First Rule of SM Sourcing? Don’t Be Creepy!

People you contact are going to want to know:

• How did you find me?
• How did you know that I can …?

Maintain transparency, says Dingee. Explain how you found them. You’re not hacking, you’re searching the Internet for publicly available information.

Dingee’s tips came at the Advanced Employment Issues Symposium in Las Vegas. (Info on this year’s symposium here.)

Here are some other things Dingee suggests that recruiters consider:

Branding

Before you get started, think about how you’re going to appear to those with whom you have contact. Are you presenting yourself in an appropriate, business-like, and attractive way?

Take Advantage of Interactive Capabilities of Social Media Sites

Social media is set up for communicating. Take advantage of it, says Dingee. Encourage questions and inquiries—they are opportunities for more engagement and interacting and more networking.

Sourcing is tedious and time-consuming, says Dingee. However, when you get familiar with the social media sources for the particular types of jobs you look to fill, you can be very efficient. For example, she recently identified 200 candidates for a newly assigned opening in about 2 hours.

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Connecting After You Find Someone

Connecting with people is pretty simple. You just say, “Let’s chat.” Consider:

• Skype
• iChat
• Google+hangouts
• Anywhere the kind of people you look for hang out

Another major timesaver for Dingee is applicant tracking systems. She suggests considering the following:

• iCIMS
• Jobvite
• iRecruit
• PCRecruiter

Dingee’s Final Tip

In all your interactions, be sure to personalize, says Dingee. No “Dear Applicant.”

Finding good candidates in the “new normal”—just one more daily challenge. In HR and comp, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. Like FMLA intermittent leave, overtime hassles, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation, and then on top of that, whatever the agencies and courts throw in your way.

You need a go-to resource, and our editors recommend the “everything-HR-in-one website,” HR.BLR.com. As an example of what you will find, here are some policy recommendations concerning e-mail, excerpted from a sample policy on the website:

Privacy. The director of information services can override any individual password and thus has access to all e-mail messages in order to ensure compliance with company policy. This means that employees do not have an expectation of privacy in their company e-mail or any other information stored or accessed on company computers.

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E-mail review. All e-mail is subject to review by management. Your use of the   e-mail system grants consent to the review of any of the messages to or from you in the system in printed form or in any other medium.

Solicitation. In line with our general policy, e-mail must not be used to solicit for outside business ventures, personal parties, social meetings, charities, membership in any organization, political causes, religious causes, or other matters not connected to the company’s business.

We should point out that this is just one of hundreds of sample policies on the site. (You’ll also find analysis of laws and issues, job descriptions, and complete training materials for hundreds of HR topics.)

You can examine the entire HR.BLR.com program free of any cost or commitment. It’s quite remarkable—30 years of accumulated HR knowledge, tools, and skills gathered in one place and accessible at the click of a mouse.

What’s more, we’ll supply a free downloadable copy of our special report, Critical HR Recordkeeping—From Hiring to Termination, just for looking at HR.BLR.com. If you’d like to try it at absolutely no cost or obligation to continue (and get the special report, no matter what you decide), go here.