SourceCon Digital 2.0 came and went so quickly this year. I was able to present on the main stage on Talent Sourcing Automation. We had over 750+ participants at this event making it the one of the largest Sourcing conferences in North America. I was honored that the SourceCon team chose me to present on this topic. I’ve been an avid attendee for over 8+ years now and I’ve attended at least a dozen times at this point. Below is a recap of my presentation with notes on how to implement automation tools within your sourcing role.
4 Levels of Automation (Shally’s Definitions)
- Basic Automation: Simple tasks, no special knowledge needed.
- Process Automation: More complex – Microsoft 365 / Chatbots.
- Integration Automation: Most difficult in-house, some human intervention (IFTTT).
- Intelligent Automation: (AI) Robots doing multiple steps, no humans.
Basic Automation Sourcing
- Automate Mundane Tasks
- Auto Searching
- Productivity Tools
- Auto – Scheduling
- Web Scraping + Data Enrichment
- Profile Views on LinkedIn
- Auto Responders
- Engagement Outreach
How to automate safely on LinkedIn?
- When you should automate – safely!
- Understanding search limits and profile views – the number is not public
- 500 views a day = The exact number is different for each user
- Number depends on age of account and number of connections
- Check out this Chrome Extension – Nefarious LI
Email Tracking Extensions
Find out if your emails were read. Simply install and any future emails are automatically tracked. A circle will appear when the tracking is enabled on the sent email and a checkmark will appear when it has been read. Works for unlimited email accounts and sent emails.
BananaTag
See email open and click data by emails and get real-time insights.
Macros – Automating Tasks (Basic)
Record a combination of keystrokes and shortcuts:
- Filling out forms
- Posting Jobs
- Emailing + Auto responses
- Type and replace text
- Searching online
Ui Path – Automating Tasks (Advanced)
- Automate – clicks, views, auto fill in templates, and connect with Outlook or Gmail.
- Discover automation opportunities powered by AI and your people.
- Build automations quickly, from the simple to the advanced.
- Manage, deploy, and optimize automation at enterprise scale.
- Run automations through robots that work with your applications and data.
MyRobot.Works (Advanced)
- Auto-message with merge fields for LinkedIn
- Groups contacts in Pools and assign them status / projects
- Share connections, collaborate with Team members
- Send invites to new contacts using merge fields
- Download connections from LinkedIn with emails
- Also check out > Scrab.in + Octoplus
Phantombuster (Basic)
- Phantombuster is used to extract data from platforms that can be used to automate necessary but repetitive tasks in recruiting.
- Phantombuster can be programmed to search certain profile data or URLs across networks such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, which can be compiled into a spreadsheet or CRM for review.
- Pricing > Free for single usage.
IFTTT (Basic)
- Connect with recipes to integrate different sites.
- Check is on LinkedIn.
- Post RSS feeds.
- Schedule Tweets.
- Buffer your social media posts.
Here’s my favorite IFTTT Recipes to use in Recruiting:
1. New LinkedIn contacts in a Google Drive spreadsheet.
Use this to keep track of new leads in Google Drive. You can treat this like your own personal CRM
2. Save contacts added to a Google Contacts group as a subscriber to a list in MailChimp.
Use this to create a networking mailchimp email list. I use this to send out monthly (new opportunities) emails at my company. Use this to keep leads warm and help build an active talent pipeline.
3. Save caller’s contact info each time I receive a call.
Receive a lot of calls during the day? This one helps you track your daily calls and uploads them to Google drive.
4. Create a calendar item to follow-up in a week when a new contact is added.
This one’s great for creating a weekly (business development) reminder of who to follow up with. You can treat this as your own personal sales assistant.
Machine Sourcer (Basic)
- Build lists of prospects: Just type in the professional and geographic parameters to automatically build lists of profiles.
- Customize your list: We know bots can’t do everything, like know not to reach out to that guy who wouldn’t stop talking to you at that one networking event. You can manually remove people from a list you build who you do not want to connect with.
- Connect with prospects: Send personalized connection requests to your lists of prospects.
SeekOut (Basic)
Features include:
- Scrape and save LinkedIn profiles within projects.
- Cross reference and get contact information quickly – 80% accuracy.
- Create automated drip campaigns with follow-up reach outs.
- Search within SeekOut and find more leads (AI matching technology).
- Export all candidate data to a spreadsheet. Import it to your ATS or CRM.
- Basic package:($99 per month) Emails for 200 candidates + Export 1,000 profiles per month.
Bookmarklets – Glen Gutmacher
- A bookmarklet is a bookmark stored in a web browser that contains JavaScript commands that add new features to the browser.
- Useful bookmarklets for Web Scraping, Web Development, and for easy navigation.
- To install the bookmarklet, drag and drop the link to the Browser’s bookmark bar > https://github.io/bookmarklets
Processing Power + Too Many Extensions + Open Tabs = Slow Computer
This is the ultimate tool for lightning fast enabling and disabling all your extensions for Google Chrome. Just enable the extension when you want to use it, and disable when you want to get rid of it for a little while.
Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once.
Better than bookmarks. Organize your browser tabs and access them quickly anywhere.
The Great Suspender – More Dev Focused
Have tabs open that you don’t want to close but aren’t using? This extension allows you to suspend any tabs that you aren’t using so that you have more RAM.
Productivity Extensions
WhenX helps you to find previously visited links in your Google search results by adding a tag with your last visit time next to the link.
Use this extension to monitor web pages online. Anytime there is a change or update you will get notified. This is a simple and easy way to track your competition or to monitor candidates online.
Swell – To Do List & Task Manager
This Chrome extension requires just a sweet and simple description.
Connect Todois to your Gmail inbox and you can instantly add emails as tasks, allowing you to follow-up when you’re ready without forgetting
Now you can send text messages straight from your computer without ever picking up your phone.
Search and highlight multiple words on web pages.
Quickli helps people easily navigate profiles on LinkedIn. Peek into company information without leaving the current page. Quickly find people working at the same company with the same title as the person you are viewing.
Managing Time and Productivity
actiTIME Timer is a great extension that works in Chrome to simply the entire process of tracking your time.
TrackingTime is another extension that helps you to collect accurate information on how long it takes to get work done.
Clockify is a timer extension that works as part of a larger time-tracking platform. It can help you improve your work performance by tracking your idle time and setting reminders for you.
Set goals + Understand Search Categories + Tells you patterns = Makes you more productive
Tomato Timer – Marinara: Pomodoro Assistant
A simple time tracking extension tool. You record short and long tern breaks. Measure your previous history stats and easily get notification for your browser and desktop while tracking your time.
 | New Book Launching SoonMy mission is simple: Help Recruiters learn about the latest Talent Sourcing Tools on the market! |
Recommended Reading:
How to Navigate through Covid and Recruit Tech Talent
How to Manage Employer Branding During a Pandemic Year
How to Prepare for a Recruiter Job Interview