I had the opportunity to interview Marcel van der Meer a legendary Sourcer within our community. He is the founder of BadAss Recruiters & Sourcers group on Facebook. Currently he’s a Global Sourcing Lead at Rabobank based in the Netherlands. He’s been very active within the sourcing and growth hacking space. Honestly, I can’t wait to see him present live at SourceCon Austin in 2020.
Tell us about your work experience in recruiting – how did you get your start, how did you progress, where are you at this point in time?
Well, it started in 2005 OMG, 15 years ago! I worked as a manager of an IT Professional Services team and had an assignment to get a European team in and fast. We had no recruiters and HR always worked with agencies. The quality of the agencies was terrible and 10 people for 15K per piece, you do the maths. So I decided to do it myself. LinkedIn, Monster and via a freelancer, I got some referrals. So that was my first start. In 2007 I decided to start for myself to freelance myself as a Project / Program Manager. I started with some projects and got bored. A lot of people asking me, you know a lot of people can you help me, please? So early 2008 I started my own agency, Klikwork.
What are the unique talents you bring to the field?
I am lazy and creative. So I when I have to similar things over and over again. I had that. In 2010 I had build workflows in my ATS, connected a couple of RPO sites to my database and made 7 niche job boards and attached them also to my ATS. The ATS supplier said that it was impossible. I love these impossible tasks. I am still in automating workflows, I am in love with Zapier webhooks.
Share your biggest success story in recruiting so far?
Well in 2010 – 2011 I had my own agency. I bluffed myself into an RPO deal, 100+ hires in three months, I was all alone. I had to make a career site, employee testimonial movies, do a Google Ad campaign 25K (which was huge) and make sure all the hires did come in. I worked hard, with one employee who still needed to start (who was a bright video editor lucky me) but I managed it. After this project the company who did the RPO for offered me to buy me and my company.
What is the best advice you’ve received during your career path, and from whom?
Well, I got a lot of advice, the best advice was from Kasia Tang. She introduced me to Phil and she convinced me to stand on stage. I spoke on a lot of events since then.
What’s your favorite recruiting tech tool?
AmazingHiring, Lemlist and Phantombuster among many others and Zapier.
As a recruiting professional, how do you handle recruiting to achieve the best results?
Always have the end in mind and always wonder what kind of value am I adding to the result?
What do you hope to achieve in 2020?
Speak in the USA, okay that is covered! I am speaking at Sourcecon fall in Austin. Hopefully, this corona crisis is solved by then. I want to speak all over the world, last year I did Amsterdam, Germany, Barcelona, Estonia, New Zealand and Israel. Love to speak!
What’s your favorite Boolean String?
Well to tell you the truth the one you recently shared adding “female” to a string and change the search into images is one of my favorites.
software (engineer OR developer) Female stanford site:linkedin.com/in
Tell me more about your Badass sourcing group! –How did that start?
BadAss Recruiters & Sourcers, yeah. I was one of the Growth Hacker moderators and didn’t agree with Tris his way, let’s leave it there :). So I started my own group, 1,5 years ago. Now with almost 4,000 active and less active users. I share playbooks, lot’s of other stuff over there. And it is growing organically.
Anything else?
PS – www.bars.team is the best virtual bar to be in right now.
Recommended Reading:
A Recruiter’s Superpower: Empathy and Positivity
12 Books Recruiters Should Read in 2020
10 Useful Extension Tools to Boost Recruiting Productivity
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- Demystifying Natural Language Search: Crafting Effective Boolean Strings - April 26, 2024
- The Art of Context: Why Rushing to Conclusions Can Lead Us Astray - April 25, 2024