Recently while I was responding to posts, twitters, and emails, I came across someone who asked what are the types of trainings that a “black-belt recruiter” would take. What makes someone a “black-belt recruiter” or “ninja recruiter”? Would there be separate programs for sourcing, employment & HR law, phone sourcing, and technical training? My answer is that if it is possible, and it is, the best scenario would be to take a course that encompasses every component and successfully ties them together. I, myself along with James Duran have developed a training program that produces top-level sourcers and recruiters. Now by “ninja recruiter” what do I mean? Well that should always include the following: |
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• Recruiters that contact any candidate whether by phone or internet. They are required to do good amount of role-playing on the phone to get their telephone sourcing skills up to par. They must also be able to manage expectations of potential candidates. • Recruiters will sometimes work for companies that cannot afford the luxury of a dedicated sourcer. In today’s recruiting environment, that means the recruiter has to generate their own source data and have search skills on par with Name-Gen Researchers. • An understanding of technology on a basic level. This is one place where I see many people in staffing fail. It’s not just a matter of copy ‘n paste technical acronyms from job req into candidate search. With every job req, their is an underlying technology that average people cannot discern. Our job as technical recruiters is not to program a C++ API or know how to create a CAD layout for a ASIC chip. But we should know the basics that are involved. By doing this, you gain credibility with not only your candidates, but the engineering hiring managers as well. • Being able to handle the hiring process is a huge deal, especially if you are a recruiter. We train in every aspect of it, from initial candidate contact, phone interviewing, onsite interviewing, managing candidate & hiring manager expectations (again!), the correct components of an offer, what parts of an offer that can be flexible, and how to successfully close a candidate. • Understanding all legal aspects of searching for potential candidates and hiring them: EEOC, Visas, terms of employment, HR hiring issues, etc… • I know I mentioned it before, but internet sourcing a must. It’s not just job boards or even personally posted resumes anymore. The perfect candidate could be a Facebook friend or someone who you find by search Twitter, or someone who belongs to a specific association. Someone who is a ninja sourcer should be able to find any candidate by any means available to them. And if the means are not there, then they should be able to create them. It’s not about memorizing search strings, it’s about being able to be creative and come up with new techniques on-the-fly. These are all must-haves for the types of recruiters/sourcers that we have trained. And in my opinion, for any “black-belt” or “ninja recruiter”. - Mark For more information, please contact me at: 408-540-0076 or markt (at) duranhcp (dot) com (the ninja way to write your email so you do not get spammed!) |
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I always see comments on recruiting blogs and ERE about the use of Twitter as a sourcing tool. Twitter broadcasts about your status in short, text-based posts. It’s a great way to stay in touch with friends and other people with similar interests. You can even follow the postings (or Tweets) of famous people like John Mayer, Heidi Montag, Gavin Newsom, Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, or John McCain (if you’re into that sort of thing). I, myself follow some of my favorite musicians, directors, and staffing professionals like: Trent Reznor of NIN, Imogen Heap, Lisa Nova, Michael Ian Black, Kelly Dingee, and Jim Stroud.
But can this cool, connected medium be used for sourcing? The answer is yes! And to help illustrate, I have enlisted the services of my friend, Plugged-in Pete. He is going to demonstrate the benefits of using search.twitter.com with the right search strings.
Click on the image below to see:

Great demonstration from Pete! By entering some simple words or phrases that a software engineer might “tweet” about, you can get yourself a geographically targeted list of passive candidates. Here’s the example of the search we used:
coding OR “source code” OR compile OR compiler OR OOP OR OOD OR “object oriented” near:”mountain view” within:50mi
Even though Twitter profiles have limited contact information, there is enough to go on so that you can track down the individuals. They contain name, location, and sometimes personal websites or company references. From this point, you take all that information and start your sourcing to find the individual’s contact information. For more help on that, see my other posts about finding people online:
People who need Pipl 1, People who need Pipl 2, and People who need Pipl 3.
Happy hunting!
- Mark
Your company has some critical positions that need to be filled. You have been informed that you cannot hire any more staffing contractors due to budget constraints and liability issues with contractors. How do you solve this problem? By using the RPO model.
Recruitment Process Outsourcing can be a great way for companies start and stop recruiting services as they are needed. By engaging with an offsite sourcing/recruiting team, you can specify the number of resumes or candidates that you need to receive at anytime. If your budget is being scaled back, you can cut down the number of sourcers or recruiters without worrying about lay-offs or contractors. The liability of the staffing contractors falls on the staffing agency and not your company. Also, you do not have to worry about housing any extra employees since the staffing agency is offsite. The key factors are flexibility, scalability and cost containment. When times are better, you can go back to hiring and developing a loyal internal team – if it makes sense. Learn to manage your RPO service provider and you may find that you will reconfigure your Talent Acquisition team to a new staffing and resource utilization model.
Typically this model is headed up by a Sourcing Manager or a Staffing Project Manager. They are the individual who interfaces with the client company, understands the company’s needs, has a complete picture of the job requisitions, and instructs their sourcing team where to find the target candidates. The Project Lead will also interface with the client onsite, speak to some or all of the hiring managers for the groups that are hiring, and provide weekly reports that meet the agreed upon metrics.
Sourcing and recruiting onsite at a client company is usually the best scenario in staffing. But if that is not possible, choosing a scalable RPO model is the next best thing. For more questions, please contact James Duran at Duran Human Capital Partners.
- Mark
| The Recruiting Roadshow is an event masterminded by John Sumser. In 1995, John started his own company Interbiznet, where he wrote a daily column on using the internet and technology for recruiting. He wrote the first book describing the internet as a sourcing and recruiting tool in 1996. The idea for the Recruiting Roadshow was brought on by the fact that recruiting can be vastly different from one metropolitan | ![]() |
area to the next. Recruiting methods and tools do not work the same for every staffing organization across the country. Each region or city faces unique challenges. The Recruiting Roadshow addresses these issues and makes it possible to connect with local recruiting communities. First and foremost, networking is the goal of the show. In addition, you will get the opportunity to hear experts address topics like: • John Sumser - “Spiky and Flat”, an overview of some ongoing multi-generational issues and geographic shifts in the workforce • Nicole St. Martin - Search Engine Optimization Recruiting • Don Ramer - Recruiting As If People Mattered • Sourcing: Best Techniques From The Pros - a panel discussion with Mark Tortorici, Dan Harris, and Chris Murdock John continues to explore the importance of culture and communications through new technologies and forums like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and blogging, all of which allow us to meet and connect with people we might not have found in another era, and perhaps say things we would never say in person. To quote John Sumser: “The Recruiting Roadshow was designed to actually bring people together in the same room to connect and talk in “real time.” Even with the coolest networking tools, there is still no substitute for sharing a meal and a conversation, for looking people in the eye and seeing them laugh.” The event is on October 23rd and is being held at Adobe Systems in San Jose. Registration starts at 8:00 am. Register Here - This free event runs from 9:00 am until 1:00 pm. Lunch is served at 1:00 pm. More information can be found on the Recruiting Roadshow page. Duran Human Capital Partners is helping with this event and I - Mark Tortorici, will be presenting sourcing techniques in a Q&A panel with take home materials for all attendees. - Mark |
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Video Resumes, Video Cover Letters or Video Interviews - The benefits of video services like Vipe, as shown by Plugged-in Pete.
I think that these video resumes, or as I call them, “video cover letters” can be a very good initial representation of a candidate. This is the candidate’s opportunity to get their best foot forward when presenting themselves. Or I guess in this case it’s their best face forward!
Sure, they can be done over and over again before they are sent, but that’s the point. If their best video still doesn’t make a good impression, then you have just saved yourself the headache of flying out a candidate for a potentially expensive interview. Let’s take a practical look at this newer and very useful approach with Plugged-in Pete.
Click on the image below to see:

There are services like Vipe that allow candidates to record answers to questions that the client specifically asks of the interviewees. Others include Hirevue, Recruitv, and LiveHire, but the interface & simplicity of Vipe seems to resonate with their users.
Mark
Just when you thought it was safe to have a separate work/life existence, they find yet another way to keep you connected to the world!!! But don’t worry, at least this one is fun! What am I talking about? I’m talking about micro-blogging!
Micro-blogging can give your personal network constant updates regarding your status. These can be sent from anywhere in the world. The great thing about micro-blogging is that you probably use one of these tools already. Whether it’s Twitter, FriendFeed, your Facebook status, your cell phone’s SMS texts, or your Gtalk status. These are just a few examples, but the more important thing to think about is how you can connect these.
Some of these sites like Twitter, can receive text message updates from your phone. Are you running late and need to update your status message for your network to see? Send a text message from your phone to Twitter and it will automatically update it.
Other sites like FriendFeed allow you to share videos, photos, links, bookmarks, blogs, books, news, and status between your network. The major benefit to sites like these is the fact that you can set them up to share information, and then you only have worry about updating one website status! To illustrate this concept, I have enlisted the help from a friend of mine named Plugged-in Pete.
Click on the image below to see:

Now how can this be used in the world of recruiting? First of all, you can search status messages within a network or with some sites you can go beyond your network. This is still a relatively new medium, so there aren’t a lot of hard-lined rules yet. I also have another article that details how to search with Twitter.
Now, since some of these sites tie into SMS text applications, they must follow the 155 character limit for SMS text. Now how can you send super-long URL’s if you only get 155 characters for your message? The answer is with tinyurl’s. These 2 sites: tinyurl.com and snipurl.com allow you to take a long URL and save it as a very short URL. Now you can post that super-important YouTube Video or news article and not have to worry about space.
Stay tuned for future episodes of Plugged-in Pete and Recruiting Today.
- Mark
Twitter is social network/web-based SMS service that connects you with everyone you know and lets them know what you’re doing at any given moment. It’s really more of a way to broadcast messages without them being important enough to warrant an email. For example, I can go to Twitter or text from my cell phone and update my status to: “I’m at the movies right now seeing Batman” or “I’m eating pizza”. Or if you’re more of the recruiting mindset: “I’m looking for Perl Application Engineers with strong software virtualization experience”.
Now how can one use this in the realm of sourcing? There’s not a lot of information here that you would normally find like on a Linkedin page. But a minimum amount of information is there like a short bio, location, and even work. Here’s an example of how this can be used:
You search a phrase like “work company”, where “company” would be the name of the company you are trying to target. You can also add a location like state. For instance you can enter in “CA” for california.
If you find someone that you would like to contact you can either follow their status messages or “tweets”, or you can send them a SMS text to their cell phone. You can be the judge if this is something you are comfortable with.
- Mark
Today we venture into the new world of Video Blogging!
Cheers!
- Mark



