Patrick Moran, Sr Talent Sourcing Manager, BAE - Sourcing cleared candidates

Everybody. And wow, happy new year, 2021. That's my, my first broadcast of the year. And I'm very, very pleased to introduce my friend Patrick Moran. Patrick, for those of you who may not know him, cause he keeps, he keeps a pretty low profile and I'll tell you why in just a minute. But Patrick is a senior talent sourcing manager with a company that you may not have heard of called BAE. He's been there for 12 years and runs a team of about 8 sourcers. I recently went through a bit of a reorg, and I'm gonna, you know, ask Patrick a couple of questions, but I just wanted to prep you. Patrick is like me, has kind of a dark sense of humor, so, um, just, you know, be ready for that. Also, he comes from a family of military service men and women, but he did not himself serve, so I guess working at BAE is is part of your family legacy, right? Tell us a little bit about what BAE does for those of us that, you know, I know, but a lot of folks don't know.

So first off, we're not Bay Systems, and that, that is a red flag in any interview. I've heard it, I want to work for Bay Systems, love it, know a lot about Bay Systems. Yeah, that sort of ruined our mojo for a couple years. BAE Systems is actually a British-owned, uh, it's a subsidiary of a British-owned parent company I think the parent actually traces back to like pre-Columbus era. I think they can go back to like 14-something for their original iteration of that. So very old established, very large, you know, worldwide defense contractor. We're the US-based subsidiary. So our sourcing team, our sector specifically deals a lot with mostly IT positions and mostly, you know, security clearance positions and Anyone that knows about the security clearance world, usually if it gets to sourcing team, it's highly, highly cleared. So some really tough requirements. But we, you know, we do a little bit of everything— sensors, IT, tech refreshes, software development. You know, we work with just about every single defense agency, intel agency, and a lot of civilian agencies as well. So we're spread out just in every— it's really tough to compare apples to apples for sourcers when I look at metrics and if I have people in different teams because our company is so diverse and the customer set is so diverse and every single— anyone that does government contracting knows like your contract has something specific to it that no other contract has. So every rec, there's, there's very little repeatable sort of stuff that we can do.

So that, that's right, exactly. It's not like you can build a pipeline of these Yeah, one-off types of— that's a good point. Yeah, it's a very good point. So it's not just— it's not just— VA doesn't just do hardware, like, you know.

Yeah, that's another sector. So, okay, so we've got 3 sectors. Yep, we have ES, P&S, uh, electronic solutions, platforms and solutions, and then intelligence and security is ours. So we— I define ours as we're the people-centric, we're the services-based Ours is a systems integrator, whereas the other two, you know, they make tanks, MRAPs, artillery, smart weapons like goggles, sensors, helmets, all that sort of stuff.

All the hardware. Got it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I had some experience working in that sector. I did some work with the Director of National Intelligence and the clandestine agencies many, many years ago. So I'm a little familiar with, you know, searches, and I've taught some courses on searching for candidates that have clearance by finding, you know, ways around the fact that they sometimes disclose that. But you've got— that's all you do. You search for people that have top secret and above, full lifestyle, poly, all those kinds of things, right? Yeah.

So if you think of all your, you know, banking, healthcare, tech sector, you know, all those tough IT recs that you all work and all the software developers and people like that that are Your purple squirrels, well, we work those too, except we have to have this like next to impossible to find security clearance added to it.

It's nice.

People that don't know a lot about it, they go into, for let's say the highest security clearance out there, there's a super exhaustive investigation that takes months, sometimes even years of your entire background, personal life connections. Allegiance to country, um, and then they have to go through, uh, a couple, several rounds of polygraph interviews where they hook you up to the, the lie detector machine and ask you all sorts of really uncomfortable probing questions.

So for people, you're not finding people that have that necessarily. You sometimes find people that can get that, or is— are you only working on people that already have it?

You're thinking like a sorcerer in a, in a rec meeting right now because no one— yeah, it's my first question is, can we get clearable, but, uh, only about probably 5% of what we do is, is of the clearable up to, or, or if it is, uh, the business really avoids it because it can take sometimes years to, to get some of these clearances, especially with the backlog of, um, investigators and clearances. Things have been moved really slowly over the last 5, 10 years. Um, so yeah, we have to, we have to sort of scrape the bottom of the barrel pretty often. We're, we're a true hunting sourcing organization versus you know, a volume. We really do pretty low volume, but takes a lot to get up to that, you know, 1-2 submittals.

So that's it. So that's interesting. A good question that, that I wanted to ask you is, how do you define sourcing? Because sourcing is a lot of different things to a lot of people. And, um, I think you and I had a conversation about this when we, when we first met at ERE many moons ago around, you know, you saw what I was doing with, with Facebook and you're like, hey, that's real sourcing. And we talked about, I don't know if you remember, we talked about how there's like teams where they call the sourcer someone who just basically downloads resumes, right? So, but obviously that's not how you define it. How do you define sourcing?

Yeah, so for me, sourcing is, it's mostly the finding. So, you know, old school, original era was probably like researcher, like this person is, is just, you know, culling data and just filling the top of the funnel. Very little else. And then I think some organizations feel like it's a, you know, it's just a candidate machine like that, or it's recruiter light. It's, you know, let's, let's have them just basically do everything but one or two parts of the paperwork. Um, here at BA Systems, and my sort of philosophy is, because it's sort of hard to, to make an apples-to-apples comparison across my team members, I've sort of had to come up with a mindset of, all right, I define it as your job is to find, attract, in our case, search for, because, you know, you can post a job, you can post something on LinkedIn, like sort of I get a chuckle and we kind of have like a little drinking game going of not actual drinking, but a fun little game of noting in an interview when someone says, oh, I'll post to my personal network and I usually get candidates like that. It's like, you're not, you're not doing that in our space. So advertising, yeah, you have to scratch and claw. If you put something out on the web for us or advertise, we really don't see a big return in that. So we are truly hunting. So for me, I've grown up, I've been here 12 years in that environment. And for me, it's, are you finding good-looking candidates for the hiring managers? What happens after you've submitted the candidate? So for us, 99% of what we do is Sourcing, phone screen, you know, quick submittal, and then on to the next one. So, you know, I've talked to a lot of employers that say, oh, you know, we based on they need to have 5 hires a month or 10 hires a month or what have you. We never think in hires and I don't even like to think in offers. So for me, the magic sort of metric of a sourcing team is interviews because that shows you got good-looking candidates in front of the hiring manager. Now, You know, it's a hot job market, the candidate might fall off, or God knows what the hiring manager can say in the interview, or, you know, the recruiter sits on your candidate for 10 days before they even get the interview and it's too late. So, so many things can go wrong. If we're hunting, searching, gathering, finding, and then queuing up a candidate and the business actually wants to talk to them, you've done your job completely and everything sort of the left and the right in the process of that interview is of lesser importance to me. So all my metrics kind of center on interview and ratios from submittal to interview and that sort of thing.

So what do you think about this? Um, I had, I had a guest on the show not that long ago that said that the, um, the, the most important metric for, for him to measure the, the production and the value of his sourcing team was the acceptance rate. So you're talking about interviews, that sort of, that sort of touches on the same, it's the same, you're measuring a different thing, but it's the same goal, right? Saying the interview, obviously, if they're interviewing them, then they accepted the candidate to, you know, they accepted it as a submittal that they want to talk to. So what do you think about that as a, as a as a measurement, the percentage of candidates you send to the client, hiring manager, or whatever that actually get, that actually get accepted, which obviously means they must be at least doing a phone screen of some kind, right?

Yeah. So like a quality of submittal versus a submittal. I— so for those that are listening that are in the government contracting space, they're all familiar with what we call LCTA. Lowest cost technically acceptable. So we're in a very, very competitive market. And our proposal people, as much as we'd like them to include us and to, you know, really put some high prices on the labor that we bid when we have to put everything out for bid, the government puts it out for bid, and then we have to, you know, put together a proposal and it includes pricing and this and that. And you have to explain how you're going to do the work. So all of our work, all of our recs start with that request for proposal, and then our proposal people, our BD people go out and try to win the work. And so years ago, we finally at least got a seat at that table. Now we can say what we want. They're still going to kind of do and, and, and say what they have to do to win the work. So in many cases, especially when it gets to my team, since we really work the stuff the recruiters can't fill on their own. So our recruiters don't have a ton of resources of their own. So it's a lot of post and pray and then call a sourcer. So for us, we get the stuff that the pay is not good enough, the location is really obscure, like in the defense market, you know, government's got sites in all sorts of wacky places that there aren't a lot of talent, or especially like diverse talent is a big one for us. There's a lot of places just out in the middle of nowhere that are a challenge.

So, but it's not just DC, like a lot of people would think.

No, no, it's, I We are in every single state in the country and several countries all over the world, even the US-based subsidiary. So to get back to your question, no, for me, I feel like, again, so many things can go wrong and there can be such a lag in picking up your candidate, talking to the candidate. I've heard so many, and not just at BA Systems, but just horror stories of, you know, interviews gone wrong or, you know, miscommunications. But really, I think the biggest thing is that salary is a lot of times we're trying to squeeze every little, you know, penny out of something. So the offer might be, you know, under what the person's asking, and we're really trying to kind of get to a margin area that the business is comfortable with. So I don't get too hung up on, you know, offers and hires, certainly, and especially The clearance aspect also slows things down. So even though your candidate might get an offer, they might not get read onto the program or their clearance might not cross over, or there might have been an issue with the clearance they didn't know about, your recruiter didn't know about, they didn't realize. So even though the person has got an offer and maybe accepted it, there might be 6 months before they can even start that job. And in that time, guess what? They've got this lottery ticket in their hand and then they're also interviewing other places and So I've seen that plenty, plenty of the time. You can't, you know, you can't—

wow. Yeah, I didn't think of that.

So we, yeah, we really do think of it as we are researchers, we are hunters, and we're going to find good talent. And, and I think we stand on that. And if, if they get to that interview, um, I, you know, I'm, I'm happy at that point, right?

And sometimes just the fact that you have the, you know, you, you've, you've supported the decision process, right? The hiring manager now has a choice. Maybe they only had one person, um, you know, as a viable candidate. Now, now they have another or a couple more, and so that, that's going to help them move the process along. Because if they only have one candidate, that's zero choice. There's, there's no choice.

Yeah, yeah. And we also, you know, we— for years and years, we— I came to BA systems from staffing RPO. So we had an RPO sales guy and he was just doing great business and just tons of temp-to-perm recruiters and RPO hours. And they eventually just said, let's, let's bring this guy in, bring his Rolodex, he can start his own little RPO, you know, kind of on-site without all the fees. So we function like that for years and years of basically the business is at arm's length and we're like a consulting organization, we're an agency you don't have to pay fees for. And that served us really well until a couple years ago when we went through that reorg and decided to sort of diversify and get a little bit closer to the business so we can affect our submittals a little more. So we do have more, and the sourcers love it, that they have a little bit more touch with the business, touch the PMs, and they can actually submit directly and get feedback directly. So, you know, we're always learning, always changing and tweaking the model.

So what's, uh, what's something that, you know, you can tell me without having to kill me? Sourcing techniques that, uh, you know, that you've developed or discovered? Because I— and let me explain a little bit to people following in the audience. Finding people with clearance is sometimes as simple as looking for TS/SCI or, or FSP, which are the keywords that somebody might have. On their profile, but not everybody puts those on. And there's a lot of other clearances that are, that are not clearances, but that are like types of access because basically the clearance is top secret or, or secret compartmentalized. But those don't make— they get redacted out of, out of people's profiles. So how do you find people that have a certain type of access that obviously in and of itself, that access is confidential? How do you find those people?

Yeah, and it's gotten worse, I think, over the last 10 years as the internet has sort of expanded and evolved and social media has expanded and evolved. The government finally realized, okay, we gotta kind of pull back the reins on our people on social media and really train them on what not to put and things not to include. So I think it was probably easier when I came here 12 years ago, and it's gotten harder over the years. Um, you know, I've got every single— you should see some of the Boolean strings I've got of like top secret or TS or this or that or that. I've got— you've got some giant ones. Um, but I think a lot of it comes to— there's going to be some trial and error. Um, you know, I, I think folks, the, the people that can't cut it here come in and they only do the top secret in quotes, TS or TSSEI or this or that, and they put it in a string and they go, well, I only got 4 candidates and I have nothing to show for it. So when I interview a sourcer and I say, well, you know what, they ask, what, how do you define success? How do you find people? Some of it's gonna take some guesswork, but it's gonna be informed guesswork. So for instance, if I am hiring in New Mexico or in, you know, someplace out in like Western New York where there aren't a lot of weird activities, I can do that research and figure out who the competitors are, who's there. A lot of it is, you know, Googling, just using the web. People ask me like, okay, what, what's some crazy spy level, you know, packet sniffing like thing that you do to find candidates? And I'm really a Luddite like at heart. Like, I, I'm interested in all the technology that comes out, but at the heart of it, I'm, I'm just a hunter and I'm curious. So anytime I get a rec or we get a new program, I'm just furiously Googling every little term I see in the, in the job description or And I'm just starting to, we call it like pulling the thread. I'm just pulling that thread to just keep on following those leads. And so for instance, I was training a new sourcer and there was some sort of like paint coating certification for some ship and I'd never heard of it. It was a real quirky wreck. So I said, all right, let's just Google it. Let's see what happens. And so we go to the website of the certifying authority and I know you're smiling 'cause you've done this probably a million times. And all of a sudden they have like, Here's our alumni. Here's our person that got the Paint Coating of the Year Award. And here's where they live on a Google Map. And I have been through that experience so many times. And so some of this technology, so some of it's location-based. You go, all right, there's a base in Ohio and—

By like logical connection, you know that if they're in Fort Meade or McLean, Virginia, you know, by proxy, they're probably related. And then if you know they work there, in Fort Meade and they work for one of these companies that does this kind of work, then it's like, it's a deductive reasoning, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Or something. And how do you do, you know, that there's sometimes there's bases in locations where the population is like next to, next to zilch.

Yeah, yeah. And if you miss, you've got, you've made a contact, you've got someone maybe that is in that, is in that clickable, you know, bucket, or is in like, knows someone, certainly everyone in the DC area knows someone who's cleared or someone that works for a defense contractor. So you're still— I approach sourcing not always rec-specific. I tell the sourcers, you know, we are doing a general get-to-know-you reach out. We are an entry into BA systems. We are a resource for you as you find yourself on the job market, maybe not today, but in the future. So a lot of what I teach the sourcers is to be a networker. More, you know, even more so than a hunter. You're doing the hunting skills to hopefully find the 10 out of 10 candidate, but we know that there's just so few of them out there that you're really going to have to backdoor network your way. And it may take you 6 months to find a candidate, but on, you know, day 5 months and 29 days, that person you talked to that wasn't quite a fit had a cousin that, you know, has the clearance. And so those sort of things happen when, when you put all the right steps together.

So do you— is there any way to automate what you do? Do you do automation at all? I mean, I would assume maybe with like some of the basic scraping and things like that, that would be helpful because you got source of data like you talked about with the, the certification body that had the list of all their graduates.

Yeah.

Do you use any automation or is that just not practical because you're looking for such a granular piece of information.

For me, I've never found it practical. I've dabbled with every little bit, and I'm sure someone is probably like pulling their hair out right now and screaming like, there's totally a way to automate that. But it never— the juice was never worth the squeeze, right? For me personally, yeah. Our wrecks are truly so cookie cutter and, and so ad hoc that there are things I'm sure I could be doing, but I don't have the time to also wade through the stuff I'd be pulling in. If I'm pulling in too much, we really have to be careful about our time. I've done lots of really cool stuff to find troves of data and giant documents and ingest them. But by the time I've done it, like we've been talking about, you're still guessing on the clearance. I think a lot of big data stuff, a lot of scraping stuff, while it's great, you're getting a ton of stuff. And if you're not getting any sort of clearance, or you're really having to tie a lot of things together, it just— I never found it worth the time. But I'm sure someone could probably prove me wrong.

But well, no, I mean, I see what you're saying. You know, automation is good for when you have volume. Automation is good for when you have a lot of the same types of skills and you have roles that, that are like— I call it, I call it a profile. So sometimes it's not a rec, it's a profile in that it's conceptually one level higher than a rec. You know, there are multiple recs. So let's take your typical software engineer, right? A mobile developer, a mobile software engineer that knows how to program in Android can have tons of specializations, but they're a mobile engineer. And so, you know, you can go out and you can find mobile engineers and then talk to them, and then you can categorize them into what might be a good fit because of their interests. You know, one thing with, with programmers and developers and stuff, they don't usually put on their profile or their resume what they're doing now. They put what they already did. So by the time you talk to them, they're like, oh man, that's yesterday. Now I'm working on, you know, Ruby and Python or whatever. So, you know, you almost have to like— if you find them because they're mobile developers, and then when you talk to them then you identify what their interest is. But if that's not possible because this is, you know, you're looking for like, um, I'll share an example that's not yours because you guys don't make airplanes, do you?

Uh, stuff on airplanes for sure.

All right, all right, so an example for a, for a top secret, you know, confidential search. There was, um, I needed to find— my team was asked to find a Flutter engineer. Nowadays, flutter is a software that Google makes. It's a language that Google makes. But back then, flutter was not that. It didn't exist yet. Flutter is the vibration in the wingtips of a supersonic aircraft, as in, you know, flutter as in like that, like a bird, that messes with the stability of the aircraft. And it also messes with apparently the, the telemetry data back and forth. So they needed to find somebody that could essentially stabilize the flutter on this experimental aircraft. And those— it's not like, you know, those people don't— like, there's no school that is, ah, yeah, we are the flutter engineering. There's no degree for that. They're engineers and they do materials and aerodynamics and all that, but they, but they couldn't work at a regular aircraft company because those planes aren't supersonic. So it almost has to be, you know, very special missiles or, you know, things like that. Anything that has a wing, right, could work. So finding this person, it was— they had to have the right combination of mathematics and some computer science and some, you know, clearance was not a huge thing. They need to have clearance, but more than likely they work at a company where that's already handled. Yeah, it was such a one-off weird thing. I've only ever in my 25 years, I've only ever done that once.

Yep.

Everything I learned about how to find Flutter engineers will probably never be useful to me.

Oh, I could, I could give you a laundry list of like, really? So one of them was their submarine signature reduction specialist. And they're basically finding ways to— it's just when you start like actually Googling this stuff, how to make submarines silent and this and that, it's an amazing sort of art and science. And, you know, how do you get into that? You don't graduate college and go, okay, now I'm going to start just like sourcing. No one, no one actually goes to school for it. So there's so many of those, like the coding, certified coding paint engineers, never heard of those, or Um, yeah, I've had some wacky ones over the years, and that's kind of more the norm than—

what, that's the normal? What about outreach? Let's talk a little bit about outreach. When you send a message out to these people, you— are you emailing them, calling them, texting them, sending them ESP? What, what's, what's the best method to reach them? Or, um, and kind of what's your success rate with outreach?

Yeah, um, all of the above for sure. So, um, we're just making sure— that's right, if there is anyone cleared listening right now, or ESP If anyone knows anyone with a clearance or anyone who's staring goats, anyone close to a base right now, find me. It's @pmaransorcerer. So yeah, I'd say nothing, nothing really crazy out there. I think we will send an email, follow up with a phone call, maybe a second phone call, second email, a text, you know, reach out on LinkedIn or social media. I try to treat it again like it's not tied to this hot wreck, even though everything we get is probably tied to a hot wreck at the end. In the beginning, because I've been approached by this and it's off-putting, especially if you're not out there looking for a job. But if someone comes at it with just the right mix of, you know, personalization, I think is very important. And not like everyone knows the cheesy, corny personalization that's out there, and we've all gotten those emails. But something that shows that you did a little research, this is not spam, this is not, you know, message 1 of 1,000, but something personalized, something very brief and to the point, and something that introduces you, who you are, and then ends with a call to action. That's it for me, is, you know, 100 words or less. Basically, hello, I'm Patrick, I work for BA Systems, I support this, 'If you ever want to talk, here's my info, you know, would you like to maybe share me your resume or get on a call or something like that?' And I basically explain to the sourcers, you know, we market ourselves as we're a very small and very quick step in the process, but we can open you up as a candidate to thousands of jobs and thousands of places all over the country, and we're not going to take too much time and it'll be painless and You know, when they go through our phone screens, you know, I hate anytime I ever see anyone doing like the, here's the 8-question questionnaire in the email, you know, please email me back your answers. Never do that. We never ever do that. So we treat it more like a conversation. We get to know you and our interviews are conversational too. And, you know, hopefully we weave in all the sort of minimum stuff we need to get in there, but I want them to get a good warm and fuzzy You know, we're the very first conversation they have, and the very first thing often they're learning about BA Systems is from that sourcer. So we're at a critical point of either making a good impression or a bad one. So I get pretty serious about—

Got it. And so what do you find is the most, um, response, the highest responses coming from an email or a text or a call?

Um, I think number one this is just me in general, your ATS is golden. Your ATS, your CRM, those are the folks that already know the brand, engaged with it, they took the time to apply. So I'm always shocked when I hear someone's recs aren't being kept clean, or, you know, I don't know how to use the ATS, the ATS is too hard to do a search, you know, after we've done 25, you know, uh, trainings on how to use the ATS. I'm always shocked that people don't go to that ATS first because Rec loads are high in every industry, and if a recruiter with 60 recs can find a hire on, on, you know, candidate number 3, candidate 4 through 100 is probably not getting reviewed very closely. So, um, I, I think, um, I think nowadays for us, emails is probably, probably still number one. You might catch somebody. I think often The thing about cleared people too is they're in what we call a SCIF, which is basically a lockdown environment. You can't bring your phone. So these folks might be working from, you know, 8 to 5 without any access to their telephone. So you might, you know, you have to get smart about when you have outreach. And that's why I like having people on the West Coast because they can call evening hours or people on the East Coast can call early morning. So you have to be smart about when your messages come out and when you make phone calls. But as long as you're—

yeah, that makes sense. So how many times do you think is okay to reach out to a passive candidate before moving on? Like, how many times? And combine the email, the call, how many touchpoints? Totally.

Yeah. A lot. Very many. I've seen— and that's sort of a red flag for me in an interview when someone will say like, I don't want to bother them. I want to put them out. I've seen some very interesting studies that there was one I'm thinking of specifically from maybe 5 years or so ago where they said there's sort of like a bell curve of person contacts me the first time. Okay, I don't know who this guy is. The second time, okay, this, I still am not really interested. The third time, or I'm getting a little annoyed, you know, this seems like spam. The fourth time they reach out, okay, I'm annoyed, I'm not interested, but then like it hits this point where they go, okay, after times like 5, 6, and 7, the people that responded to the survey— these were job seekers, thousands of them— said, now I actually kind of respect the person because they're not giving up. As long as the message isn't schlocky and cheesy or, you know, asking everything of them, it's not you're sending them an 8-question questionnaire or anything. As long as it's just very broad, simple, polite, respectful, Um, you know, 4 emails, 4 calls, couple texts. And, and always, I think now it's sort of an industry standard of that, hey, last chance saloon, you know, it's been 3 weeks and 2 calls and 5 emails, are you sure you want to? And, and a lot of people I've seen certainly proven out in studies and, and in real life, um, that last email where it says, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop bothering you now, usually gets a pretty big uptick. So I think newer sourcers or people that are introverts would be surprised to find out people aren't actually— they're busy. You know, you might get a couple emails. It happens to me, happens to all of us. And you just, you know, all of a sudden the kids have something, you have to go, you forgot, something at work came up. People need, especially people that are really in-demand skill sets, they value that, that you're reaching out to them. You know, you're not just giving up. So I wouldn't possibly—

you're reaching out be more than just an email, right? You might, yeah, if you can, or yeah. Although there's something kind of unique about calling people with clearance, and I'll touch on that in just a second. But I did get a question that came in from our viewership. Wendy Thompson wants to know what ATS you guys use. Is that okay for you to share?

Sure. So we have, um, Connexa, um, Brass Ring from IBM. And I think we are going to be transitioning to an Oracle product sooner than later. Yeah, and we have Phenom People is our CRM.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, they both— they're decent.

All right, I'm letting her know.

So here's some people really have trouble with, with Kinexa because you can configure it in so many ways. It's just ultimately every single bit of that dashboard is ultimately configurable in like 100 different ways. So it takes a little bit of learning, but once you have someone that's able to do it or train you on it, I find it great. I really love it. The search, the candidate search is great. So got positive feedback there.

Got another question. What creative sourcing strategies when, when you don't find candidates?

Oh, how much time do you have?

Um, yeah, right, like Hours and hours and hours.

Yeah, my first job ever in sourcing and recruiting was at Bank of America. It was, uh, I used to work for Allegis Group, Aerotech staffing agency that a lot of people may know of, and we were staffing a call center. It was literally a bunch of kids who had just graduated college. There's about 8 of us, and they just threw us on site, hired us, and said go find them. And these were like $10 an hour, um, you know, sort of retail call center jobs. So We really, and we had to fill 110, we had to make 110 hires per month for a team of like 8 children with very little training, 18, 19, 20-year-olds. So we would go to, we had advertisements, you know, a restaurant, you get that paper with all the little local ads. We put ads in those. We would go to Dunkin' Donuts, we're in New England. So we'd go to Dunkin' Donuts around the various towns talk to the people, we try to pull them there. We would call into the mall, we'd cold call, we'd get the mall directory and we'd start cold calling, you know, Nail Pagoda and Piercing Pagoda and this and that. And is your manager around? No? Okay, well, let's, you know, would you like a call center job? So that's how I started outsourcing. So my floor is pretty low as far as what I'm willing to do to get a candidate. But to talk in a more practical sense, and this is something So when the business, when folks at the C-suite ask me about, okay, what can we train our sourcers in? What can we do? How can you teach them how to be like this magical, amazing sourcer? And my answer is always very disappointing because I'm not a big tools guy. I'm not a big automation guy. I'm not a big AI/ML guy. So my thing is really that pulling that thread, that curiosity. So I would say if you have gone through all your boards and resources and you're just not finding the candidates. Number one, bringing in a friend, talking to your team about it. I think that's why— Yeah, yeah. Phone a friend. Yeah. I— people— buzzword diversity is such a big buzzword now, but it really, truly, especially for any team, is important, especially a team that thrives on creativity. Because my upbringing, everything I've been through to this point kind of colors my world and how I think about things and how I solve a problem. And so I have a very diverse team and I'm very proud of that. And it has served me so well because I think totally different about solving this problem than that other sourcer will. So anytime we have a challenge, we always bring it to the table and we beat it up. And you would be shocked at how many like really like obvious ideas are out there. But I just, oh yeah, I had not thought of that. I hadn't heard about that. I didn't have that experience. So I would say you know, reach out, reach out on social networks. There's a ton of sourcing groups on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, including the Sourcing Method, of course, which there's a lot of really smart people and people that are really willing to lean in and help out. But for you, in a more practical sense, I would say just dumb it down, bring it a step back, start small, start easy. Google one thing, Google, find something that's unique about that requirement. And just look into every aspect of it and then just start branching out and just don't stop at search results 1 through 10. Go to the second or the third, the fifth, the sixth, 20th page. I think that's, that's also where I define what makes a great sourcer is a good sourcer or recruiter is going to go through page 1 of results, page 2 of results, and then they'll go to Bing. And okay, that's great. But you know, the great sourcers are the ones that are not only doing cool cyber sleuth type of stuff. But then they're going to go to page 10, they're going to go to page 20, and all of a sudden you found some weird Excel spreadsheet with 10,000 records on it that no one's finding because it's not indexing. And, and so I think you just have to keep pushing, you have to keep pulling that thread. A lot of what we do, because it's hunting for how tough our recs are, requires persistence. I think any industry any— it doesn't have to be even HR. If you have a dogged, persistent approach and you do not give up, period, you're gonna find a way. And it just takes taking, you know, taking a break, a mental break, or asking somebody to sort of jog those, those thoughts loose. I hope that—

yeah, that's really important, you know, that, that basic sense of just Google something, you know, it's, it's so important because A lot of people just assume, or recruiters take for granted, that what's on the rec is gospel, right? That, um, that what's on the rec is what, what it is.

Yeah.

So I'll just use a quick example. I was working with a, with a company and they had a very challenging search. The recruiter was one of the best recruiters in the company. All their peers said this. That's not me, that's the peers saying when I interviewed them and asked them who's the best, they, you know, many of them pointed to this person. And, you know, great track record, but just was completely failing on this one particular wreck and couldn't, you know, just couldn't get past it. So they brought it to me, and my first question was to ask what this technology is. So like, they were looking for somebody that has experience with a facilities management software. And, you know, they gave me the name of it. And so my question was, so what is, you know, this facilities management software? And the first thing I did was I went to Google and I typed in the name of the facilities management software. And the first result was that this company had been acquired by this other company. So then I Googled the new company and product name and then saw that that company had been acquired by another company. And then we found that that technology was now called something completely completely different. And I asked the recruiter, I said, hey, what do you think about that? Can you, can you ask the hiring manager? Can you send an email to the hiring manager and ask about this? And, and the recruiter, she said, I'll do one better, I'll call him right now. Like, literally had it on, you know, this, this recruiter really had strong relationships with their, with their hiring managers. Speed dial, right? Hiring manager answers, she's like, yeah, I'm with a consultant right now, and then he wants to know if, if we find candidates that have this blah blah would they be acceptable? And I could, I could hear over the speakerphone the hiring manager said, of course, that's what we use now. It's just that was on the rack, you know. Yeah, like, just simply Google it and see because it might have changed or whatever. Don't, don't assume. That's such a base— and by base I mean like foundational skill for, for a sourcer in that inquisitive mindset. So I think that's, I think that's a brilliant answer to a creative sourcing strategy. It doesn't seem like it's very creative, but a lot of people just don't do it. So Google skills and, and the requirements one at a time and see if anything there points to something unexpected. Um, yeah, we actually got another question. So you've been quite popular with the audience. Usually don't get that many questions. He wants to know how your teams are set up. So your sourcing team, are they divided up by technology division, um, you know, functional area? How is, how is that set up?

Yeah, so it's an interesting story. Headed into, uh, 2021, we had a leadership team meeting, um, went all to corporate and, and had it out myself and, and the TA managers who manage the recruiting teams. So we have 3 different business areas and then our Inc. and functional staff, so that's a 4th. So I basically have 4 kind of internal customers. So we go to this meeting, all my peers, and, and we have really good relationships and everything's hunky-dory. And day in, day out, the, the feedback is great. Sourcing team's doing awesome. Awesome. And this was, say, year 1 through 10 of me being here at BA Systems. We were doing that just-in-time sourcing, that RPO agency model of give us your really tough reqs, give us your really high priority reqs, and then, you know, some specialty sourcing too. So we were working hot stuff and stuff that was impossible to find. And, and it was so— it was very transactional, just very ad hoc, nothing, you know, evergreen really to it. And again, we had the business sort of at an arm's length because we treated it like we were an agency and we would just sort of say, we're going to submit, but we're not going to waste our time in your daily standup calls and all that sort of stuff. So I always found value, number one, in that we were saving time by not being in all these meetings for the sourcers, which I still sort of believe in, you know, having a very delicate balance there. But we were also, you know, able to, to be able to flow with the business because things change so quickly and you have to have that ultimate flexibility. So anyway, to get back to this meeting, all 4 of my colleagues, my boss said, all right, everyone get out your sticky notes I gave you when we showed up and just start writing what you'd like to see us do differently or try out in 2020. And so we all wrote 4 or 5 and put our sticky notes all up on the board. And one by one, they start, we start reporting out. And each one of my colleagues that manages the recruiting team said, I'd like to see some sort of embedded, like aligned sourcing. And, uh, you know, for a moment it kind of hit me because I had such a good relationship, things I thought were going great, but all 4 of them without colluding on it or anything had the exact same answer that they wanted this. So I said, all right, let's, let's go to work on this. And I started, um, you know, in looking at different models to, to— I'm sure if you Googled right now how to structure a sourcing team, you're going to get 100 articles and not a whole lot of agreement or usable stuff. And I read one from you, I recall, a pod sourcing model, and I read just hundreds of them. I ingested all that and nothing quite fit what we needed. So the model I came up with has 3 levels of sourcing support from closest tie to the business to least tied directly to the business. And then at the bottom, it's sort of evergreen. So to explain it very quickly, we have our embedded aligned sourcers, which they go to a business vertical. So they are very program-specific. They're building deep pipelines in that specific business area. And they're, you know, in some of the team meetings, they're meeting with hiring managers and PMs, and they're really able to get a really good connection to that business. So that was sort of new for us. The second model is what we were doing, that RPO, just-in-time. We call it the SWAT team. You know, if you think of you got a hot wreck, go throw the SWAT team. So we call those our SWAT sourcers. They change what they work on from day to day, week to week. They work a wreck until it's closed, they move on to a totally different wreck, completely different. So that gives us that flexibility as an organization.

The third— business aligned like the first one. Yep, it is. Or it is not.

It is not at all. Nope. They, they flow all the way across all the businesses. They are just focusing on the hottest of the hot recs, and they give us that flexibility where if I had them all aligned, you know, then I'm like, okay, let me borrow my Air Force person and throw them over defense. And no defense, do you mind if I take them back and throw them over to Navy? Having that second level allows people to not have that organizational confusion. So I really wanted that flexibility. And then the third level is what we call pipeline sourcing. And that is kind of the true, like, researcher, fill the funnel. That's where sort of the process automation, AI, ML, the really cool, like, stuff happens. Now, when I briefed the model, everybody loved it. Great idea. Let's go at it.

We—

I think we need to hire 4 to 5 people. Got all the thumbs up. And then this was now March of 2020. And I don't know if anyone knows exactly what happened in March of 2020, but things sort of changed drastically in our society, and those hiring figures of 4 to 5 additional heads turned to, we love the model, can you do it with the team you currently have? So, so we ended up having to take away that pipeline part, which is the evergreen skill sets, the filling the funnel. That's also sort of a reason why I haven't been able to get the team size up to a level where I can delve into some of the cooler sourcing scraping sort of stuff that I'm familiar with, I'm comfortable with, but never really gotten to dig my teeth into it. So I'm excited if we can someday kind of add a couple people to that Evergreen. And the idea behind them too is not only are they just constantly filling the funnel and they're specializing in the really, really out there sourcing, but they're also thinking about your whole organization so that if you've got— we have systems engineers, we have software developers, testers, you name it, across all of our business areas. So, you know, the, the fear is Air Force Group needs a systems engineer with this and that, and then Intel Group needs a systems engineer with the same thing, but they're not talking because they're in those stovepipes.

So that's what we talked about before, Patrick. That's the profile base. That is about Yep.

And so that's where that pipeline sourcer is thinking about what are the core 100 skill sets, and I'm just going to constantly fill the funnel and I'll, I'll also enrich the funnel. So our idea was they're not only going to do some really cool sourcing, but they're also going to do a lot of that, um, you know, candidate outreach. And just like, they'll fill the funnel with a sort of question mark about clearance, and then they'll enrich the funnel with that outreach and starting to kind of build out candidate profiles.

Else.

So someday we'll get there. That's my, my dream model, to have all three.

Yeah, that's actually, um, I'm glad you brought that up because that is the, the highest level in the sourcing maturity model. Um, you know, you've got basically the, the block and tackle recruiting that, and, and this, this works with organizations that have distributed, you know, hiring, or they use RPOs, etc. So the kind of, you know, first level of that maturity model is to work on a rec when it's open. You know, rec opens, it gets posted, you got low or no applicant flow, bring it to sourcing, sourcing adds some lift, right? That's, that's level 1, very reactive. The second evolution is more proactive, which is I think what you're describing as your level 1. Business aligned. You know, they, they work with hiring managers, they get to know the hiring managers, they, they fill the funnel for the, the common profiles, and they're working on, you know, not necessarily rec-specific but profile-specific, right? So that's the more proactive. The third evolution is kind of that high-octane, you know, SWAT team that you, that you talked about. And then the final evolution is pipelining ahead demand. That's programs-based, and that's We don't have wrecks. We know we're going to need these people 6 months from now. That's the, you know, so not everybody gets to go there, but to have that is a very good goal, um, to, to evolve into, even if you end up having a small portion of your team dedicated to it. And then what I've usually done as a consultant in implementing this is, is I've done it 2 separate ways. One way is to have a dedicated person that that's their job, 1 or 2 people that you know, a portion of the team full-time. And the other is to dedicate a small percentage of the team's time on this type of work using the Pareto principle, 80/20. 80% of their time they're working on either their business-aligned or their SWOT activity, and 20% of the time they're working on the pipeline. But, um, in that case, I assign them a channel. So they're pipelining from a particular channel as opposed to a vertical. So in that case, they're pipelining from LinkedIn, or they're pipelining from Facebook or Twitter or whatever. So that way, um, somebody else is also pipelining for critical roles in the future, but they're finding people in a different, you know, environment. So they're not— there's less likely to overlap and have what I call contact collision. So you definitely can do that with your team now. You just need to either dedicate 20% or take one person and dedicate that one person, you know.

Yeah, we're doing that with diversity sourcing. So we've done several things. So we say you get a rec as a sourcer, the first 2 hours of your search you're gonna look for diverse candidates specifically. And that way, the thing I love about it, instead of having one diversity sourcer in your organization, is that it keeps everybody fresh, keeps them sharp, keeps them thinking, keeps it at top of mind, and if you have one diversity sourcer working across, you know, a sourcing team that's working 100 recs, it's going to take a while before they get to your rec. If you— each sourcer doing that, or each sourcer doing, you know, what you're talking about, it's timely. So they're doing it regularly, often, for the things that are top of their mind. So, right, yeah, I think that's a really good way to do it.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, well, we're pretty— getting pretty close to the hour. I think I have time for maybe to squeeze in one more question in the air, if you don't mind.

Sure, of course.

Um, what, what outreach methods— is— we're on the outreach, you know, we were— we started on the outreach path there. What channel or outreach method is off limits, if any?

Oh man, I don't think any are off limits. Um, I mean, I, I had one former, um, director that said we— she was going to buy a sandwich board and she was going to walk up and down outside CIA headquarters with the sandwich board saying BA Systems is hiring. I think that was one that sort of I thought we might not want to try, but you know, we do food truck events, we do a lot of sponsored stuff, text messaging, totally fine, you know, messaging natively in the places where these people go. So inside of developers, yep, reaching out on those platforms. So no, I don't think— I think if you're respectful about it and you're curious and you're open. And if you just, hey, I'm, I'm a professional, you're a professional, and I have this big giant company with a lot of great jobs. And if you want to say hi to me and get to know me just for a few minutes, we can keep that relationship going at as, you know, slow pace as you'd like. But I'm not going anywhere, and this is what I do. Um, I'm a networker, so I, I want to build long-term relationships. I think that people that fail in this industry are thinking, if I need a top secret candidate, my search is top secret. Like you were saying, you look at the resume or you look at the rec and you start, if I want a Java developer, my search isn't Java developer. How many times have you seen that? It's everything but that. So I think as long as you're keeping an eye towards what's hot, but you're also really working and on the outward, inwardly you may be thinking this is like dire, I need to find this person by this week. But outwardly, everything you should do should be very passive, very friendly, very respectful. Yeah, you don't want to scare people.

So yeah, I think you're spot on. I totally agree with it. It's respectful and humble. You're providing them an opportunity. Look, we have a very honorable job. It used to be that, you know, decades ago, recruiters were seen as headhunters and, you know, all the negativity that comes with that. Like literal shrunken head on a spike.

And, you know, I get called headhunter. That's— I— oh, anytime I say, oh, I'm a sourcer, what do you do? Well, I find people. Oh, like a headhunter. I get that every time.

Yeah, but it used to have a negative connotation, you know. Um, now it's, it's changed. So we have an— we have a job where— this is the way— this is my philosophy. The way I see it is I'm providing somebody an opportunity to improve their career and improve their lives. You know, that's what it's supposed to be. It's a career opportunity. I'm not selling anything because they're not buying anything. They're not— there's no money exchanged here. I'm not making the decision. So, you know, I'm not a salesperson and I'm also not a buyer, but I am connecting. You know, I've seen this on a few different ways, connecting people with opportunity. So if this is a strong opportunity and it's stronger than what you're currently doing and you want to consider this opportunity, I'm doing you a favor. It's also my job, but it's a job that also happens to be, you know, social workers help people and it's their job. I'm not saying we're social workers. Psychologists help people. Nurses help people. So it's my job to help you connect with a better opportunity. If what I have to offer is not a better opportunity, please move on. Like, you know, There's nothing to see here, right? Move along. But if it is, then I'm doing it. So I think it's a valuable service. And it's an honorable service. All the candidate has to do is say, I'm not interested. That's it. So to me, there's nothing off limits, as long as it's business. And like you said, humble and respectful. And hey, I want to talk to you about something that might be of interest. If it isn't, it isn't.

When it's impersonal, when it's spam, when you've reached out to the same candidate 5 different times, you didn't even realize it because you were just sort of spamming stuff out there, that's when it's bad. So when you're doing it, you know, one-on-one with some care and attention, you can reach out on any platform you want at any time you want, as desperate as you want to be, as long as you're respectful.

I think is right, that's right, because all you need them to say is yes, no, or, you know, and, and the worst is no, is no response. So by not responding, you are essentially disrespecting me because, you know, if I'm being respectful and genuine and this is a real opportunity, I'm not spamming, I'm not scamming, I'm not, you know, then all you have to say is, hey, thanks but no thanks.

Yeah. And that's, that's my thing. When I do a call to action, it's not some big grandiose thing. It's not, can I have 30 minutes of your time? It's not, here's our interview process. And it's not, fill out this questionnaire. You have, you have call time for 10 minutes call. I just want to kind of learn more about you. And that's it. I usually ask for something extremely simple, very, very— or just, would you have interest in talking?

What are you interested in doing? And, oh, that fits with what we're doing. Do you want to hear about it? No.

Yeah. And when I've gotten on the other side of that from recruiters recruiting recruiters, the ones that really get me are like, hey, I work at X company. And if the company's decent enough and the outreach— it was just like, hey, I want to get on a call, you know, I, I'm a, I'm a pretty shy person, pretty introverted person. So if someone came to me with an email that says, here's my job requirement and it's a sourcing role and I want to talk to you, I want to interview you, and I want to go through a rigorous interview, that probably would just turn me off and scare me as sort of a, a quieter personality. So I feel like I'm always sensitive to that, of not going to ask for much, I'm not going to put you through the ringer because we don't. So I'll be nice and upfront about that and make it easy for the easier you can make it on the candidate.

And it's just step 1. It's step 1. If you want to do step 2, we move on. If you don't want to do step 2, we don't want— it's no big deal. You know, it's like, it's like you probably, you know, you're, you're a manager in a very well-known company that I'm sure you get a lot of vendors calling, right? It's the same thing. I just— same way I feel with vendors. If a vendor is respectful, and they reach out, hey, I've got this thing I want to show you, and I get 5, 6, 7, 8 a day, right, from different, different companies. Sometimes they're completely off, like it's procurement sourcing. But if they're respectful and informative and true, then I respond with it, hey, sorry, you know, not my thing, barking up the wrong tree, not my— and sometimes they're like, hey, thanks for letting me know. Sometimes they'll go, well, if not you, then who? And I'll reply, be like, really sorry, I'm not— it's not my job to help you figure that out. I don't know and I can't answer that. I'm not going to go investigate. Or I do know, contact this person, but I'm not going to give them the contact information. I'm just gonna direct them in the right way. Yeah, but I'm being respectful, right? No thank you is, is all. Sometimes though, I do get the ones that are, that are so presumptive. Like, I got this one message once from a vendor that was so like kissy-uppy, you know what I'm talking about? Oh, you have such a marvelous profile, such a prominent blah blah, blah, blah. And it was so flattering that it felt really weird.

Yeah.

And I was just like, yeah, it's just like, it's like dating.

I've had it described like that. Like, you don't want to come out as far as like putting the job description and everything you learned about them and everything, every hobby you have in common.

Like, some people say, oh, you got a personalized person to a person you're interested in. You are the hottest, most attractive.

Yeah, yeah, I love you. Really?

No way. That's not— can't be possible. I mean, I may not have a high self-esteem, but I can definitely tell you I am probably not the hottest, most attractive person. I mean, really?

Yeah. Personalization in small ways, simple ways, not creepy ways, um, and maybe some humor interjected small— in small amounts. Anything over— over that you're writing that's not in person, over the phone, face to face, can be interpreted in so many ways. So keep it simple. And if anybody leaves my sort of messaging outreach philosophy with one thing, it's end everything with a simple and direct call to action. Don't make it a vague call to action. I've done that too, where it's like, if you'd like to, you know, you could or not. Ask them a yes/no question. Ask them, can you talk, you know, next week? Do you have time on Thursday? Not like a, would you like to talk? Because that's yes/no, but it's very vague. So end your emails and your voicemails with something very achievable, very small, because just sometimes it's babying someone along where they might not be in the market, but then all of a sudden on Wednesday of that week when you reached out Monday, they had this horrible meeting and they're pissed and they wanna— now they're looking. So if you can just reel them in very gently, I think is the right approach for me.

I love that. I love that. Um, there was one last person that just snuck in a question. I don't know if you want to answer that or not. Are you able to? They're asking if a company with only a couple of recruiters, 2 to 3 recruiters, um, how do you suggest fees, uh, are, are split?

And see, because you came from an agency world, so yeah, that's, that's not in my wheelhouse at all. I have— I, I've known people that have been out on their own, but I've never had the gut guts to, to go out and do it or have my own, you know, split desk, full desk type of thing. Um, I would say there are lots and lots of websites, lots of messaging boards on people who split recs and do splits and stuff like that. So there's tons of stuff out there, but unfortunately I could not speak to that one bit.

Yeah, I would say, uh, you know, it's been a while since I've done it, but what I've seen from my clients and consultants is typically the sourcers are base salary. Yeah, you know, and it's a bonus on performance like you would as a, you know, corporate bonus, but not a commission fee base for the sourcer. And then yeah, recruiters, you know, you come up some split arrangements. Well, thank you so much, Patrick. It's been a real pleasure to catch up with you. It's been a while. I really appreciate you spending time with us today. Happy New Year to you and to everybody else, and hopefully we'll have you back on the show in a little while.

Awesome. Same to you. Thanks, Shelly.

Thanks, everybody. Have a good weekend. Take care.