So, this post was inspired by the one and only ResearchGoddess. She’s a newlywed (congratulations!) and probably has one of the best engagement photo moments I have ever seen. Catch it here.
The ResearchGoddess and I are acquaintances… I only stumbled on to the pic because Suzy Tonini (one of the best sourcers ever) commented on a post of mine and I was wondering what the ol’ ResearchGoddess was up to and if she’d written anything (I know… long way to get there). In any case, one search led to another and I found her new name, wedding site and so on.
That’s stalkery… or sourcing. But, it got me thinking. As I try to develop new sourcing tactics for our firm, maybe it’s time to take old school new.
Twenty years ago when we were buried in the land of paper, part of my recruiting training was digging into wedding announcements to see where newlyweds worked, and if it yielded me one or two electronic technicians, it was worth it! Why not apply the same theory to sourcing in 2014?
Here are some ideas:
Dig in to a wedding site like The Knot with this:
site:theknot.com “washington, dc” “project manager”
Or… what if you looked for the word “wedding” in the url?
inurl:ourwedding “chicago, il” engineer
Is it yielding a list of thousands? No. But you know what? I just found three construction project managers that I didn’t have before. Those are the pros that my recruiters are constantly telling me “you can’t find that online.” Sure you can… you just need a different tactic from the same old-same old.
So this Valentine’s Day, let’s celebrate the newlyweds and help them find a new gig, too!
Kelly is the Recruitment Manager for Westat, a leading social science research organization headquartered in Rockville, Maryland.