Did you know there are people out here in the world who are hired by companies to “find” people like you? Yes, some companies are keenly interested in the skills and caliber of employees who work at certain other companies, and they employ people like me to find you because they can’t find you themselves.

There are many reasons they can’t find you and the Number One reason today is that you’re not listed anywhere on the Internet that pulls your name in conjunction with your title and the company you work for easily or cleanly enough for them to be able to “locate” you with basic Boolean strings.

What’s a Boolean string? I will write more on that subject later in this series or I will bring a guest writer along who can explain that subject more thoroughly than I can. Fair enough?

My name is Maureen Sharib and I am a telephone names sourcer. "What's that?" you’re thinking. Names Sourcing is a little understood activity. Simply put, it’s the finding of people who hold specific titles (usually) within (usually) specific organizations so that a recruiter may contact them and offer them a job opportunity.

There are two types of names sourcers: Telephone and Internet. Internet names sourcers use the Internet to identify people that hold specific titles, have specific skills, work at or have worked at specific companies or within specific industries, etc. They mine the web for information about people that they can submit to their recruiters so that the recruiter may contact them and offer them a job opportunity. Internet sourcing is the preferred model for many sourcers because mainly it does not entail having to speak to anyone other than confirming information they find on the Internet. See, many people will deny this but the truth of the matter is that many people don’t really want to talk to other people, especially if that talking is tasked with obtaining information of any kind. Most Internet sourcers are able to “find” maybe 10% of the available workforce out there – personally I believe the real number is down around 5%.

Telephone names sourcers use the Internet to begin to identify people that hold specific titles, have specific skills, work at or have worked at specific companies or within specific industries, etc. Notice I used the word “begin.” A Telephone names sourcer cursorily uses the web for information about people inside a specific company location in order to get inside that company location and find the people that are doing the job their customer wants that person to be doing for them.

Sometimes any name will do – just so long as that name will get the Telephone names sourcer past the Gatekeeper
and into the environs of the company. You know how when you’re looking for a job and you get the bright idea to call the hiring manager yourself? You’d think you’d be able to call the main number and ask for the hiring manager for a specific section, wouldn’t you? Reason dictates that life should be like this. Have you ever tried it? If you have, what most of you experience is a receptionist (AKA Gatekeeper) who asks you if you “have a name.”

“Huh?” you ask yourself, stupefied. “How would I know the name of the Hiring Manager?” you might think to reasonably ask her. Again, reason says that at this point she would understand your plight and willingly pass you along to the hiring manager of your desire. No dice. “You need a name,” she briskly corrects. “We only have names and numbers here at the switchboard. You need a name – do you have a name?” she presses.

“No,” you confess and she seizes upon your weakness like a cat pouncing on a hapless mouse. “If you know the name of the hiring manager I can transfer you. If you don’t, I cannot. Good bye.”

It’s a helpless feeling, isn’t it? Well, take heart – there’s a class of interrogators out here like myself who know how to handle that Gatekeeper with aplomb and nearly every time gets passed through to the Magic Kingdom. There’s art and science in the practice of this witchcraft and I have been teaching the mechanisms for delivery for about three years now. But that’s not what you came here for. You came here to find out how you can make yourself more findable to recruiters and/or hiring managers, right?

Telephone sourcing is the preferred model for a select few number of sourcers because mainly it is the only way to get inside a company to learn who everyone doing specific jobs is. Phone sourcers can gain access to nearly 100% of the available workforce with the use of the telephone. A good phone sourcer uses the information she finds on the Internet with a cursory glance and then gets on the phone armed with this little bit of information to work her magic. She uses that information to gather more information and then she uses that more information to gather even more information – you get the picture, I’m sure. Think of one of those snowballs rolling downhill gathering steam and size. That’s what a phone sourcer does.

Telephone sourcers are not afraid of asking for information and the most skilled of them have to do very little questioning. One or two well positioned questions can bring a whole org chart of a company down in one call. But that’s the exception.

A phone sourcer does a lot of questing behind the scenes. He has a variety of weapons in his arsenal but one of the most powerful is the use of your company’s phone directory. “Huh?” you’re thinking again. (I know you are.)

Think about it. A company’s phone directory holds the names of just about every employee inside that location’s office. Many times it also gives the extension (or direct dial) of each of those names. Once in a while it even gives titles to those names! Here’s how it happens and here’s one trick you can do today to make yourself more findable for phone sourcers to pass your name along to the recruiter or hiring manager who hired them. This is so simple it’s stupid but then, useful things usually are simple, aren’t they?

Okay guys, here's what you do ...

Shhh ... quiet down.

You taking notes? Get a pencil. Gen a pen. Get ready ...

The first thing you do is put a message on your VoiceMail at the office - you know the one - the one that picks up 80% of your calls – something like this:

"Hi - this is Iwanna Newjob, Software Engineer in the .net development group here at (go ahead, give them a plug) your company name. You can reach me by email (spell out your name s-l-o-w-l-y) at _________ or you can call my cell at xxx xxx xxxx." Don't forget the area code!

IF you have buddies that want in on the act, you can also refer the caller to call them, like this:

"If you can't reach me (and I hope you do!) call my co-worker, Hewantsa Newjobtoo. If you can't reach either of us, call our Manager, Had Enuff, at xxx xxx xxxx."

With one call the sourcer has picked up three names. You're all going to be pursued because the sourcer who is trying to find out who all your team members are doing this on behalf of a company who wants to hire people out of your company and usually the more the better so never you mind about the sharing the wealth thing. It just depends where your head is ...