I’ve talked numerous times over the last several years about the need for many of us to expand our candidate searches beyond the national active candidate boards, especially since they’re not paying off as they once were.
More and more recruiters are tackling the passive candidate marketplace using Google, the other search engines, services for name and lead generation for recruiters, and/or almost any other way they can think of to fill their clients’ needs. A Google resume search is a great addition to any recruiter’s sourcing strategy.
Which is a good thing.
One practice you should start is to try and locate information about your candidates before you submit them to your clients. This is easy. If I was your candidate and you wanted to Google me, you would simply type the following into the search box (with quotes):
“mark e. berger”
Upon doing this, you would find many Internet pages that include my name. These would come from my Web sites, my Fordyce Letter columns, vendors I have relationships with, my MAPS (Missouri Association of Personnel Services) state board association, and others, as well. But what you would not find is any reason your client wouldn’t hire me for a job.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with all candidates. In these days of Facebook and the proliferation of other personal networking sites, people have a tendency to put a bit too much information on these public sites at times.
I’ve talked with more than one recruiter who’s been embarrassed because his client Googled his submitted candidate and found good cause not to consider that candidate for employment. I will leave it to your imagination as to what reasons might disqualify a candidate in a client’s eyes.
If you try this and you get too many responses, then try adding an additional keyword or two after the name, perhaps an industry or state of residence to pare down the skills.
Make this a standard practice before you submit any candidate to a client, whether they’re an active candidate or a passive one.
(Mark Berger, CPC, a guest writer for the Top Echelon Recruiter Training Blog, has been in recruiting and staffing since 1979. He is currently the proprietor of Swat Recruiting, a firm supporting the technology needs of the recruiting and staffing industry.)