One of the topics we’ve never really covered in much detail on the podcast is the role of sourcing in corporate recruiting. It is obviously something that is absolutely critical to many organizations particularly those who are recruiting in market segments that are suffering skill shortages.
My guest this week is Chris Shaw Director of Talent at Meteor. Chris has previously been part of the recruiting team at Google and was part of the team who recruited 300 hires in 11 months at Twitter. At Meteor he focuses on recruiting the top 1% of the top 1% of technology talent and I’m delighted he agreed to come on the show to share his thoughts and some of the practical techniques he uses.
In the interview we discuss:
• Why turning passive candidates into active ones is always better than post and pray
• How to identify your Hiring Bar
• The importance of a great ATS
• Automation and personalization
Chris also gives us a step by step walk through of the techniques he uses and share his thoughts on the future of sourcing
This episode the podcast is kindly sponsored by Lever, where ATS meets CRM
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Lever. Providing a modern take on the applicant tracking system. Lever combines ATS and CRM functionality into a single, powerful platform to help you source, nurture, and manage your candidates all in one place. What’s more, Lever’s deceptively simple interface means that hiring managers and applicants love it, too. To find out how Lever can help you both accelerate and humanize hiring, visit www.lever.co recruit. That’s www.lever.co recruit. And Lever is spelt L E V E R Lever. Where ATS meets CRM.
Matt Alder [00:01:07]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 68 of the Recruiting Future podcast. One of the topics that we’ve never really covered in detail on the podcast is the role of sourcing in corporate recruiting. Obviously, it’s something that’s critical to many organizations, particularly those facing skill shortages. My guest this week is the perfect person to talk about this topic. It’s Chris Shaw, who’s director of talent at tech startup Meteor in San Francisco. Chris has previously worked at Google and he was part of the team at Twitter that recruited 300 people in 11 months. He’s a real subject matter expert, and I’m delighted that he agreed to come on the podcast this week and share his knowledge. What’s unique about this interview is he talks both at strategic level, but also a practical level, and gives a precise walkthrough on the process that he uses to recruit the absolute best talent for his organization.
Matt Alder [00:02:07]:
Hi Chris and welcome to the podcast.
Chris Shaw [00:02:10]:
Hi Matt. Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:02:12]:
So could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Chris Shaw [00:02:18]:
Sure thing. So my name is Chris Shaw. I’ve been recruiting for going on 20 years now. Currently I’m the director of talent at Meteor Development Group in San Francisco. Started my career way back when in the late 90s in the agency world. Back then I was mostly on the sales side and acquiring new clients. After a few years I decided, hey, I can do this on my own, and started my own recruiting firm. So that actually ended up going on for about eight years. I learned a lot by trying a lot of new things and even some old things. In about 2009, I went to Google as an engineering sourcer. Went in there with the mindset of forgetting everything I knew about recruiting. It was sort of like joining the pros. I’d been used to always being able to perform very well in Comparison to my peers and going to Google, everyone was amazing, and I was able to learn a lot there. So to this day, I consider that, like getting my master’s in recruiting. And then a few years later, a couple of my Google coworkers had gone to Twitter and I went there to set up their first ever sourcing team. Built that team from two sourcers up to 15, with sort of our crowning achievement being able to fill 300 roles in about 11 months against a goal of 200. Wow, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, that was a good time. We all learned a lot from each other and we all made each other better. And I’ll talk more about that later. My last two roles have been as director of recruiting, essentially at Andrees and Horowitz startups. And what’s great about this type of role is just being able to design a custom hiring process from the ground up. And so that’s where I am today.
Matt Alder [00:04:15]:
Fantastic. And could you just sort of tell us very quickly a little bit more about Meteor and what you guys do?
Chris Shaw [00:04:22]:
Sure. So Meteor, we essentially create the equivalent of software Lego blocks that engineers can then assemble into whatever program it is that they might need. And that’s a sort of an oversimplification, but it’s probably best considering for time reasons, I think that’s the best way to explain it.
Matt Alder [00:04:45]:
Yeah, no, that’s absolutely fine. And we’re. We’re talking to a recruiting audience, so that’s probably, you know, that that’s probably as much information as we as we need to get a sense of what it. Of what you guys do. So, I mean, tell me what, what role does sourcing play in your recruitment strategy at the moment?
Chris Shaw [00:05:05]:
Even back to the beginning of my career, I would say that sourcing has always been the foundation of my recruiting strategy. I inherently believe that sourcing candidates is essentially turning passive candidates into active candidates is the way to find the best candidates that you could possibly recruit to your company. I’m not a big believer in post and pray. I’m not as big of a believer in scouring job boards. I think that going out and identifying and then recruiting the exact people you want is the best way to improve your company, make it the most successful. I heard a quote once that said one amazing person might affect the trajectory of our company and make us more successful, but 20amazing people would definitely affect the trajectory. So we should always be going for those amazing people. And that’s why I put it as the most important thing that I do in recruiting.
Matt Alder [00:06:11]:
And I mean who do you sort of recruit for at the moment? What’s the sort of the scale of the operation that you’re currently working in?
Chris Shaw [00:06:22]:
Meteor is one of those companies that is looking for the top 1% of the top 1% of people in their industry. It’s a much smaller team with a much higher bar. The entire founding team, they all came out of mit. And so I’m usually looking for these really, really strong computer science people that have worked for companies like Google or Facebook that have literally done some of the most amazing things that there are to do in computer science. But I would say that even with that sourcing, yes, applies to that. But I’ve also worked for companies where the hiring bar wasn’t this high. And later on, I’ll talk a little bit more about how you have to identify your hiring bar and then source to that bar.
Matt Alder [00:07:19]:
Absolutely.
Matt Alder [00:07:19]:
And I’m very interested to hear your perspective on how sourcing has developed and how it’s been different, the sort of companies that you’ve. That you’ve worked at. But before we talk about that, I’m just really interested in the, obviously trying to get the absolute best of the best. What, what sort of tools, techniques and approaches do you. Do you use to sort of achieve that goal?
Chris Shaw [00:07:47]:
All right, so if I had to pick just one recruiting tool, if I just said one, one thing I was allowed to buy for my recruiting team, it would be a great applicant tracking system. We’re going to spend the bulk of our time there. And not only is the recruiting team going to spend the bulk of their time there, but the rest of the company views the recruiting team through the lens of the applicant tracking system. So your hiring managers, your interviewers, and then even the executive level of the company who’s going to be looking for reports and data and information, all of that eventually ties back to your applicant tracking system. So that’s how I look at tools as the most important thing. If people don’t like the ats, they will do everything they can to get around it. And the other aspect is if you’re looking at the one tool to save your company the most time, then you have to carefully pick this. So the way I look at this also is that for every hour that one of your software engineers is interviewing or entering feedback or trying to put a referral into the system, for every hour that they are doing that instead of coding, you are essentially not building product. So I look at the recruiting team as saving the rest of the company time. And that starts with your applicant tracking system. So the one that I use, I use leverage. Over the last 19 years, I’ve worked in a lot of different systems. The rest of them I’ve demoed. When setting up these last two startup companies, everything is faster from scheduling, especially sourcing and then even the integrations with DocuSign on the back end makes your offers super easy. And then often when you make an offer, there’s a period of time where you might need to go back and forth or change the offer. That is super easy. And then last, I’m really excited about the lever nurture feature, which is, I think going to be a game changer. Basically all of the sourcing best practices are going to be built into this particular feature and it allows you to send automated follow ups and a whole bunch of other stuff. So if I had one tool, that’s that other tools I like, I like Mixmax for email tracking. I like Connectifier or AV for email identifying. And then Reportive, I still use even though it’s been around a while for email verification. So those are the tools. Any questions on that part?
Matt Alder [00:10:26]:
No, that makes perfect sense. And in terms of sort of techniques and ways that you sort of identify this talent.
Chris Shaw [00:10:34]:
Yes. Okay, so this part I have a lot of detail on and this is really the heart of what I feel sourcing is. So the first thing I like to do is research my own company, the company that I may have just joined. I connect with everybody within the company. What I’m trying to do is identify the hiring bar. I want to know the types of people that are most successful in this company. And if you’re at a company now and you haven’t done this yet, you can start really at any time. You just go to your managers or directors, ask them who the best people are so you can use them as templates for who you want to source. Step two is research. Start internally. Find out what if you’re recruiting for engineers, find out what open source projects your engineers respect and then go search them on GitHub and try to find more people that have committed to those projects. If you’re recruiting salespeople, talk to them about the types of numbers a prospective candidate should be hitting, what types of things are on their resume that they see that get them excited. Or if you’re looking at say something like operations research, like what schools should I recruit out of to get those people? So once you’ve done that, create a list of prospective candidates. Maybe start with, well, I’d like to start with 30. I go through that list with the hiring manager, and you sit down with them and you say, look, I want to understand how you read a resume. So let’s put these 30 profiles into a sheet or put them up on a screen. And then one at a time, just read out loud as you’re going through the resume with what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’re doing there is you’re learning how to view a resume through your hiring manager’s eyes. The next step is that you want to work with that same hiring manager to create a list of things that are really interesting about this particular job. Maybe create a short email template that you can send out either on their behalf or that you can send yourself. I recommend keeping that template short. The sort of rule these days is having a TLDR that people can refer to if they don’t want to read a giant email. But I usually like to keep an email, like maybe four or five sentences at most. Otherwise, people simply don’t read them. What’s important about creating the email is leaving space at the very top, like your first sentence, for some sort of customization, something that’s personal to that particular candidate. So that’s the first half. Any questions on that part?
Matt Alder [00:13:33]:
No, that makes perfect sense. So where do you kind of go from there?
Chris Shaw [00:13:40]:
Yeah, so now you get into the last few steps here, which is you’re customizing each email. Think about your subject line and the first 20 words of your email. So when you look at. When you get an email, whether it’s Microsoft Mail or Gmail, when you get an email, what is the first thing that you read?
Matt Alder [00:14:06]:
Always? The subject line. Yeah, the subject line. Yeah.
Chris Shaw [00:14:09]:
And then. And then do you usually look at the preview or maybe the first few words that you can see?
Matt Alder [00:14:16]:
Yeah, for me, it’s always the subject line and then the first two sentences. And that kind of. That’s where I make my entire decision about whether I’m going to read the rest of the email, delete it straight away, or reply to the person.
Chris Shaw [00:14:32]:
Okay, so I would say that you are like 99% of people that we look at the subject line, we maybe look at that first sentence. And if you’re in Gmail, you could even see right now on your screen that, yeah, there’s about 10 to 15 words that you can see before you even open the email. So if you’re starting leading off your email with something like, hey, I’m Joe Schmoll, recruiter, and I really like your profile, blah, blah, blah, I mean, you’re wasting the Opportunity to immediately hit that candidate between the eyes with something interesting about them. And that’s where your customization comes in. And that’s where it comes in. You should have done your research. You should have looked at their Twitter, you should have looked at their profile and hit them with something that’s personal to them. And then you will have a chance to get them to open that email. That’s critical.
Matt Alder [00:15:21]:
Okay.
Chris Shaw [00:15:23]:
Okay. So now where you end your email is basically asking or requesting just a couple minutes to get on the phone so they can learn more about the opportunity or the job or the company that you’re representing. Okay, so that’s the email. Once you’ve created these emails, obviously you need to figure out a way to send them. You should use the sourcing tools that I described above to look for personal direct email addresses if you can. LinkedIn is becoming somewhat saturated with InMails. I still do use it, but I usually use it as sort of a safety net. If I can’t locate somebody’s personal email address with AV or Connectifier or Reportive, then I will downshift to InMail. And then lastly, actually, after you’ve done all this work, you should actually click the button and send your email. But beyond that, you probably send this email and a few days are going to go by and you haven’t gotten a reply. Maybe a week goes by and you haven’t gotten a reply. One thing that I think a lot of recruiters aren’t that comfortable with is sending follow ups. And I think it’s important to really have a polite way of bumping that email up once or twice in their inbox before you maybe snooze that candidate. For down the road, I’ve found that I can double my response rate just between my second and third follow up emails. I will double that response rate that I get to any batch of candidates that I’ve sent. Which is one of the cool things about the tools you’re picking. There’s one tool called ToutApp that you can send Drip campaigns or Lever. Nurture Lever has built this functionality into the applicant tracking system. So if you don’t feel like exporting all your emails to another app and then sending them from there and then exporting it all back in your tracking system. There is a system that has it all built in, which is cool. And then the final step, if you’ve actually gotten a response and they’ve agreed to talk, well, now it’s your time to shine. This is where you get a chance to talk to the candidate. To keep things simple, I usually break the conversation into three parts. I’ll just sort of say, okay, here’s the framework for the conversation I’d like to have today. First of all, I’d love to hear about what you’re working on, maybe what you’re most proud of, that you’ve worked on recently. Two, I’d love to hear what your ideal role looks like. If you could create any role for yourself, what would that be and what would you get to do? And then the last part of the conversation, let’s talk about Meteor or let’s talk about whatever company you’re working for as a sourcer. Let’s talk about the company, let’s talk about the job. And the reason why you ask about them first is that you want to learn about what is ideal for them. And on the back end now you can tie the pieces of your job that match to the candidate’s ideals. Sometimes they’ll want to hear about the job and the company first. You can reverse invert the conversation, but I find that it’s more successful if you can get them to talk about themselves first. So there you go. That’s my approach to sourcing. Those are the tips and techniques that I like to use A to Z.
Matt Alder [00:19:06]:
Fantastic. Thank you for lifting the lid on your process there. I’m sure that’s going to be very informative and useful for, you know, quite a few of the people listening, sort of. Next. Next question. Obviously you’ve been sourcing for quite some time in a number of different organizations. Technology, communication, technology, searching technology has been improving, you know, throughout that time. How have you seen sourcing develop over the last few years and where do you think it might go in the future?
Chris Shaw [00:19:43]:
So we kind of see these pendulums swing back and forth in recruiting and when LinkedIn sort of really took the recruiting industry by storm at a certain point, sort of took the crown away from the job boards. What happened is that everyone flocked to LinkedIn, sent millions of InMails to people to the point where people just felt spammed and overwhelmed by the amount of content there. With the advent now of all of the email identification tools and direct email, I think now that you are seeing that people are especially software engineers, because they are and other highly sought after areas, they get bombarded by recruiters. I think that the challenge is going to be like I said earlier, how do we reach through that noise? How do we connect with people on a personal level? So this is sort of like a back to the future thing. I believe that as the amount of noise increases from recruiters reaching out directly to candidates, your messaging is going to have to be that much more on point. It’s going to have to be personalized. Hopefully it’s fun. Hopefully you’re writing in a way that isn’t too well. Know your audience. Some of your audiences are going to maybe appreciate a more professional approach, but others, I think, just want to see a more human approach, that you’re a person and you’re enjoying your job and you’re having fun. And you mentioned the flaming hot Cheetos that they talked about on their Twitter account. So there’s a lot of ways to have fun with this. So what I would say is that, yeah, we’ve got all these great tools, but the thing is everybody has those tools, so how are you different? And the way I would say that you’re going to be most different is by being yourself, doing your research and really making sure that you’re personalizing. Another Back to the Future item is that networking is never going to go away. So you have to make sure that you’re. So when I’m talking about networking, especially within your own company, like maximizing your own employee referral channel, hopefully as sourcers you’re allowed to do that within your company. If you’re not, then, well, then maybe there’s some other things you can do, like create a source jam where you’re creating passive referrals. There’s a lot of ways to get creative. Where is this all going? More automation. I think you’re going to see more tools that have built in functionalities that as you’re working. Like say for example, you’re working in an applicant tracking system and you’re in the early stage of just identifying that candidate, say you email them, it will automatically forward them to the reached out stage. Say that they respond, it will automatically forward them to the recruiter screen stage, et cetera. I just think you’ll see more automation and the ability to do the tasks that we have to do as recruiters and make those things faster.
Matt Alder [00:23:07]:
I completely agree. I think, you know, we’re looking at a really interesting mix of more automation and more personalization at the same time. So yeah, I think it’s going to make for an interesting few years. Final question, just interested. If you had any advice for a head of talent or a director of recruiting who was looking at sort of building a sourcing capability for the first time or expanding. Expanding what they had, how should they go about thinking about that and sort of putting that into practice.
Chris Shaw [00:23:45]:
So I guess the first thing is when you’re hiring sourcers, I often like to hire out of my coordinator pool if you have recruiting coordinators. If you don’t, what you want to look for are people that are fast and organized and maybe they have sort of the gift of gab. Those are all good attributes, just core attributes. The rest I feel you can train. Other tips I would say is that have your team practice what they are not as good at. When I joined Twitter, the team was great at sending out lots and lots of emails, which I think is good. I mean, that’s the first step. They weren’t as comfortable picking up the phone. And I think that that’s an important final stage if you’re looking to really convert a passive person into an active candidate. So what we did is we practiced making cold calls to each other. We created a list of all the top objections that we got from candidates. And then what we did is we handed out those objections to the people that were being called and then have the caller practice trying to overcome that objection. And the bottom line with that is that every baseball player out there knows how to hit the ball, but they still go to the batting cage all the time to practice their hitting. We all know how to make a phone call, right? But to be great at it, some practice is helpful. Another thing that I would recommend, have your sourcers and your recruiters even share their best practices. I personally believe that everybody on this planet has something to teach me. I guarantee that every sourcer on your team knows some trick that the rest of the team doesn’t. So we used to encourage as a team, we would have a best practice, just best practices sharing every other week. And the way I talk to the team about that is that, look, I mean, there’s 10 people here on the team. If you share one of your sourcing tricks, you’re going to get nine back in return. That seems like a pretty good investment. And then the last thing, I mentioned this earlier, but source jams, these are great ways to get big lists of passive candidates that have been identified by other people in your company. What I usually do is I like to create an event, maybe have some margaritas and chips just to make it fun. At the end of the day, have a hiring manager come in, present a position that we’re having trouble filling, talk about that role, and then all the people in that room then go into their various tools and source. And we’re not looking for people that they know that are available. We’re not looking for the friend of your uncle’s that he met at a barbecue. That’s looking for a job. You’re looking for the best possible people you’ve ever heard of in the industry. The ones that you think would never join. This person’s amazing or they’re amazing by reputation. Put all those names down on a list and then carefully and respectfully reach out to those people over a period of six months or a year even to get those great people. That’s one of the things that I’ve found that has worked really well is to create lists of passive people. I did say that was the last thing. One more thing is I would say have the best tools. That’s what I’d recommend to recruiting and sourcing leaders to start there.
Matt Alder [00:27:30]:
Some fantastic advice there, Chris. Thank you very much for talking to me.
Chris Shaw [00:27:35]:
You’re welcome. I had a lot of fun.
Matt Alder [00:27:37]:
My thanks to Chris Shaw. You can subscribe to this podcast on itunes or via your podcasting app of choice. Just search for Recruiting Future. You can also find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
