Talent Sourcer Spotlight Martin Freeman

Jonathan Kidder

6 years ago

I had the opportunity to interview Martin Freeman from Medallia. He’s been a very active and positive voice within our community. He recently launched a website that highlights all the latest talent sourcing and recruitment tools. Overall, I love getting a Talent Sourcers perspective from Sydney, Australia and I hope you enjoy reading this interview!

How did you get into the recruiting field?

My entry into recruitment was purely by chance. In 1996 I was working in finance and took a role at a recruitment agency and was eventually approached by their internal headhunter to see if I would be open to moving across into sales. One thing lead to another and I moved into a Jr Sourcing position in 1997 and my recruitment career launched from there. It was a great learning experience, fast-paced, scrappy & completely different from the world we operate in today.

What types of roles are you working on?

At Medallia, I work on pretty much anything that is a business priority in need of an extra bit of sourcing muscle to generate leads/applicants. Currently, I’m working on Enterprise Sales Directors for APAC but the next day I could be working on a Sr Frontend engineer in Washington D.C. My role is a global sourcing position which meants I have to be adaptable to the business needs at a moments notice and support any corporate function. Its a truly passive sourcing model and every day is a roller-coaster.

What’s your favorite extension tool or search tool?

I’m having a lot of fun and successes with tools such as PhantomBuster API’s & Zapinfo and enriching data using tools such as Full contact sidebar for Gmail or their API. I’m also exploring more of the functionality within the OSINT extension. This tools are a little more time consuming and not always required in my day to day but for hard to identify/reach talent pools, I can certainly see a need for more niche tools in the future.

You have your own talent sourcing tools website. What inspired you to create it?

Over the last few years, I’ve delivered numerous sourcing sessions online & frequently get asked what tools am I currently using? I had a pretty drab looking PPT slide with a Google sheet overlay with a list of hyperlinks attached – Not great looking. I stumbled across a free site (Sheet2site) that converted URL’s into a structured page and I thought this would be great to house all my links to tools & sites of interest. I shared it with a few local recruiter friends in London and all of a sudden word spread. I know the site has been circulated to many online recruitment communities & showcased at T.A. events around the globe. I try to stick to free or low-cost tools, so sourcing becomes accessible and hopefully, interesting to as many people as possible. I suppose, in a little way, it was a way for me to give back to the wider community.

Favorite Boolean search string example?

It’s not the most complex one in the world but I still like Glen Cathey’s diversity search where you ping a bunch of the most popular female names into the name field of LIR using the OR command e.g. (Anne OR Julie OR Susanna etc). The amount of times I have used that search when D&I is on the agenda and the reaction it gets is unreal. We sometimes over-complicate our searches or thought processes when the solution can be so simple. Thank you, Glen!!

What’s your favorite sourcing hack that you’ve used in a search?

When I start my live sourcing demonstrations, I always like to show the potential of having a great sourcing methodology. Two hacks spring to mind of which one is completely left-field. I was watching a YouTube video about cybersecurity and the subject of the war in Iraq came up. This got the sourcing cogs turning. I will jump a few steps but I was able to find the declassified WMD document the U.K. government used as justification to take the country into war in the middle east. I did a search online which lead me to a government website but the document had archived but with the Wayback Machine, I brought it back to life. It was an interesting read and with a little investigation, it was found to be a fraudulent dossier as they pulled information from a students dissertation and not intelligence collected by the security agencies.

The 2nd search was about ME using a mixture of OSINT tools, Facebook & Google to showcase how much personal information can be extracted from the web. From a basic search on Google, I was able to find my full name, full address & mothers maiden name. From there I was able to gather geo-location data and take streetview and aerial snapshots of my property. I also pulled up a list of my likes, friends and places visited via Facebook. The point I was trying to get across, is that there is so much personal data out there, you really need to be careful with what you are sharing online. The audience I presented to was astonished.

Any future predictions on Talent Sourcing? What will change in 5 to 10 years?

Great question which comes up frequently. It’s hard to predict in truth. Technology is certainly moving faster than talent acquisition processes and we are trying to figure out what tech will work, what won’t and every organisation has different requirements. Depending on your budget and recruitment model, I can see a lot more automation taking place but this will only enhance the process and candidate experience rather than replacing the human element of recruitment. I’m not a true believer in A.I. currently in the recruitment tech market. Most tools run on machine learning or natural language principles but don’t completely run autonomously from people. I think we are probably getting closer to something in recruitment that is truly A.I. but my senses say we are not quite there yet.

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