Avanade model - presentation for Human Resource Executive's TA Tech conference in Austin, TX (partnership with RecruitingTrends) in Nov. 2016 TalentTechConf.com

1. The Integrated In-House Sourcing Model:
Offshore and Onshore Pipelining, Tools
and Systems
Sourcing & Assessment track
Presented by: Glenn Gutmacher
(glenn@recruiting-online.com)

2. Who Is This Presenter?
• Current: State Street (custody bank:
31,000 employees; $28+ trillion in
assets under mgmt.) to help lead 8-
person Diversity Talent Sourcing team
in US and global sourcing evaluation
• Previous: Avanade (2010-15), joint
venture of Microsoft and Accenture;
built, trained and managed offshore
online sourcing team supporting North
America recruiting
• VP of recruiter training firm Arbita with
Shally Steckerl (2008-10)
• Senior Recruiting Researcher
at Microsoft (2005-8) &
Getronics (2003-5)
• Recruiting-Online.com
founder: pioneer sourcing
training/methods in the ‘90s
• Founded JobSmart in 1996,
greater Boston’s 1st regional
career site (newspaper chain)
• Yale graduate & co-founder of
Boston Area Talent Sourcing
Association

3. Minimum background you need to know
• This is mostly the Avanade sourcing story (2010-15)
• Talent demand:supply ratio escalates after 2008-09
recession ends; in April 2009, my boss seeks to utilize
offshore for recruiting like the sw dev teams offshored
• Goal was to remove administrative tasks and online
research that would get sourcers to the phone more/faster
• Our parent company had RPO-like resources in different
regions
• We tested output head-to-head in 2010 in two offshore
locations: China & India (“headhunter” backgrounds)
• Main tools: Dice & Monster dbs, free LinkedIn, Google
Avanade:
• Joint venture
of Accenture
& Microsoft
founded 2000
• $1B  $2B
ann. revenue
during period
• Hire IT
solutions pros
w/ Microsoft
platform exp.

4. Minimum background (cont.)
• Key metrics: Accept rate (by onshore
recruiters) of online-sourced prospects
• China won, and not just on $ (your results may
vary) – initially handled APAC and NA sourcing
• Added expert “SWAT” onshore sourcing team
(4 researcher-caller pairs) to supplement
quality leads for priority needs
• We needed a solution that scaled better: by-
requisition wasn’t impactful enough; needed
pipelines for recurring candidate skill profiles
Now let’s dig deeper…

5. Our Sourcing Team in China

6. Key Tasks
Initial list:
• Skill profile-based
sourcing
• Submit online-sourced
prospects and resumes
to onshore sourcers
• Goal was 80% accept
rate (typically >90%)
• Match accepted talent to
sourcing reqs in ATS
Added later:
• resume upload from onshore and ATS coding
• Employee referral resume upload/ATS coding
• Job posting
• Find individual contact information
• Name list (from one co.) using online tools
• LinkedIn Recruiter - search & send InMail
campaign or share results for onshore review
• Name-gen research in niche channel
• Send InsideConnector invitations to people
• Create InsideConnector campaign
• Update an existing candidate or input a new
one into ATS

7. Onboarding & Ongoing Training
• Evaluated onshore team: Each
person self-evaluated on 30+ sourcing
tools/methods, and reviewed 1:1 with a
manager on a priority subset of those
• Training developed to prioritize on
areas of greatest common weakness
• Determined items best to transfer
offshore (more labor intensive,
straightforward to teach/learn, etc.)
• Conducted biweekly group trainings:
I led these for entire China team,
created pre- and post-documentation
Evolved into:
• Small group + 1:1 training by
on-site managers and up-and-
coming individual contributors
• Managers own documentation
updates and create new ones

9. Key Online Tools
• Boolean string library: stored in Excel (easy filtering,
no smart chars), tabs for each candidate profile family,
Excel formulas to auto-convert strings by site (each key
free & paid board, LinkedIn & search engines).
• ATS datamining: untouched >1 year, silver medalists,
applicants at interview or further on related reqs, etc.
• LinkedIn (incl. saved searches & alerts)
• Search Engines (& alerts): Google, Bing, Clusty,
MillionShort, Yandex – incl. diversity search (first names
search with Vlookup or Gender API, Google faces, etc.)
• Macro shortcuts tool: supplementary time-saver for
search, emails, etc. MacroToolWorks is 100% free)
Job board
resumes via
InfoGIST:
• Can search
hundreds of
paid (with
license) and
free sites
• Automatically
routes results
above match
threshold

10. Key Online Tools (cont.)
• Contact info search: Jigsaw, Pipl, Google chrome
extensions, MailTester (use bookmarklets, too!), etc.
for non-CV/resume leads
• Branding/mktg.: Dlvr.it, Hootsuite, Jobs2Web (talent
community), job posting optimization (w/video) &
LinkedIn profile optimization
• Bookmarklets (Bookmarklet Combiner or bookmark
bar zip file) for search, contact info, etc.!
• InsideConnector: personalized email campaigns &
landing pages (also had TalentBin for a while)
Some must-have
extensions:
• Connectifier
• Data-Miner
• Email Hunter
• Facebook
search
• Lusha
• Prophet
• Rapportive

11. Other Resources
• Events: Find out who’s going to what
industry events in the business and
what corporate marketing is
sponsoring, then target talent likely to
attend in advance and set up meetings;
make sure they get & give you attendee
list afterwards
• Tech forums & user groups: similar
to above, but can also be tapped online
• Tech-skewing social networks:
particularly searchable are GitHub,
Stackoverflow, Twitter
• Employee Referrals: Make
sure ER coordinator knows
what talent you need and/or
it’s searchable. Supplement
with LinkedIn 1st degree /
“gimme five” method
• Business acumen: Bring in
internal SMEs willing to
explain what they do, lingo,
selling points to share with
prospects, etc.

12. Fulfillment Logistics
From Email
• Initially, requests were submitted
the old fashioned way via email
• Tracking became a nightmare
(e.g., prioritization/deadlines,
revisions to original request,
responding with questions to
earlier versions, people out/no
task status updates, unclear
if/when needs cancelled)
• Adverse productivity, frustration
and morale impact
To Portal
• Create an InfoPath / SharePoint-
driven site on intranet
• On-site manager alerted to new
inbound requests to review
• Tasks prioritized and assigned to
people with delivery dates
• Better control and predictability of
workflow: reassign, postpone or
reject based on circumstances
• Ongoing tasks auto-expired after 30
days; had to be renewed if needed

13. Expanding the Scope
• External job posting: on LinkedIn and or Dice (we
had no multi-site posting service) plus embed video
• LinkedIn Recruiter inbox management: in
addition to owning all licenses, China handled all
initial replies, escalating when phone screen-ready.
• LinkedIn groups: Made them managers for
Avanade’s two largest ones and trained them to
look for the types of new member requests to
approve, deny and talent to alert sourcers about.
• ATS: candidate dispositioning
Once the China team was proving their value for basic sourcing
and resume upload, we asked them to take on more:
Members:
• Avanade
Professional
Network - 5,493
• Avanade
Employees and
Alumni - 6,403

14. Expanding the Scope (cont.)
• InsideConnector: Importing
names and sending campaigns
using approved templates with
minor editing
• Talent mapping: thorough online
research against key competitors
(Microsoft IT solution providers via
Pinpoint, etc.)
• Web scraping: MeetUp group
members and other online
directories (using Outwit), etc.
• Junior Sourcers: Could we scale
phone sourcing, too? China’s
South America counterparts did, so
we added separate US-based
phoners new to sourcing!
• Highlights: Over 25% of leads
being worked by recruiters at any
given time were generated by
offshore research team

16. Some Big Wins . . . . and Misses
• InsideConnector: personalized
email campaigns against past silver
medalists, second interview, etc.
• Contact info search: When a
candidate didn’t respond to inmail, a
follow up email could increase
response rate up to 2x
• LinkedIn license consolidation: All
LI Recruiters went offshore (much
more consistent & disciplined usage);
onshore had Recruiter Lite only
• Resume search:
Centralizing with InfoGIST
was good initially (+ offshore
did the data entry of accepted
results), but in recent years,
yield from resume boards
yielded more visa and
agency candidates
• Jigsaw for competitor
name-gen: dated info,
usually had moved on

17. • Administrative
transactions are
resume uploads,
requisition uploads,
ATS record
updating, LinkedIn
inmail processing
• Candidates sourced
or researched = all
online channels
(LinkedIn Recruiter,
resume databases,
InsideConnector,
Jigsaw, etc.)
9140
40854
66879
50474
53283
2257
18417
22392 21880
15192
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Offshore Results by FY
Admin transactions Candidates sourced/researched

18. 2
4
4
6
8
6
0
2
2
8
8
6
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
CHINA SUPPORT
HEADCOUNT BY FY
Researchers Admins
186
253
330
223 222
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Hires contributed
by FY
Hires impacted

19. Evolution & a Community of Practice
• Ran internal Sourcing Certification
program (mandatory for offshore team,
but some onshore sourcers audited it)
• China created own task documentation
• On-site management succession plan
• Hour-by-hour onboarding plan for first
few weeks for new junior sourcers,
featuring presentations by managers,
SMEs and hands-on training exercises
• China let people choose interest
areas to delve deeper and
become SMEs (e.g., investigate
new Boolean auto-search tools,
web-scraping methods, test
productivity tips for Taleo)
• Share notable findings with
rest of team in periodic meetings
(rotating presenters)
The goal was to make the system fully self-sustaining so I could move on
to other projects:

20. Learnings
• On-site lead: Strategy and group
training can be done remotely, but you
can’t manage the day-to-day remotely.
Need a local leader who can physically
address issues 1:1
• Frequent check-ins: Especially when
introducing something new. Culturally,
they may be reluctant to raise concerns
• Language: Non-native speakers often
have deficits (won’t think of synonyms for
strings, accents may make them
inappropriate to run phone screens, etc.)
• Scalability: Assume your
volume will grow, so
anticipate with systems that
can handle it
• Ongoing training’s surprise
benefit: It doesn’t just make
sourcers more productive, it
improves retention and even
acts as a talent magnet
(virtuous cycle)
• Task communication issues
are usually on-shore deficits

21. Q&A
If we don’t have time to get to your question today,
you can reach me later via:
• Email: glenn@recruiting-online.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gutmach
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/glenn.gutmacher
• Quora: www.quora.com/profile/Glenn-Gutmacher
And if you liked this and want to learn more about
sourcing, most of my presentations are free online!