Vanessa Raath Interview Spotlight

Jonathan Kidder

5 years ago

I had the opportunity to interview the legendary Vanessa Raath. I had the chance to see her speak at SourceCon in 2019 and I was very impressed by her sourcing presentation.

She has over 13 years of recruitment experience, 10 years focusing on the South African Technical IT market, she then decided to launch her own Sourcing Training business called The Talent Hunter. She combined her passion for teaching and recruitment in order to offer much needed Sourcing Training to the South African Recruitment markets.

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?

As I say in my training, no one goes to their parents at the age of 6 and says they want to be a Recruiter when they are big! We all kind of fall into Recruitment and it gets ingrained under our skin and we never leave the industry! 😊

Like most others, I fell into recruitment about 14 years ago. I am a qualified Teacher and I spent 8 years living in the UK while teaching at various primary schools in South West London. I then scheduled an early mid-life crisis and went to live on a small island in Thailand and trained to be a PADI Scuba Diving Instructor. After this, I spend a few years travelling around South East Asia working at different resorts. I then ended up in East Africa working in the tourism sector in Kenya before I woke up one morning and decided that it was time to go home, to South Africa!

I went to a Recruitment Agency to try and get into a role where I could do some training or facilitating and they offered me a job on the spot to join their team. The rest is history I suppose… I spent two years doing agency recruitment and then moved into an internal recruitment position for an IT Company where I spent 9 happy years!

I am now the proud business owner of a Sourcing Training Company and freelance Sourcing Business called The Talent Hunter. I celebrated my first year in business last week which I was very proud of! 😊 I am doing loads of local talent sourcing training in South Africa as well as training international companies in places like Australia, USA and Canada – I am loving every minute of it! 😊 I also do international sourcing of top tech talent whom I assist to move around the globe.

What are the unique talents you bring to the field?

I think the best ‘talent’ that I have is that natural curiosity that so many successful Sourcers refer to. I think that if you are naturally curious about the world around us, how things work and what makes other people do what they do, you are halfway to becoming a great Sourcer. I often find myself researching arbitrary things on the Internet as I want to understand them better!

I am also a People’s Person and I think that this helps me to be able to connect with people on various different levels, very quickly. I also like to think that I have a good sense of humour, which sometimes gets me into trouble, but is also a great ice breaker!

Share your biggest success story in recruiting so far!

I have always been one of those Recruiters who has preferred helping people just starting out in their careers as I believe that this is where you can have the greatest impact on someone’s life. Placing a C-level exec is fun but not as rewarding to one’s soul! 😊

My greatest success story was when I staffed up a 45 person strong Grad Recruitment programme through one Tweet. Twitter is a great medium here in Africa for recruitment as our Students love the platform and it is light in data. I sent out one tweet, looking for Engineering Grads to join a Learnership programme and the response was overwhelming! My Tweet went viral and my Twitter Inbox exploded!

To deal with the numbers, I had to get the applicants to produce a 90 second video, ‘selling’ their skills to us to get onto the programme. The videos were incredible and I was really impressed with our South African Talent.

The reason why this is my biggest success story is because I know that I managed to change 45 lives. These young students had no other work prospects and I hope that I have set them up to achieve great things in the future.

What is the best advice you’ve received during your career path, and from whom?

Wow, this is a tough question!

I have had so many mentors during my career especially those in the Sourcing space. When I started learning how to be better at Sourcing, there were no local Sourcers that I could learn from. I had to start looking on the other side of South Africa’s borders to find mentors in this space. To name a few, some of the first people that I first made contact with were Shane McCusker, Greg Savage, Katrina Collier, Balazs Paroczay, and Bill Boorman who are all wonderful!

I then went to the first SourceCon Europe event in Budapest in 2018 and I met the whole SourceCon Family which was AWESOME – it truly was a life and career-changing experience for me! I find that everyone in this community is so willing to help others. I was scheduled to be speaking at my first SOSU event in June this year in Estonia but unfortunately, this will not be happening due to the coronavirus. BUT I know as soon as we can travel again, I look forward to meeting some of the key players in this sourcing family too….

One piece of advice that stays with me, and I have heard it from many people throughout my life is the following: every action has a reaction and you need to choose whether the action is worth the reaction! 😊

What’s your favorite recruiting tech tool?

I have several!! How can you expect me to choose a favorite? I am going to share my top 3 with you instead!

SeekOut – A great tool if I have lots of sourcing to do in a short amount of time as it makes my life so much easier!

AmazingHiring – I love the way that this tool allows me to see where candidates have other ‘online presences’ other than the site that I am currently looking at. I also love the paid for version to find scarce tech talent. 😊

My best tools to find contact details at the moment are: SalesQL, Swordfish, and Nymeria

As an recruiting professional, how do you handle recruiting to achieve the best results?

I think that this is where tenacity plays a BIG part! You cannot give up as the right candidate, who is open to a new wonderful opportunity is just around the corner. It’s very easy to become despondent and disillusioned in this career, but that feeling of finding ‘the one’, is something that is hard to beat!

I also think that treating both candidates and hiring managers with empathy and by being fair to both parties, will always assist you to achieve the best results. They also show that you have good values and this simple activity will encourage people to want to work with you again in the future. Be true to yourself, your candidates and the decision-makers and this will definitely stand you in very good stead with all stakeholders.

What do you hope to achieve in 2020?

This is a very interesting question and a frustrating one for me to answer! My goal for 2020 was to grow my international presence as much as possible. In January, I was already lined up to present at SourceCon Lisbon in May and SOSU in Estonia in June. I was also in the process of further negotiations to speak in the Netherlands, the UK and Australia with other organisations. All of those conversations have been placed on hold and the conferences have been moved out by a few months or a year. ☹

So I am still hoping to spread my wings and to grow my international presence in 2020 – I am just doing this from my home office in Johannesburg, South Africa! I am networking with loads of international friends and fellow Sourcers in the industry at the moment – this is a great time to schedule several online video calls.

Hopefully once we get a hold on this virus, I will be able to shoot out of the starting blocks very quickly and get myself to some international events 😊

What’s your favorite Boolean String?

I really don’t have one set search string that I have liked. It all depends on what I am searching for! One day I could be looking for Geotechnical Mining Engineers with dragline experience in Australia and the next day I could be looking for Java Developers with FX experience throughout Africa….

What’s your thoughts on Coronavirus? How should Recruiters should be responding to this crisis?

I think Recruiters should be using this time to reconnect with their candidates and clients. Before the lock downs were put in place, people were always too busy to connect with other people. Now you have the time to do so and I encourage people to use it wisely!

I have also been encouraging people to work on their online brands now that they have some time on their hands. Maybe to update their LinkedIn profiles and to use this time to build their talent communities which will later become their talent pipelines. Far too often as Recruiters, I see people only connecting with other people when they want them to join their business. How about being more proactive and building that community before you actually need them. This is far more personable and will make you stand out as a great Recruiter in your space.

Unfortunately, I think that our initial 21 day lock down in South Africa is going to be extended. (We are currently on day 11) We are not allowed to leave our houses to go for a walk, or a run or for anything other than medical emergencies or to pop into the grocery store. They have also banned the sale of alcohol and cigarettes here which I have not seen happen in any other country! Due to poor sanitation, dense living conditions and 3^rd world government hospitals, I think that African countries are going to be worse impacted and for a lot longer than our 1^st world counterparts. I hope that I am proven wrong!

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