6 strategies for_recruiting

A publication of:
Source Talent
Like a Pro:
The 6 Strategies That Top
Companies Use to Win
the War for Talent

Source Talent Like a Pro
A RecruitiFi Special Recport 2
Hiring can seem like a mystical art in which talent sourcing sorcerers conjure up the perfect
candidates through a series of HR rites and rituals. Though it’s slightly more organized than
that, recruiting can be as much of an art as a science. No two companies, positions, or hir-
ing environments are alike. While one strategy may be extremely effective for recruiting fi-
nancial candidates, a totally different approach may be needed to attract tech talent—even
within the same company.
Regardless of what typically works best for your particular organization, it’s wise to have an
overarching strategy that combines a number of established tactics. Having the flexibility
and agility to move between effective sourcing strategies is paramount when hiring across
different departments and during different economic conditions. Unless, of course, you’re a
company like Google. Then you can rely on a single time-tested strategy—just be Google.
In the interest of saving time you should establish whether you are in fact Google before
you continue reading. Go ahead and Google yourself just to make sure.
Not Google? Then, you’re in luck. We’ve laid out a roadmap that highlights the most effec-
tive strategies in the industry for sourcing top talent. We begin with the tactics that have
proven to be the most efficient, meaning they routinely produce top talent in a highly cost-
effective manner. We’ll then explore some lower priced solutions that require a bit of luck,
but might be worth trying if cost is an issue. Finally, we’ll move on to some strategies that
are highly effective, but may require a higher financial investment.
In most cases, we recommend progressing through these steps one by one, as they can
all be effective at producing top talent in the right situation. However, this is meant to be
a general game plan, not a bible. If a certain tactic is yielding poor results on a particular
candidate search, or has repeatedly proven to be ineffective for your organization in the
past, we recommend that you to progress to the next step. If you maintain some flexibility
in your overall hiring strategy and use these tools as we’ve laid out, you’re almost certain
to get the best candidates at your disposal.
Demystifying the Sorcery of Sourcing
Figure 1:
Am I Google?
If you look in the
mirror and this
is not what you
see, it’s probably
a good idea to
continue reading
the sourcing tips
contained on the
following pages.

1• Fast: Able to accelerate start date and
avoid lengthy organizational orientation.
• Vacancy: Leaves an opening at the
employees old position.
• Affordable: No cost to promote. Able to
recruit a lower salaried position through
more affordable means.
• Smaller Talent Pool: Not ideal for rapid
growth or very niche positions that require
wider searches.
• Cultural Fit: Candidate’s prior experience
within the company assures cultural fit.
• Corporate Stagnation: Limits infusion of
new ideas and diversity.
• Upward Mobility: Demonstrates
opportunities within the organization,
providing incentive for other employees.
• Growing Pains: Promoted employee must
learn new skills that a lateral hire from
outside may already possess.
• Familiarity: Existing internal network and
institutional familiarity helps to improve
early performance.
• Internal Tension: “Robbing” a department
to staff another, or promoting one employee
over another can create friction.
If you asked Deepak Chopra how to hire, he’d likely tell you to look deep within. At
RecruitiFi, we would consider that some sage advice. Promoting internally is generally the
safest and most affordable option when hiring—not to mention the most common. A 2013
survey by CareerXRoads asked employers about 185,450 positions they’d filled in the prior
year. Redeployments came in as the top source with 42% of all hires coming from internal
promotions.
There are a number of benefits of hiring from within. Internal candidates can often be
re-deployed quickly, they’ve already proven to be a good cultural fit, and they have an
established network of internal support that can help their transition into a new role.
These factors directly translate to positive performance. According to a study from
Matthew Bidwell, an associate professor at the Wharton Business School, internal
promotions generally perform better, cost the company less, and are less likely to be fired
or leave than external hires. The study found that candidates who were internally promoted
performed better on their evaluations over the first two years despite having 18-20% lower
salaries. On top of that, external hires are 61% more likely to be fired and 21% more likely
to quit.
Pros Cons
If the Cons outweigh the Pros...
#1 Redeployment: Promote from within

2
Regardless of your company’s HR structure, you’re sitting on a tremendous network of
effective recruiters—your employees. Why not leverage this network and bring quality
candidates your way with very little outreach?
Referrals have always been an effective way to bring in new hires. Existing employees are
much more likely to vouch for contacts that will reflect positively on their own reputation.
Hence, you’re more likely to find that ideal candidate through a referral than through a
random search. That’s typically backed up by superior productivity. Depending on the
industry, referred employees are 10-30% less likely to quit and yield a higher profit per
employee while having significantly better performance on high-impact metrics like patent
creation.
It’s no wonder that referred employees are twice as likely to get interviews at places like the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and anywhere from seven to ten times more likely to be
hired overall depending on the industry. Imagine spending a tenth of the time and resources
to make all of your future hires. That’s the potential power of your internal referral network.
Until recently, however, the outreach required was extensive and time consuming.Employees
needed to engage in the tedious process of individually calling and emailing their contact.
With the advent of social networking, internal referrals have become a more viable sourcing
technique. The increased connectivity of networks like Facebook and LinkedIn allows
employees to quickly reach out to hundreds, even thousands of their personal contacts in
seconds.
#2 Referrals: Ask Around
Enterprise Deloitte Ernst & Young
‘10 vs.‘12 ‘10 vs.‘12 ‘10 vs.‘12
Percentage
of New Hires
from Refferals
Upward Trend in Hiring through
Refferals at Major Corporations
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%Figure 1:
Referrals
Seeing the value
both in quality
and cost savings,
many large
corporations are
updating their
strategies to
include a higher
percentage of
referrals among
their hires.

• Fast: Employees only suggest candidates
that reflect positively on them, so they can
usually be fast tracked through the process.
• Lack Diversity: 61.3% of employees refer
a candidate of the same sex, and 71.5%
suggest one of the same ethnicity.
• Coporate Fit: Pre-vetted by existing
employee for applicable skills, work ethic,
and cultural fit.
• Confidentiality: Job search cannot be run
confidentially. Especially sensitive if the
goal is to replace and existing employee.
• Affordable: Usally just a small referral
bonus to existing employee.
• Distracting: Searching for new referrals
can be a distraction for existing employees.
• Morale Boost: Bonuses are excellent for
building morale for existing employees.
• Unfocused Search: Difficult to get entire
employee network to focus on new hires.
Pros Cons
Even with the increased power of this sourcing method, Employee Referral Programs can be
disorganized, distracting for employees, and difficult to track and reward. Their increased
popularity, however, has prompted a number of centralized systems to hit the market. Many
Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have built in referral tracking and third party applications
like Zalp and Jibe’s “Get Referred” platform allow you to more effectively organize your
internal referral efforts.
Capitalizing on the potential that has been opened by technology, companies like Ernst &
Young, Deloitte, and Enterprise have aggressively targeted the growth of their employee
referral programs. They’ve set lofty goals for increasing the percentages of new hires made
through referrals and backed that up by offering new prizes like iPads and big-screen TVs
in addition to traditional cash bonuses.

3
Despite being pronounced dead more times than disco, the job boards have persistently
reinvented themselves to remain a relevant, albeit diminished, factor in the hiring process.
What was once a thriving empire in the early 2000s is now a fragmented industry dominated
as much by a crowd of niche sites and aggregators as it is by the once dominant general
job boards.
Great variations in size, popularity, and industry focus lead to a wide range of costs. Posts
vary from free sites to $25 for major cities on Craigslist and up to $750 or more for some of
the niche technology sites—all of which are relatively affordable when compared to other
recruiting methods.
This low initial cost, however, comes with a hidden cost stemming from the job boards’
major flaw: lack of quality control. The public nature of these posts leaves a very low barrier
of entry for anyone, qualified or unqualified, to get their resumes into your inbox. With the
larger, general job boards this translates into a virtual flood of unsuitable applicants to sift
through. So, in order to consider using a job board, you must first assess which asset you’re
more willing to spend: time or money. In the end, time is money, so you’re going to pay for
it one way or another.
Over the years, niche job sites like Dice, eFinancialCareers, and OneWire have emerged
in an attempt to provide a lower volume, more targeted sampling of resumes. However,
advertising your position on a smaller site comes with the exact opposite risk. There’s a
chance that you’ll get too few resumes to choose from. And with all the out of pocket costs
coming up front, there’s always the gamble that your post could come up empty handed.
Ultimately, your ideal candidate might not even be on a job board. Passive candidates—
those that are currently employed and not actively seeking new employment—are not likely
to be looking at job boards. If they’re actively employed in a similar role elsewhere, you may
not be able to attract that perfect candidate with the ideal skill set, no matter how much you
post.
#3 Job Boards: They’re not dead...yet
Figure 2:
Monster Stock
Once a major
player in the
recruiting world,
competition and
an ideological
shift within the
industry has seen
Monster’s stock
plummet in recent
years.
Monster Worldwide, Inc.
Stock Price 1997 to Present

• Affordable: Relatively low cost to post.
Lowest overall cost if successful.
• Not Confidential: Hard to post if you’re
trying to replace an existing employee
• Fast: Quick and easy to post. Resumes
start to come in almost immediately.
• Hassle: Open to public, which can lead
to constant follow up by candidates and
repeated solicitation by recruiters.
• High Volume: Post your job to a general
job and let the flood gates open.
• High Volume: Sifting through a mass of
applicants can be overwhelming, and the
time spent greatly brings up overall cost.
• Integration: Many job boards have built-
in posting mechanisms within major ATSs.
• Poor Value: High quality passive
candidates are not typically available.
Pros Cons
The top job board at the moment is one that has strayed from the traditional posting model.
The job aggregator, Indeed, allows you to advertise jobs through a pay-per-click model or
just hope that their job scraping software finds the job on your company website and posts
it for free. While it seems complicated, they’ve applied the Google model to job boards.
They aggregate jobs from around the web for easy searches and sell advertised positions
at the top of the list. And they’re very good at it, accounting for as many job placements
as the next three biggest job boards combined. Others like SimplyHired and JuJu, with a
slightly varied but similar business model, are also making their mark in a newer segment
within the job board market.
Despite potential drawbacks, job boards still account for about 18% of all hires. While they
don’t command the market share that they used to, they remain a popular staple of the
recruiting process. If you’re lucky enough to find that diamond in the rough, they can be one
of the most affordable ways to source for new hires, despite the hidden labor costs. While
we don’t recommend them as an all-encompassing strategy, their affordability makes them
an option to consider. Your prior experience with job boards is the best gauge of success
in the future, but it’s wise to have a backup plan in place.

4
This is the place the pros turn for talent. LinkedIn can be an extremely powerful tool in an
experienced hand. With amazing search technology and a reach that covers a good portion
of the western working world, professional recruiters have turned much of their sourcing
efforts to pinpointing the perfect candidate on the web’s largest professional network.
Due to it’s vast reach and the longterm nature of its profiles, LinkedIn is also the best way
to effectively source passive candidates. Unlike job boards and other methods, candidates
on LinkedIn aren’t necessarily actively seeking new employment. At least, they don’t know
they are until you make them a better offer. It only makes sense that if you’re looking for
candidates with the perfect skillset, poaching the already polished talent from your direct
competittors is a good place to start.
LinkedIn’s greatest strengths, however, are also their greatest weaknesses. With 300
million people, you have every possible player you need for your team. The downside--
there’s 300 million people to sort through! Even a few hundred from the job boards can be
mindnumbing. Unless you’re an expert at sourcing, it can be difficult and time consuming to
find the right candidates. You’ll almost certainly need a heftily upgraded account that allows
for more refined searches.
When you do find the perfect candidate, keep in mind that there’s a very high probability
they’re already actively employed. Convincing them to switch teams can be a tall order.
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Users
(in millions)
201420132012201120102009200820072006
User Growth
Figure 3:
LinkedIn
Perhaps the
single biggest
game-changer
in the industry,
LinkedIn
announced
that they had
surpassed 300
million users in
April of 2014.
#4 LinkedIn: 300 Million People Can’t
Be Wrong

• All Encompassing: Everyone’s on it. You’re
on it, I’m on it, your future talent is on it--
whether they’re looking for a job or not.
• Time Consuming: Learning to use
LinkedIn is easy. Learning to use it like a
professional recruiter is no small task.
• Up to Date: Profiles are typically updated
with a candidate’s most recent experience
• Global Talent Pool: The sheer volume
available can be overwhelming
• Photos: Having a face to put to a name
helps hiring managers see applicants as
people rather than just resumes
• Passive Candidates: Many candidates
are actively emloyed and not currently
searching, leading to few positive responses
• Search: Solid search technology allows
you to get very granular on the type of
candidate you’re sourcing
• Pro-Candidate: Passive candidates can
negotiate from a position of power. You
need them more than they need you.
• Reference Checks: Allows you to easily
find common connections for candid
reference checks
• Quickly Escalating Cost: The free version
won’t be very useful, but the corporate
recruiter plan costs over $10,000/year.
Pros Cons
When you come across your purple squirrel, make sure to utilize common connections
within your organization. If your candidate has a common friend or a business associate,
this connection can turn into your best recruiter. It also doesn’t hurt to have a candid
reference.
So, if you have the time, the level of access, and the wherewithal to do so, we encourage
you to search on LinkedIn. Your perfect candidate is out there, but finding them is only half
the battle. Convincing them to join your team is an art in and of itself. For an extra edge,
see our blog post: Writing the Perfect InMail.

5
At this point, you’ve been flooded with a sea of unqualified resumes from the job boards.
You have neither the time, nor the experience to source like a professional recruiter on
LinkedIn. While you’d love to hand the reins over to an executive search firm, you have
neither the time to wait for results, nor the approval to spend up to 33% of the candidate’s
first year salary. That’s where RecruitiFi comes in with the best of all worlds.
RecruitiFi is an entirely new category of search that utilizes crowdsourcing and gamification
technologies to produce top-quality candidates significantly quicker and at less than half the
cost of traditional recruiting (14% of first year salary). While crowdsourcing and gamification
have become the basis of powerful, results-driven models across many industries, RecruitiFi
is the first to bring those concepts to the recruiting space, solving several of
the industry’s biggest problems in the process.
This new crowdsourced approach to recruiting allows employers to
confidentially post their open position to up to 250 expert agency recruiters.
By casting a wide, but focused net, RecruitiFi creates something that no other
recruiting method can duplicate—a serendipitous match. The application
is as quick and easy as posting to a job board, while leveraging the power,
reach, and value of expert agency recruiters. These experts provide the
human touch, which is invaluable to finding and hiring the right talent.
Imagine walking into a room with one expert recruiter and asking if they
have a potential CFO candidate. They probably don’t, but for a premium
fee, they’ll go right out and start looking. Several weeks later, you might
have three or four candidates to choose from. Now imagine asking that
Internal
Redeployment
Agency
RecruitingJob Boards LinkedIn
High High Low Medium High High
Medium Medium High High Low Medium
Fast Medium Slow Slow Fast Medium
Low Low Medium High High Medium
Too Few Too Few Too Many Too Few Just Right Just Right
High High High Low High High
High High Medium Medium High Low
Quality of
Applicants
Quantity of
Candidates
Time to Hire
Cost
Efficiency
Resource
Hogging
Diversity of
Candidates
Candidate
Engagement
RECRUITiFi
#5 RecruitiFi: A new category of search
Internal
Referrals
Figure 4:
LinkedIn
RecruitiFi stacks
up favorably
against the
competition. Top
technology and
expert recruiter
submissions
allow for a high-
speed, high-
quality, highly
cost-efficient
solution.

• Quality: You’ll never beat the quality of
working with professional recruiters and
highly engaged candidates
• Cost: While 14% is an amazing fee for
expert recruiting, if you can hire a referral
for almost no cost, it should be considered
• Speed: Crowdsourcing tech allows for
serendipitous matches and faster results.
• No Haggling: If you like fee or contract
negotiations, you’ll have to get your fix
elsewhere
• Affordable: At a flat 14% fee, it’s less than
half the cost of traditional recruiting and
competitive with other methods when time,
value, and cost are all considered.
• Infatuation: You might like it so much,
you’ll want to tell the world about it.
The problem is that you only know a few
hundred people.
• Complete Info: Resume, LinkedIn link, a
note from the recruiter, and everything else
you need to make a rapid hiring decision
• Less Back and Forth: No calling and
emailing with recruiters. So, if you’re
lonely, this is not for you.
• Simplicity: Sleek workflow gives you the
reach of thousands of recruiters through a
single platform and without the hassle.
• Augments: New supplemental channel
to source talent that does not interfere with
your current systems or practices.
same question in a lecture hall filled with 250 expert recruiters. All of a sudden, you’d start
to see some very excited hands raising. When you expand the recruiter pool from one
to 250 within a specific area of expertise, there’s a great chance that a number of these
recruiters have recently done a search for a candidate at a similar company. On average,
about 10% of these recruiters return with top-quality candidates, ready and waiting to be
evaluated within the first few days.
By gamifying the recruiting process and associating point totals and rankings based on prior
performance, RecruitiFi unifies a fragmented marketplace. This takes all of the guesswork
out of selecting recruiters, allowing employers to quickly assess the top performers through
quantitative metrics for the first time in the industry.
And with a sleek centralized platform providing transparency on both ends, there’s no
unnecessary communications back and forth. Recruiters are unable to directly contact the
hiring managers, nor do they need to, with all the info they need right on their dashboard.
Candidates also use this same elegant interface to confirm their interest in the open position
prior to being submitted.
Unlike the job boards that give you too many unqualified candidates, or an executive search
firm that will give you a few qualified ones at a high fee, RecruitiFi gives you the perfect
amount of fully qualified candidates at just the right price.
Pros Cons

6• Quality: We’ll say it again. It’s hard to
beat the quality when you’re working with
a top expert agency recruiter.
• Cost: At 25% to 33% of first year salary,
agency recruiting is by far the most costly
method
• Throrough: Candidates are so thoroughly
vetted, the recruiting process basically
replaces the first few rounds of interviews.
• Managing: While top recruiters behave
properly, many recruiters can become a
distraction, requiring close management.
• Relationships: Over time, recruiters will
learn your company culture and provide
great results with limited info
• Time Intensive: Retaining a single firm
could take weeks or months to yeild
effective results
• Good Fit: Finding the right recruiter for
your company can be as difficult as finding
a candidate. The wrong recruiter will bring
the wrong candidates.
When it comes to recruiting, there’s no question that a top executive search firm is the
gold standard. It’s not a coincidence that firms like Heidrick & Struggles are publicly traded
entities that have dominated the recruiting world for over 60 years.
Expert recruiters have the professional connections to fill top roles, the sourcing ability
to find talent that eludes you, and the salesmanship to convince even the most content
passive candidates to consider new offers. Their knowledge of the market and experience
in thoroughly vetting candidates generally produces a handful of highly polished applicants.
Prior to being submitted they’ve already been interviewed and reference checked by the
recruiters, so by the time you’re getting them, it’s really like the second or third round of
interviews.
At the end of the day, a lot of work goes into recruiting, and there’s no question who’s
paying for it. Employers can routinely pay up to 33% of first year salary (sometimes higher
in special cases). This generally comes with hefty guarantees and high expectations, but
there are no long-term guarantees. Times are changing, and with the Gen-X and Gen-Y
workforce, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see 40-year careers at a single company ever again.
It’s increasingly rare to see 4-year stints in one position. While 33% may have been a drop
in the bucket when amortized over 40 years, it’s a significantly riskier proposition when
you’re talking two or three.
There will always be a place in the world for top recruiting agencies. CEOs and other top
performers don’t grown on trees. When the position at hand is critically vital to the success
of your organization, executive search firms are always an option to consider. Just know
that if you want to play, you’ll have to pay.
Pros Cons
#6 Agency Recruiting: Good but pricey

The bad news about filling highly skilled tech positions is that it remains a very challenging
endeavor. Talent with certain specific skillsets--like a senior Ruby developer--won’t stay on
the market long, comes at a premium price, and generally has a multitude of job opportunities
thrust at them weekly. They’re the prettiest girl at the dance, and their dancecard is likely
to be full before you work up the courage to ask them.
The good news is that there are a number of interesting new solutions on the market that
may be able to help. Hired and InterviewJet both operate under a similar principal. They
accept applications from top tech talent, who they vet and showcase for select employers
for a limited period of time. Essentially, these companies act as tech recruiters and offer an
auction-style marketplaces with their talent.
They’re both too new to really have much public data. And while HR departments may be
slow to adopt novel ideas, the tech talent they’re looking for is generally the first demographic
of early adopters. So, if you’ve tried elsewhere for that nearly impossible to fill backend
developer position, it might be worth giving these guys a look.
*Bonus: If you’re in Tech, you’re in luck...kinda
Whenever you’re hiring, there are a handful of strategies that should be used in conjunction
with your other efforts. These are quick, free, and easy ways to improve your results.
#1 Post the job to your online job board. Depending on your company’s branding, this
might be the only thing you need to do for entry and mid-level positions. Why spend time
and money searchng for candidates if you’re already getting quality candidates to fall in
your lap?
Plus, if you’re a prominant company, there’s a good chance that job aggregators like Indeed
and SimplyHired will “scrape” your job (meaning they’ll copy the details from your website
and post on their own for a much borader audience). You can sit and hope this will happen,
or you can expedite the process by pushing the job to the aggregators through an XML feed
on your ATS.
#2 LinkedIn referencing. Even if you’re not directly sourcing on LinkedIn or posting on
their job boards, it’s one of the most vital tools in your hiring toolbelt. Serving as more of a
longform resume, it’s a great way to get more details about your candidate. If you’re lucky,
you might even find common connections that you can speak to as impromptu references.
#3 Google/Facebook/Twitter. What people do in their own time is their own business. But
when they’re foolish enough to post their exploits publicly, that becomes an issue. Not only
does it reflect their own poor decision making, it will reflect poorly on your business. Do you
want someone who casts you in a negative light?
**Double Bonus: Ubiquitous Strategies

Building a recruiting strategy is a lot like cutting into an onion. When done properly, it
should be a well thought out process, and the end product should consist of many layers.
However, if you slice right into it without a plan, it will make you cry every time. You can
save yourself the tears in the future by considering each of the recruiting methods that
we’ve put forth in this reference.
After all, every position has slightly different recruiting needs. Attacking these different
problems with the same solution is irrational and ineffective. Companies with the most
effective recruiting strategies have recognized this and diversified their techniques. Over
time, you might find that some methods work better for your particular company or depart-
ment, but it’s wise to maintain flexibility in your recruiting policy. Having a solid, but agile
plan will produce better talent at a lower overall cost.
Good luck and happy recruiting!
No More Tears...
RecruitiFi is a revolutionary new category of recruiting solution that utilizes the power of
crowdsourcing to make talent acquisition more efficient and more affordable. The intuitive
application enables employers to leverage the skills of thousands of third party, expert
agency recruiters in a scaled, economic manner.
Based out of its New York offices, RecruitiFi has a talented team with diverse backgrounds
in recruiting, technology, marketing, and finance. They enjoy long walks on the beach,
recruiting technology, and a good slice of pizza. Unfortunately, there are very few
serviceable beaches near the city, and their favorite pizza place recently closed, so they
end up devoting most of their time to getting their clients top-quality hires, while opening up
new revenue streams for recruiters. If you venture to the East Village, you’ll probably find
them helping old ladies cross the street or tending to the community gardens.
www.RecruitiFi.com
About RecruitiFi

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