My Sourcing Story : Billy McDiarmid, HR Consultancy

Name: Billy McDiarmid
Country: Scotland
Company: HR Consultancy
Twitter: billymcdiarmid

Q1 – What problems are you currently solving in your role?
The range of disciplines that we cover! I work with a team of 30 end-to-end agency recruiters in sectors including finance, engineering, financial services and legal. Sourcing and attracting candidates is completely different in every sector so I try and come up with best practice that can be used both in those sectors and across the business. I also work close with external clients to solve their problems that cannot be resolved through straightforward contingency or retained recruitment.

Sourcing is … the process of identifying, attracting and engaging with people so that when the time is right it will be easy for them to become a candidate

Q2 – How do you define sourcing?
The process of identifying, attracting and engaging with people so that when the time is right, it will be easy for them to become a candidate! I’m not a believer of the active / passive candidate terminology. People are simply people until they decide to throw their hat into the ring for a position – then they become a candidate. It doesn’t matter whether the have been looking for job or not.

Q3 – Sourcing tools I use daily
Where do I start?
– Our CRM and Marketing platforms Firefish Software and CampaignMonitor.
– For talent pooling I use HelloTalent.
– For social media I use Buffer, Audiense and Canva,
– For data I use DataScraper, Outwit, Import.io, Blockspring and Postman.
– For contact information and engagement, I use Prophet, Lusha, Name2Email, Rapportive and Streak.

Always remember – your competition will stop looking at some point. If you never stop looking, then you will find those that others can’t!

Q4. Can you tell us five people you admire most in sourcing?
There are so many people but the top five would be:

Aaron Lintz – very much a geek in the same mould as myself, and just superb at hacks.
Michael Kelman – one of my favourite parts of the recruitment world is the community, and whether you love Michael or not he has created one of the best for sharing ideas and learning.
Martin Lee – for introducing me to the sourcing community in the first place!
Kasia Borowicz – for not being frightened of calling recruiters out and for always putting the candidate at the core of the recruitment experience.
Randy Bailey – just a great source of information – always willing to share and get sourcers speaking to each other!

Q5 – One bit of sourcing advice I can give to my peers
Always remember – your competition will stop looking at some point. If you never stop looking, then you will find those that others can’t!

Billy is speaking at #sosueu on 27-28 September.