Recruiters spend a majority of their time sourcing talent. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a magic button you could hit that would make talent suddenly appear? While there isn’t such a thing just yet, there are certain tools you can use to make your lives easier, starting today!
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At RecruitCon 2019, preconference presenters Arron Daniels—Founder of Source Houston—and Jer Langhans—Chief Growth Officer at Paired Sourcing—discussed tactics to help you source and recruit passive candidates. The speakers offered many practical tips, but one thing that stuck out was the variety of Chrome extensions recruiters can use to help source talent.
What is an “extension” you ask? It’s a small software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, ad blocking, and cookie management, to name a few. Extensions are designed to make your life easier, and in the sourcing world, you need all the help you can get. Which is why we’re covering six Chrome extensions you should start using today.
Before we dig into the nitty-gritty, there’s one major tip you should be aware of before using these extensions.
Daniels and Langhans say the best way to get into your sourcing mode is to limit distractions, which will help you find that purple squirrel. To start, you must make sure you’re logged into ALL your Chrome extensions FIRST, before using them. By logging into the extensions beforehand, you’ll minimize the time you spend on the back-end and will be able to start sourcing faster. All right, now that you’ve been “warned” let’s get on with it.
1. Prophet
Have you found that purple squirrel, but can’t figure out how to contact him or her? This is where Prophet comes into play. Prophet helps you find people’s contact information, such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, social media profiles (with the exception of LinkedIn), and more.
According to Chrome, “Prophet is special because it doesn’t just show you information you can find on the web. It goes beyond the web to analyze, generate and verify contact information that you can’t find on the web.”
Prophet uses an advanced engine to predict the most likely e-mail combination for a given person based on name, company, and other social data. Prophet will then verify the generated e-mail to make sure it is correct and deliverable. The best part about Prophet: it’s free!
2. Hiretual
Taking sourcing one step further is Hiretual. This extension claims to be the ultimate sourcing tool and allows you to recruit the strongest talent with Boolean building, contact finding, and artificial intelligence (AI) sourcing.
Hiretual allows you to quickly construct and launch advanced Boolean strings, find candidates’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and aggregate and cross-reference all of a candidate’s online profiles. Hiretual also converts your job descriptions into smart Boolean strings and allows you to prioritize candidate outreach with estimates on candidate availability and salary range.
3. Lusha
Let’s say you’ve discovered “Shirley Smith,” a Vice President of Communications at ABC Corp, she’s a shoo-in for the role you’re recruiting for, but you have no way of contacting her and every ABC Corp e-mail combo you’ve tried is getting zero results. This is where Lusha comes into play.
Lusha is the easiest way to find business to business (B2B) contact information with just one click. According to Chrome, “Lusha helps sales, recruitment and marketing professionals establish a fast and true connection with their leads, prospects, and candidates. We offer simple tools to enrich business profiles and easily access their contact information.”
Basically, Lusha scans social media profiles for business contact information and links it directly back to your Gmail account. There is a free version, and a paid version, and both are compatible with Gmail, Salesforce, and LinkedIn.
4. Intelligence Search
Intelligence Search allows you to search for candidates easily via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. All you need to do is Specify the criteria of your search and this tool will help you search the main social networks. Find people by name, job, location, age, gender, their friends, the groups they are members of, etc.
One caveat to this extension is that the tool needs the ability to access your browser so it can communicate with Intelligence Search servers to run your inquiries. But fear not, the only information that gets recorded is your Facebook ID, if this is available, and the data and time of the search. The company does not access any other information other than what is needed to run the searches you specify.
5. UID Extractor
If you’re unfamiliar with the term “UID,” or Unique Identifier, it is a numeric or alphanumeric string that is associated with a single entity within a given system. UIDs make it possible to address that entity so that it can be accessed and interacted with.
With UIDextractor, you can now narrow your audience to only reach the most relevant Facebook users. This extension allows you to extract super targeted users right from your Facebook search screen to a TXT file and easily upload these users as “custom audiences” to your Facebook ads campaigns. This program is great for marketing as well, so be sure to share this tool with your marketing team.
6. ZAP info
ZAP Info allows you to automate every aspect of the recruiting process. Use ZAP info to easily capture individual contact data or entire lists of contacts, résumés, or social profile data and then find e-mail address and contact information instantly.
Once you’ve “zapped” contacts into your ZAPBoard, the tool will enrich any profile and find the candidate’s e-mail address, phone number, and social profiles so you can instantly “zap” them into any applicant tracking system or web application. You can also export that information to an Excel/CSV file or PDF document to create fast sourcing lists. ZAP info claims that “You’ll never do data entry again using this intelligent form filling app.”
BONUS: Crystal Knows
RecruitCon Keynote speaker Barb Bruno, of Good as Gold Training, Inc, also provided us with an additional Chrome extension during the Day 2 opening keynote. This extension is called Crystal Knows. While the above extensions are great for sourcing candidates, Crystal Knows can be used for candidate outreach.
“By analyzing public data and text, Crystal can generate personality reports for your contacts and anyone in our database. Learn how to adapt your communication style to different personalities, and take the guesswork out of cold calling, networking, and meetings with new clients or customers,” says the extension’s page.
There are so many extensions that can help you source top talent, by using these extensions mentioned above, you’ll find your purple squirrel in no time!
If you weren’t able to attend RecruitCon 2019 in Austin, Texas, we’ve got great news! There will be a second RecruitCon 2019 event being held in Nashville, Tennessee, November 14-15, 2019. Click here to learn more, or to register today!
