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 Talent Acquisition and Sourcing Conclave (#TASCON15) was a great success with interesting insights to take back. If you were present then I’m sure you’ve benefitted a great deal by the insights you acquired. But for the ones, who couldn’t make it, you have no idea what you’ve missed nevertheless you can still catch up.

The event began with an opening session by Yusuf Pathan, the Managing Director of Key Resourcing (@keyresourcing) who gave a brief introduction about Sourcing Adda (@SourcingAdda) and TASCON. After which the cake cutting session to mark the anniversary of Sourcing Adda was conducted. Then we had Angeline Peters the Marketing head of SourcePRO (@TheSourcePro) addressing the crowd followed by the next opening session…

The Future of Sourcing & Recruiting and where it is heading

This session was taken up by Shrinivas Rao who talked about “The Future of Sourcing and Recruiting and where it is heading” and was introduced by Sarang Brahme. Shrinivas began with a brief outline of the Talent Acquisition and Sourcing Industry where these aspects were discussed…

• Avoid Customer Service Relations (CSR) used for Executing Sales & Management
• Common problems faced without the use of Social Media
• Social Media as a solution to most of these issues
• Use Social Media effectively
• Social Media affects the future of a company & the Talent Acquisition process

Strategy Hub

WNS Case Study

The very first session was Ragendra Raut’s who discussed a “Case study” of his company about “Adopting the Sourcing Module successfully” and the keys to outperform. Here’s what was discussed…

• The concept of crowd sourcing and whether Sourcing is the new recruitment
• Discussion on how WNS has adopted the Sourcing Module successfully
• Keys to outperform –
  • Be passionate about the profession
  • Know your competition and be updated with the latest developments
  • Continuously build your competencies & come out of your comfort zone
  • Understand the company, clients and its process, communicate smartly and have self – awareness
  • Function as a team, not individually and leverage your networks

Panel Discussion on Employer Branding

The next session was a Panel discussion on “Employer Branding (EB)”, with Yusuf Pathan as the moderator along with Ruchi Bhatia, Novex Alex and RimJhim Ray. These were the points discussed –

• What is Employer Branding, how is it done in different segments and whether Indian Companies are good at EB
• Difference between EB and Employee Branding (EmB)
• Whether EB or EmB is to be used?
• Product and Services marketing was conducted earlier but now products and services based on customer experience is marketed
• The basic strategy followed while marketing is ‘pull rather than push’
• Debate on whether branding should be a part of marketing
• Can ROI be measured?
• How to handle negative reviews on Social Media, tackle layoffs and still protect your brand name?

How to build a Sourcing Team?

The next session by Jashan Joshi was on “How to build a Sourcing Team” where he mentioned that Sourcing is an art that requires you to source in order to find the right person at the right time. The session highlighted the skills required to be a good Sourcer like –

• Good at the calling process and Boolean Search Strings no matter which portal
• Have a relationship building Sourcing team
• Conduct timely follow ups and give instant feedback
• Stop segregating UK vs US & learn global techniques instead
• Have industry knowledge, skills & be street smart
• Profession and beliefs are very important after being patient

Riding the Referral Wave

Next we had Nrusingh Samant with a session on “Riding the Referral Wave.” Where several ways to create referrals was discussed –

• Keep the referral in cc when emailing
• Looping in spouses (crowding)
• When there’s a vacant position link it by Gamifying every step of the position
• In LinkedIn when you have connections that might fit the vacant position it prompts you to refer that person for the position
• When using referrals make sure to reward the referrer
• Have tracking mechanism in place to ensure you reward the right person

Panel Discussion on Impact of Technology on Sourcing

The next session was another Panel Discussion on “Impact of Technology on Sourcing” with the moderator Masood Sayed, Micky Chopra and Satya Reddy. Here’s what was discussed –

• With technology detecting the cultural fit is easy, everything is traceable even consumerism
• Technology and human logic should go hand in hand where selection is concerned
• Segregate the tools used for filtering active candidates
• Use tools that can be customised to your needs
• Know the organisation’s goals
• Based on your requirements build an ATS to end up in a win, win situation
• Use Psychometric assessment tools

Best practices in Social Recruiting

The last session was Sarang Brahme’s on “Best practices in Social Recruiting”. He opened the session with an interesting comic strip that highlighted the current scenario where most Social Media users weren’t active, shared several mantras on the subject and discussed the key aspects to be considered such as –

• Define the audience & build awareness
• Establish trust to build relationships & get mobile savvy
• Use Social Recruitment Monitor tool for complete analytics of your website’s social channels
• Create, use & send jobgrams that highlight problems and that solve them

The last session was Masood Sayed talking about his new gamification website (sourcinggames.com) that was recently launched to help Recruiters and Sourcers improve their understanding and skills. Towards the end Sarang introduced a video L’Oreal Inspiration (@L’Oreal) which was creative, yet eye opening.

The main highlights of the entire session were the Panel discussions on Employer Branding & Impact of Technology on Sourcing, How to build a Sourcing Team and the Best practices in Social Recruiting. Overall the sessions were brain storming, interesting, informative and quite entertaining with insights and tips imparted as trade secrets you’d have to have been present for to learn them.

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.

• Chetan Indap shared his views, “I believe Artificial Intelligence is going to be used a lot to automate subjectivity in recruitments. Demand for machine trainers (hence machine Learning will be a norm). Scary part is recruitment will be ruled by Mathematicians and programmers!”