My Sourcing Story : Ralitsa Burneva, Amazon

Name: Ralitsa Burneva (Rali)
Country: Luxembourg
Company: Amazon Web Services
Position: EMEA Recruiter

Q1. Can you tell us about your current role and what problems you are solving on a day-to-day basis?
I work as a full-cycle recruiter for AWS and support the hiring for our Partner organization across EMEA and for our Nordics Sales teams. AWS is growing at an enormous pace which puts a healthy pressure on us in the recruitment team to find the right people yesterday, in big volumes and at the same time keeping the Amazon hiring bar high and keeping our amazing culture uncompromised.

Q2. What are the biggest challenges you currently face as a recruiter/sourcer
I am now working as a full-cycle recruiter for the first time in my life, after several years as a sourcer. It requires a special effort, strict planning and prioritization to still be doing your own sourcing, be creative and up to date with your sourcing approach and at the same time deliver quality service to your clients throughout all other stages of the process.

Sourcing and recruiting across EMEA has its unique challenges and I need to be aware of the specifics of all local markets I touch upon.

On the other hand, the tech industry is getting more and more competitive and fast-moving which calls for speed-of-light recruitment actions. Every day I need to find the right balance between moving fast enough and insisting on the highest standards when it comes to candidates’ skill and cultural fit; between the huge influx of applications we get at AWS and proactively engaging with the people we are interested in.

Q3. How do you define sourcing?
Sourcing is the art of match-making in the corporate world.

It is the best job in the world for people who:

• Are information and internet geeks
• Crave puzzle-solving and finding the missing pieces
• Love engaging with people and helping them achieve more than they thought possible

Q4. Sourcing tools I use daily?

Internet, phone and chocolate! J

Specific tools change constantly as every day better ones arise but there are a few:

Referral sessions!, a great internal tool our IT team built for us at Amazon, Meetup, Quora, 360social, Newsle, Facebook Graph Search, MailTester, various phone number search engines (vary by country), good old X-ray searches, CSE, LinkedIn…

Q5. Can you tell us the people you admire most in sourcing?

This list can go on and on!

Glenn Gutmacher, Shally Steckerl, Maureen Srarib, Irina Shamaeva, Jim Stroud, Balasz Paroczay are just a few people who have influenced my sourcing journey. I am super excited I will get to meet some of them at SOSU!

Q6. One sourcing advice I can give to my peers is….

Everyone can learn how to play with tools, do research and gather CVs. What really differentiates you is how you engage with your candidates – so spend time to get to know them on personal level, dive deep into their goals and drivers and be present for them every step of the way. You might be surprised to understand how much that mattered to them when they get to choose between your offer and another one at the end.