Recruiter SpotLight Pete Radloff

Jonathan Kidder

7 years ago

I had the opportunity to interview Pete Radloff – Talent Acquisition Operations @ comScore and Principal at RecruitingIn3D. I appreciate him sharing his thoughts and observations on the recruiting industry, and I hope you’ll enjoy this fun interview!

How did you get into recruiting?

Probably the same way that 90% or more of us did…by accident. I was recruiting volunteers and doing PR for a state facility, when I thought to myself “what if I was being paid to do this?” So I started applying for recruiting jobs, mostly with temp agencies, and got a few calls back. I was fortunate to get a call back from Randstad, and found myself in front of a manager who was willing to give me a chance. From there, I never looked back or considered another career.

Advice you would give someone starting out?

Be a sponge. You cannot possibly learn everything that there is to know in our field, since it’s constantly changing. But we are lucky to have a profession where many people are willing to share their knowledge and experience with you, which is rare, in my opinion.

Get out of the office too. Networking is critical, whether this is with other recruiters, or the people whom you are recruiting. You want to be top of mind, and if you are forever stuck in your cubicle, you’ll stunt your own grown and opportunities.

What makes a good recruiter?

In no particular order: Being organized, a competitive drive, and the ability to overcome failures. We have to be a resilient bunch in recruiting, and there are hard times along the way. As someone said to me once: “People are the most unpredictable commodity in the world. Accept that, and life becomes easier.”

Good recruiters also pay it forward. Share your experience and knowledge with new recruiters. You were in their shoes once. Take the time to help people who need your professional advice, even if you aren’t going to make money on it. Karma comes back around to you in this line of work.

What’s changed in the sourcing world in the past 5 years?

There are hundreds of more tools available to us now that there were 5 years ago. Forget about 10 years ago, since that seems like the stone age in comparison. When I initially took AIRS certifications, it was all about Boolean strings. To a new recruiter, that’s a whole new language, and one that is intimidating. With the proliferation of all these new tools for sourcing, competitive intelligence, and contact identification, you have a shorter ramp up time in learning how to master them all.

The problem now becomes separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. You must be more adept at asking the right questions of tools that vendors are selling. This will ensure you are getting tools that make sense for your specific team. Beware of Shiny Object Syndrome.

We also have a much more robust digital community than back then. People are sharing and lending advice to others via blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and at conferences. The answers are out there, if you are willing to ask around.

Future predictions on sourcing. What will change in the next 5 years?

First off, AI isn’t replacing all of us. There is this pseudo-doomsday feeling in the industry, that people will be sourced, engaged and hired by bots. Which might be easy when ordering on Amazon, but humans have more variables in their life, and we need other humans to get through the process. AI will help for certain – that much is absolute – but it won’t be a full on world of TA robots.

We’ll begin to become more like true researchers, finding out how to tie different data points together, and Sourcing & Recruiting will lead the research charge. This will go beyond just finding skills. It will encompass competitor research, market research to determine where skill sets can be hired, and at what market compensation rates. Sourcing will be less so list-building and will be more involved with candidate engagement and market research. Because of that, in some industries, we may see a merging of sourcers looking more like recruiters and vice versa.

Favorite Google chrome extension?

Hiretual. In full disclosure, I advise them, but was a fan long before I took on that role. It’s robust, and powered by a team of strong engineers that understand our industry. They have mastered the contact-finding solution, and their AI sourcing is a set-it-and-forget-it type of solution that allows you to move easily from task to task.

A close second is GlossaryTech. This is a must have extension for sourcers who need to better understand the technology they are recruiting for. I use it daily, and I’ve been at this almost 20 years. We can always learn more in our roles.

Favorite Boolean string?

This may seem rudimentary, but I love simplistic searches. When trying to ID a company’s email structure, I will put “*”@companydomainname.com (email OR contact) to find out what the schema is. Once I have 1 or 2 options, I can then start popping it into tools like mailtester or others, that I can verify it with. Why not email people where they are looking 100+ times a day?

You can follow Pete Radloff here for more updates:

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