Sourcer SpotLight Greg Hawkes

Jonathan Kidder

7 years ago

I had the opportunity to interview Greg Hawkes a Strategic Talent Sourcer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It was an honor to speak with Greg about the future of sourcing and talent acquisition. I hope you enjoy reading this interview!

How did you get into Talent Sourcing?

I was a full-cycle recruiter several years back where I was focused on finding mechanical, electrical, civil, HVAC, and everything else engineering. I sat next to the sourcing team and absorbed everything I could. Arron Daniels, Josh Jones, Monali Parmar, and Megan Calimbas were my cube neighbors (and mentors even though they didn’t realize it).

Advice you would give someone starting out?

The data is out there, you just have to know how to find it. The great thing about the Sourcing Community is that there is a wide array of resources. You just have to know where to go or who to ask. That’s why built the HR Sourcing Toolbox, to share a short list of tools with explanations, so people could get a head start. I recommend checking out these sites: Dean Da Costa: Search Authority, Irina Shamaeva: Boolean Strings, Todd Davis’s Candidate Generator. Use what suits your mentality! My sites focus on free tools because I don’t like paying money!

What makes a good Sourcer?

The ability to learn, innovate, and create. You have to be up on all the new technologies and tools, but using them in innovative ways, and combining them in new ways separate the deep divers from ones that only scratch the surface. And some of the older resources still work, people just forget about them.

“What makes a Sourcer grand though is one’s ability to look beyond one’s self and ask for help. I do this on a regular basis and it’s amazing who will come with answers!”

What’s the difference between sourcing and recruiting?

You know, that’s an interesting question. I’ve been a full-cycle recruiter, a Sourcer, and a hybrid of both. The line between Sourcer and recruiter is shifting. As technology gets smarter, and automation becomes more relevant in recruiting, the line may blur even more. To me Sourcing is more like headhunting, focusing more on the hunt and reeling talent, especially passive candidates in.

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

Everything and nothing. Some of the older resources like FEC.gov and directories are still great prospecting sites. However, technology has been advancing making gathering info much different. I can look up someone on a social platform, or open source site, or on Facebook and find more information. Sourcing is not just keyword searches, it’s identifying top talent when they posts, or ask questions, or watch videos.

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

As technology continues to get smarter, AI and machine learning makes searching different, Sourcers are going to need to find new ways to engage niche talent. It’s already happening, Google Hire, LinkedIn is changing, Facebook may soon catch on to the job market. It’s not about job boards as much as having a social presence.

Favorite Chrome Extension Tool?

That’s an excellent question, that’s like asking me what’s my favorite super power… Hands down right now its Data Miner’s Recipe Creator. This free tool saves me so much time by avoiding data entry pretty much whatever profile site I’ve found. To pull an entire list from a random niche profile site has changed my whole pipelining process. I don’t just pull one pipeline anymore, I pull multiple pipelines from multiple resources, because I don’t waste time entering data into a spreadsheet. The Recipe Creator helps me organize my data for free and I don’t have to know coding to do so. Once you are over the learning curve, it’s a great way to become your own aggregator.

Favorite Boolean String?

site:randomprofileurls/* Site and * are the main way I unlock any profile site and search to see if its a viable resource to the role. It may not seem complicated, but it isn’t once you recognize the parts of a url. It’s like solving an equation, once you know the formula you can figure out the other pieces of the puzzle.

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