Being in the recruiting industry you’ve heard these terms a thousand times but how often have you stopped to wonder whether there is a difference between them or are the same. And if they are same why do we have so many different terms for the same reason? Well I’m not sure about you but I for one would like to know if there is any, Difference between Headhunters, Recruiters and Sourcers. Therefore, I’ve taken the liberty to answer these similar questions that most of us are also wondering. So let’s take it step by step and begin with how they are defined.

Definitions

If you wish to get a clear understanding of these terms it is important for you to understand the terms first. 

Headhunters

These are individuals that are hired by a third party corporation or company in order to locate suitable candidates possessing certain skills sets that aren’t easy to come by. These skill sets are harder to find and requires a certain background.

Recruiters

On the other hand a recruiter is an individual that is hired by a corporation or company to fill positions that crop up on regular bases within the organisation. The recruiter may be either employed at the organisation and work solely for that company or a third party recruiting organisation. These individuals may work within their own business or are usually a part of a larger staffing organisation.

Sourcers

These are individuals that are tasked with finding candidate details such as a specific name, title and or contact information of that particular person.

Now that we have a clear understanding of the terms we’ll be able to understand what the tasks these individuals are involved in are and this too might help you get a clear understanding.

How do they work?

Headhunters

For Headhunters, as mentioned earlier, these individuals usually take a proactive and an aggressive role in finding candidates and reach out to the ones directly if they find them suitable for the post. Such candidates are reached out and searched by headhunters. Their task usually consists of actively sourcing candidates and is completed once they get the candidate but these individuals aren’t involved in the recruiting process apart from locating candidates.

Recruiters

Recruiters on the other hand are involved throughout the recruiting process beginning from advertising job specs, scouting the desired talent, recruiting the right talent and introducing the new recruit’s to the company staff.  

Sourcers

Sourcers have a relatively similar role to the ones mentioned earlier but they are tasked to only source candidate details that are forwarded to recruiters to take the recruiting process to the other level. These individuals are present for a brief period of time i.e. they need only source candidates with the requirements and then recruiters handle it from there.

In a nutshell, a Sourcers role ends after a candidate has been sourced and shows an interest in the job offerings. Similarly a Headhunters role comes to a halt after a particular prospect has been located. While a Recruiters role begins at the application stage and only ends after an offer has been extended and /or accepted.

Hope this information was as useful as it was for me. Well I think it’s safe to say that, the difference between headhunters, recruiters and sourcers is clear now. If you have any suggestions or pointers that you’d like to add, do let us know via the comments sections.

For a recruiter apart from sourcing candidates via Social Media platforms they even dig into their existing connections. Just imagine if you could view connections that aren’t your immediate ones, won’t it assist and boost sourcing results?

Well if you have been having as much trouble sourcing the right candidates as most of us usually do and are looking to View Third Degree and out of Network Profiles then, take a deep breath; your search is finally over. What a relief!

Are you fed up with the constant interruptions during sourcing caused by ads, then that too can be taken care of with a simple tool to do that for you.

So let’s take care of the issue at hand i.e. How to view third degree and out of network profiles?

Viewing third degree and out of network profiles has never been as simple as it is now. This can be done via Private Browsing. Here is how you can browse privately irrespective of the Browser used. Whether you are using Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari there is a way nonetheless.  

Google Chrome

This browser has a feature that enables you to browse privately i.e. incognito. Here’s how:

• Left click the Customize and control Google Chrome icon (the 3 Dots icon on the right hand side of the page)
• Select  the option New incognito window
• To speed up the process use the short cut Ctrl+Shift+N

Chrome allows you to access the profile searched in the private browser. Before opening the profile in any job portal you can right click on the link and select the option Open link in new incognito window. Once you do this any profile you access will open in the incognito browser with its own tab.

Mozilla Firefox

Like most browsers even Firefox has the private browsing feature. To shift to private browsing follow these steps:

• Left click the Open Menu icon (the 3 Bar icon on the right hand side of the page)
• Selecttheoption New Private Browsing
• To speed up the process use the short cut Ctrl+Shift+P

Once you are in the New Private Browser you can view and search profiles easily. This will assist you in your search for third and out of network profiles thus improving your sourcing results. 

Safari

Most browsers have the private browsing feature. To access it follow these simple steps:

• Under the tools section, left click the icon (the Cog icon on the right hand side of the page)
• Select the options Private Browsing and Block Pop up Windows

Once you have done this your Private Browsing is set up and you can start searching and accessing profile links that meet your criteria. This will also enable you to access third and out of network profiles which will boost your sourcing results.

Prevent Pop Ups

Most browsers will take care of these interruptions via private browsing; if it isn’t then you always have a tool AdBlock that will do this for you.

So here is the answer to your troubles and if you have any other to add do let us know in the comments section. This will increase our knowledge as well as our readers.

A common challenge faced by most Talent Acquisitionist is dealing with hired candidates without a relieving letter. While there are various reasons for such problems dealing with them is difficult especially when they are the preferred candidate and are serving their notice period or are unable to get a relieving letter due to genuine reasons or other commitments. Therefore, how does one deal with such individuals and still hire them is the question on our minds.

Thankfully we @SourcingAdda realise such challenges and try our level best to address these concerns to arrive at alternative solutions that are workable. And thanks to one of our Mumbai group members Archana who suggested we discuss on, How to deal with candidates who have joined the company without submitting a relieving letter? We are able to be of better assistance to our members. Therefore we have disclosed the chat for your review so let’s find out what options are available from a Recruiters perspective

Just like most fields have certain myths so also the Recruitment Industry too has assumptions that people have followed till date. These misconceptions that are held are followed blindly and the field of Recruitment is no exception.

The misconceptions need to be checked and rectified in time or else it will affect the performance and efficiency with which Recruiters function. This will in turn affect the quality of the hires. We as Recruiters need to be aware of the “Myths of Recruitment & Selection”, if we are to recognise any of the Myths that apply to us. Therefore, here is a list of the, “5 Myths of Recruitment & Selection – Debunked”

Myth 1 – Job Board Ads & the Website are most Effective Recruiting tools

Well that used to be the case earlier but with the updates to Social Networking sites everything is going digital. Due to the recent developments such as Boolean Search Strings, Application Tracking System (ATS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) this no longer holds true. Isn’t this a shocker?

Myth 2 – All Experienced Individuals are Egomaniacs

If you are doing this, “stop it right now” because you will be turning down individuals of exceptional talent and calibre. You will be depriving yourself and the company staff of the benefit of the tips, tools, techniques and the wisdom an experienced person has to offer.

Myth 3 – Best Applicants, Make the Best Employees

Are you wondering why an applicant who nailed the interview, got selected for the job but turned out to be the exact opposite of what you had expected him / her to perform on the job? Don’t fret,  you probably have been a victim to this myth just like others before you, so next time ensure that you evaluate all the aspects before you make a decision to hire them.

Myth 4 – All Shortlisted candidates, must be asked the same questions

While it helps to ask similar questions as it reduces our work and also helps us gauge and compare the answers. It isn’t very effective because you are skipping information that differentiates one from the other.

Myth 5 – You cannot Prompt Applicants to respond to the questions favourably

Sometimes it helps a great deal to prompt as it helps them to develop a rapport that gives them confidence to ponder further and give you a straight answer. This will tell a lot more about the person as compared to the first impression you had of them.

If you can relate to any of these Myths or recognise the ones that you practice, it’s probably a good time to take a step back and evaluate the other Myths that have gone unnoticed so that you can then unlearn what doesn’t apply. Besides if you are practicing any of these Myths the individuals that you hire aren’t probably the right ones. So go ahead and evaluate them without these misconceptions affecting your decision to hire the Candidate.

We’ve been hearing and talking about all things related to Talent Acquisition and Human Resource in are favourite Wednesday’s discussions that are all taken in good stride by all our members. Being a part of these discussions and an active one at that, if it has taught us anything it has definitely added to our learning.

Therefore we decided to look into our hat of ideas to find out what our next discussion topic should be and before we knew it our member Manish from Pune WhatsApp Group suggested we talk about what changed in Recruitment in the last 10yrs and what’s next? We decided to go with it as it was a challenge to test our knowledge and find out the changes that the Recruitment Industry went under and what we can expect next as future developments. And here’s what we discovered…

From the nature of the conversation above we can state that this discussion was quite interesting with lots of inputs put forth by our WhatsApp members. We can even conclude that we’ve learnt a lot and most definitely we have all added to our knowledge at least to those of us who’ve attended it. If you’d like to be a part of these conversations and participate in our upcoming activities then follow @SourcingAdda and don’t forget to join us at #TASCON16 to interact with Thought Leaders of the Industry.

The activity with the most responses i.e. the Wednesday’s Discussion being the Hike Group Chat will now resume on the WhatsApp Platform. This new development was taken well by all the Members of the North, South, West and East Group.

This decision to revert back on WhatsApp was made upon the request of our loyal Hike Group Members. So we @SourcingAdda  now have 8 groups in total as before namely Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Gujarat. Where we’ll continue all our activities including our favourite discussions we all await eagerly to add to our knowledge.

Therefore this time our discussion was on, “Best Practices for Improving Offer to Joining Ratio” as suggested by Kanhaiya Lal and here’s what we discovered…

Well this brings an end to our discussion and I’m sure you’ve added to your knowledge as I have. So many views expressed. Now wasn’t that a great session leaving you enlightened and anyone with the willingness to learn. A big thank you to our fellow Talent Acquisitionists for sharing their ideas and perspective I’m sure all of us present and the ones reading this that means you have also benefitted from this recap.

To get more updates to our upcoming activities please follow @SourcingAdda and to avail the early bird discount for #TASCON16  another amazing place to network and learn from the Thought Leaders in the Industry register fast. Trust me when I say you’ll have an experience that is worth attending.

The modern techniques or trends of recruitment have boosted the Sourcing process for recruiters and companies as well. The modern method of recruiting no doubt has improved the recruitment process due to easy access to a huge database of Social Media like LinkedIn.

Gone are the days where job seekers went through job ads in newspapers while employers waited and hoped that the right candidate would walk in. Most recruiters and human resource departments have resorted to modern methods of sourcing candidates.

Social Media a Recruiting Tool

One of the modern ways of recruiting is through Social Media platforms like LinkedIn. Everyone who is anybody most definitely is on LinkedIn so getting desired applicants is now easy. Most Sourcers looking to fill in a vacancy would do better if they used social media sites. These sites with a huge database of Candidates also have at their disposal all the necessary information a Recruiter is looking for and is cost effective too.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow employers to post job ads on these sites, apart from this they can even swift through potential candidate profiles and create a selection list of candidates that are suitable for the post. This is possible because these sites also give all the necessary information to Sourcers. Therefore they are perfect ways to source Candidates with caliber. They can even help you schedule your job postings at an appropriate time that yields maximum results.

Mobile as a Recruiting Tool

Well if you thought that social media is probably the only trend that most employers follow to capture candidates you are mistaken. Because aside from Social Media Recruiting you also have Mobile Recruiting as the recent trend making its mark, due to its availability. Besides it is easier for most individuals to access as it is flexible.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           The flexibility it provides enables individuals not only to view job postings but also to apply to the ones that interest them instantly no matter where they are or even if they are on the move. When conducting Mobile Recruiting you need to ensure that your job posting is visible on a small screen like a Mobile and is easily viewable without disruptions.

Both these tools if used together can boost your search for the right Candidate at it gives you access to Passive Candidates apart from the active ones. Each tool has its own advantages that can speed up the process of Recruiting and capture suitable Candidates for the vacancy. Therefore for modern Recruiters knowledge about Sourcing Candidates via Social Media channels and Mobile Recruitment are essential.

Let’s not forget our all-time favorite Recruiting methods of communication like a simple message, email and the most effective way to verify the information making a call and then having a face to face interaction with suitable Candidate.

These are some of the most effective methods of sourcing Candidates that have served Recruiters well and continue to be as effective as before. So go ahead and use these methods to receive results and select the suitable Candidates.

It’s 2016 and we’re all wondering what this year has in store for us. On that particular note it’s only right that we take a moment to think about what the Recruiting Trends look like for this year. Having highlighted that @Souricngadda every Wednesday we hold discussions where our members get the opportunity to interact with like – minded individuals and add to their knowledge.

These discussions give us a chance to see the other side of things that we don’t usually get to see or learn on a daily basis. Hence the topic for discussion was on “Recruiting Trends that Matter in 2016 as suggested by Sarang. And here’s what we discovered

Well we received some interesting perspectives through this discussion and now it’s time to be patient and see how much of it comes true. In the meantime to get real time updates to our upcoming events follow us @Sourcingadda. And while you’re waiting to see if these aspects turn out to be true you might want to be a part of #TASCON16 and add to your knowledge as well.

The Talent Acquisition profession is a demanding profile requiring patience, Talent Sourcing skills and to be a Proactive Recruiter who is on the move for a successful hiring. Interacting and Socialising with people is Recruiters bread and butter.

Finding Talented Candidates is like looking for a needle in a haystack thus being abreast with the current market trends in convincing Candidates from bigger firms to join mid-sized firms is that much more essential. Hence Sourcing Adda decided to have the Hike Group Chat Wednesday’s discussion on, “The current trend in the market to convince a candidate from a bigger firm to join a mid-sized firms” as suggested by Sathya a member form the South Group and here’s what we uncovered…

From the discussion above we can conclude that the interactions were quite informative and insightful. Hence, we can say that we have added to our knowledge and now you too can by following @SourcingAdda to get updates to our upcoming events.

Gone are the days when recruiters used to use traditional methods of marketing, job ads. The traditional methods of recruiting include the distribution of pamphlets, newspaper job ads job portals and referrals. These days with Social Media dominating the way we connect with people it has improved the way recruiters look to hire talented individuals.

Popular Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest are but only a few examples of the sites that most individuals are active on. With the majority of applicants spending most of their time on these platforms, targeting these users is fairly simple due to the developments in these sites and posting job specs is also relatively simple. So what are these, New Ways of Social Media Recruiting?

Where to Begin

As the heading clearly states; you need to start where the people flock, if you are to get anywhere in your Recruiting or Sourcing process. It is that simple, go to Social Media sites because that’s where your potential candidates are job hunting.

Know which Social Media sites to browse through

It may sound obvious, but it isn’t. While you have several social networking sites available not all, serve you best. Sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are preferable due to their large database including their features. But industry focused sites or blogs have a small database to choose from that comprise of specific field related audience.

Recruiting online begins in your office

When building online connections for Recruiting; don’t forget your biggest asset, your current employees. It is important to note that internal recommendations are the best way to get reliable employees. Besides you can even request your employees to post job ads on their social network sites.

Quality V.S. Quantity, which is better

Although it is preferable to have a lot of connections, it is also essential that you have quality connections. Put simply, having 500 connections is not as effective as having 50 connections that know you well and who would help you with your recruitment needs.

Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn is more than a networking site it is a dedicated business networking site. Its layout and display of information is in the resume style. This enables you to get a view of all the information at first glance. Besides, it even has the groups feature, which helps you to participate in the forum discussions. You also need to answer the posts on the forum if you have some information to contribute and help’s you to get recognised as well.

If all of these aspects are taken care of you are likely to get more applicants if they recognise you. With the kind of connections you form you can then boost your Recruitment process while you get noticed. So pay attention to all these aspects to receive the best results. I leave you with an encouraging thought, Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use. – Earl Nightingale