Thank you for putting your LinkedIn profile in the chat. We will make sure that you can link with Dan in the show notes as well as follow Dan's podcast, speak easy and all other things from hire easy. Don't forget next week, same time, same place. We talk live in these actionable best practices for crew late. Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to subscribe. Tune in for all our next full desk experience live workshop and we'll be back soon with more leading voices in the recruiting industry. Kortney Harmon [00:47:28]: Thanks so much for joining us I'm Kortney Harmon with Crelate. Thanks for joining the full desk experience. Please feel free to submit any questions for next session to [email protected] or ask us live next session if you enjoyed our show. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen, and sign up to attend future events that happen once a month.
