New Search Engines Sourcers Will Love | @RonnieBratcher on The #SocialRecruiting Show

Google only delivers 4% of the web!

Did you have any idea? We surely didn’t when we asked Ronnie Bratcher – Pearl Jam fan and Senior Technical Recruiter at his own sourcing firm, Arete Alliance – to join our show to talk search engines, sourcing in 2019 and metrics.

We began our conversation by setting boundaries on Ronnie’s definition of where sourcing ends and where recruiting starts. After researching and interviewing sourcing leaders for over 2 months with ATAP, they agreed on the following definition.

“Basically a sourcer is responsible for identification research. We collect names then deliver a list to a recruiter. Sourcing stops when you engage with somebody.”

Settings this definition has helped sourcing teams create better success metrics. “For example, I don’t feel like the sourcers should get measured on qualifications of the candidate because I feel like that’s a recruiting metric.”

However, many teams haven’t evolved their metrics just yet and it’s still causing headaches among sourcing and recruiting teams alike. In fact, Ronnie believes these faux metrics drive sourcers to focus more on tools than the fundamentals – and that’s a big mistake.

“Understand the backend of everything from a maintenance standpoint so if you want to go use a tool, you can understand how that all works and how to manipulate it effectively.”

Ronnie’s favourite sourcing tool? Search engines.

“I knew my competitive advantage was seeing the people who others at my agency didn’t see,” explained Ronnie. Now with more than 96% of the internet not scraped by Google, Ronnie uses up to 16 different search engines at a time to dive deeper than the average Boolean search.

Ronnie offered the following metasearch engine resources for other sourcing professionals interested in using search engines to discover hidden talent:

• Etools.ch scans 16 different search engines.
• Searx.me boasts that it is a hackable search engine.
• A comprehensive list of search engines.
• 101+ open source intelligence (OSINT) tools for online investigations, research, due diligence, and background checks

If that wasn’t enough, below Ronnie shares more: