Friday I posted asking if anyone had any suggestions in regards to questions I might ask a sourcer.. when sourcing. What I got were quite a few comments and a bucket of emails with great questions – many of which were, “Is your name X” (replace X with the sender’s name.)
This was a great response and I’m still going through some of the messages sent via email (it REALLY is okay to use the comments field here, ya’ know.) While some questions were stronger than others there were a handful I’d never have thought to ask and just might use. So thanks to everyone.
One thing that I did find was the SourcersGuild network over at Ning. (Thanks, Maureen!)
Check out this snippet from a post Maureen made last week. Good stuff!
“What’s your secret sauce?†they ask. “Where DID you get this stuff?†they demand. “How DO you do this so fast?†they want to know. The queries take different forms but they all boil down to the same-ol’-same-ol’: How do I do what I do?
I spend the early parts of my mornings doing phone banks, posting in my groups, answering customer inquiries and things like that. What I do most of the hours in the day, is either think about, dream about or actually telephone names source. Yep, it’s the air I breathe, oh lucky me.
“What’s name sourcing?†you may be thinking. Names sourcing is the activity of finding people who hold specific titles, or who do specific job functions, usually inside specific organizations. These “persons of interest†are usually not found in large numbers on the internet, which differentiates the two branches of names sourcing. Internet sourcers scour the net for these folks; telephone sourcers call into the companies to obtain the names. The difference is obvious: telephone sourcers dig out the candidates behind the corporate brick and mortar walls – Internet sourcers peel them off the Internet pavement. Telephone sourcers sometimes begin their searches on the net – many times it’s necessary to “have a name†ready for the Gatekeeper in order to be transferred inside the company. Most times it’s just easier and faster to get on the telephone, call and ASK for what you need.
You can read the rest (I would recommend it) here.
