As you all know the Talent Acquisition & Sourcing Conclave (#TASCON15) held recently was divided into 2 sections the Strategy Hub and Sourcing Lab were held simultaneously. The attendees were thus required to choose the sessions that interest them. The host Sarang Brahme began the session with a fun activity of questioning the audience. The individuals who answered the questions during the sessions correctly or with unique inputs were rewarded with goodies. The activities that were conducted were-

Say Something Unique about yourself

They had to tell one thing about themselves that is not on their resume and Social Media. This received a good response with inputs like

• Sarang mentioned he was a classical singer and that he liked back benchers, so they had to beware as he would ask them questions for sure.
• the need to know about something unique as Ankush mentioned
• Trivedi mentioned that he was a good trainer
• Masood Sayed mentioned that he had won the geography quiz competitions while in school and college

Recruitment History Recap

This was conducted by Rajendra Raut who asked the audience to name one H. R. Company that was well known and the pioneer of Recruiting policies. The answer was TCS, which is later explained why because they were the Pioneers of Recruitment Policies as they came up with policies which were later translated into policies by the government –

• 1920 Leave with Pay hence PF
• 1940 Workman Excellence Compensation Act government adopted
• 1949 HR dedicated Courses for HR was started
• 1921 Multidivisional organisational structure was started
• 1950 Need for Consultants to guide HRs
• 1969 Vish Aggarwal the ‘Vishvapeta’ of Indian Recruitment Industry started ABC Consultants
• 1974 a dedicated H.R.E. department started first at LNT Infotech

Thoughts Exchanged

Here the audience was asked to mention any tricks used by them to reduce vendor dependency? Wherein Yusuf mentioned that he conducted a mapping and headhunting Sourcing from the Internet database.

Creativity Challenge

There was another activity conducted by Sarang Brahme to get the audience engaged. He posed a challenge to the audience by questioning the audience, what is the most innovative thing you can do with Employer Referrals? Here are the ideas that were expressed…

• Gamifications
• Brownie points in performance appraisals or give an appraisal itself instead
• Engage influencers like Spouses by giving them points
• Non – voluntary appraisal or Learning aspects
• Giving employee referral points with goodies attached to each point

Industry Knowledge Quizzer

Jashan Joshi conducted an Industry Knowledge quiz during his session by questioning the audience –

1. Name the 1st Software Company in the world.
A. The answer was Computer Usage Company (CUC)

a.Founded by John W. Sheldon and Kubie, E.C.
b.In the year 1955
c.Shut down in the year 1970

2. Which are the big 4 Consulting Companies in the world?
A. ENY, PWC, PMG & Deloit

3.Name the Top 4 IT Companies in India.

TCS, Infosys, Wipro & HCL

The host was Sharath Kumar, Partner at SourcePRO, who began the session with fun activities too. The ones who gave the best answers were rewarded with SourcePRO mugs and badges. Here are the activities were conducted by Sharath Kumar…

Sharing Entertaining Ideas

The session began with an opening statement combined with Recruiting Humour where…

• The statement was an entertaining job description, “The wisdom of a 50 year old, the experience of a 40 year old, the drive of a 30 year old and the pay-scale of a 20 year old.”
• The recruiting humour was where Sourcing was looked at or compared to an Intelligence Service or Secret Service to highlight what we as Sourcers do by Using other Intelligence such as –
  • Portal Intelligence to bring up active lists of candidates for open positions
  • Social, Google, Telephone Intelligence etc. to create a profile of a candidate
  • Mobile intelligence & Platforms for attracting candidates to us or our company
  • Human Intelligence to analyse, understand and then match candidates for the vacancy which is called “Humint”

Repeat Names of the people at the same table

The Participants were picked randomly and asked to repeat the names of everyone at their table in order to get people to interact with others and if they were able that were rewarded.

Funny Recruitment Stories

Here the audience was asked to share these stories. For instance

• Recruiting in China is difficult due to a language barrier i.e. English so neither party understood the either
• When a candidate was contacted to set up an Interview, the candidates immediate reply was that they weren’t able to respond due to their ears being bandaged L.O.L.!

Mention Sourcing Tools that haven’t been covered during the entire event

Here the audience was asked to mention other sourcing tools that haven’t been mentioned during the entire event for instance Dex.

The birth of technology has transformed the lives of people to a great extent. It is used in almost all aspects of an individual’s life thus making it convenient. Connecting with friends and family at a global level is possible due to the Internet. With that being said, Recruiters can now connect easily with other Talent Acquisition professionals at a global and national level.In view of this development and to get more professionals to interact, share views and improve their knowledge in the process, Sourcing Adda’s next WhatsApp Group Chat focused on Dream.

Application Tracking System (ATS). Following which several professionals had interesting insights to add, so here’s what they had to say…

Well based on the aspects mentioned, I think it is safe to say that we all now have at least a brief idea as to how we would like our ATS to work for us. This should probably get all of us thinking about creating the perfect ATS. Let’s all aim to bring more people to interact and gain interesting insights. Be sure to join us for our next WhatsApp Group Chat.

The Talent Acquisition and Sourcing Conclave (#TASCON15) that was held on April 15^th 2015 in Pune was a smashing hit and the attendees walked away happy & excited about the excellent learning. In the Sourcing Lab we also had the Mega Sourcing Contest which we’ll come back to in our next post as our main focus in this post is on the Sourcing Lab – A practical insight into many aspects of Talent Acquisition & Sourcing tools & techniques presented by hands on experts from within the Talent Acquisition space.

Sharath Kumar, partner at SourcePRO was the Host for the Sourcing Lab. The session began with comments to lighten the mood by sharing a funny Job Description that said “We’re looking for someone with the wisdom of a 50 year old, the Experience of a 40 Year old, the Drive of a 30 year old and the Pay Scale of a 20 year old!”. Sharath also mentioned that a Sourcer is like the Intelligence Agent of the Recruiting World! Think about it – Portal Intelligence to get active resumes and SOCINT, GOOGINT, TELINT to gather intelligence about a target while profiling him/her for a mission. We use MOBINT to attract the target to the mission and assess the fit using all of the sources I mentioned using HUMINT! Sharath had the crowd entertained by involving them in activities in between the sessions.

Let’s find out what went on at each Speaker Sessions…

Sessions with Speakers

LinkedIn Hacks

Anshuman Mukherjee was the first speaker to enlighten the audience on “LinkedIn Hacks” where he covered the points mentioned below:

• Uses of X-ray search
• Google Search’s range option
• Linked In messages & education page
• Conduct an email search
• LinkedIn Search candidates using pin codes and mobile numbers
• Tips and Tricks to assist Sourcing

This particular session had lot of takeaways.

Source faster than ever before using Chrome extensions

The next session was presented by Namratha Nandish, who spoke on “Source faster than ever before using Chrome extensions.” The Extensions she focussed on were –

• Rapportive
• Prophet
• Lippl
• 360social.me

These simple tools that were shared will definitely help you to Source faster than ever before using Chrome extensions.

Purple Squirrel Sourcing Tools

The next session was conducted by Sathish Ganesh whose topic of discussion was “Purple Squirrel Sourcing Tools”. He focused on tools like…

• Recruit’EM
• Sourcehub
• AIRS free Resume Search
• PropelIQ
• ReferYes
• BRUPT

The incredible tools were quite eye opening as they simplified the hunt for the Purple.

Magic of 140 Characters

Up next was Kunjal Kamdar’s session – “Magic of 140 Characters”. As the name suggests we are talking about the micro blogging site Twitter. During the session he highlighted that it was started on the idea of SMS but unlike 160 characters in SMS it allows only 140 characters and here’s why. The creators of Twitter wanted to keep those 20 characters for your name and Twitter handle. He also mentioned other uses of Twitter –

• Hold TweetChats, conduct Webinars & post Blogs
• Follow news articles by joining hashtags Eg. #news
• Gain quarterly reports of the progress of a competitive company by following a company # e.g. #TCS
• Post job specs that are automated through the Organisation’s Careers Twitter Account
• Use Google url Shortener to learn how many people have clicked on your URL
• Use #trend to get real time reports from organisations
• Create and use Twitter lists

This was another great session that conveyed important insights not familiar to the commoner.

Company Mapping

The next speaker to take the stage was Nitesh Kumar who spoke about “Company Mapping”. He simplified the understanding by explaining that Company Mapping is done basically to understand the structure of an organisation for competitive intelligence and to create a target list. He also provided alternative uses of Company Mapping to boost the process.

• Create lists to build Talent Pipelines
• Look for partner lists of companies that use the target skills to map companies
• LinkedIn to get a list of companies that are hiring for the same profile
• Use groups and connections called similar profiles for Company Mapping found only on LinkedIn

An amazing session that was a hit with the delegates due to the insights shared.

Contact Discovery

Our next speaker was none other than Chinmay Chavan the Lead trainer at SourcePRO who took a session on “Contact Discovery”. The tools he covered will most definitely help uncover contact details like telephone numbers and/or email ids. These incredible tools are:

• Data.com
• Zoom info
• Google Search
• Facebook
• GitHub

The other tools that one can use are LinkedIn & Facebook and even Twitter, Meetup & Google+ where you can send direct messages to a particular person.

Well this brings our recap of the Sourcing Lab @ TASCON15 to a close. and knowing If you’re interested in getting hold of the PPTs then visit TASCON or SlideShare. Stay tuned with #TASCON15 for updates that prove how impressive the entire session was.