I am going to make it easy for you all. I decided it’s time to ‘open-source’ my tool belt when it comes to recruiting and sourcing tools. So you guys can stop googling ‘best-recruiting tools’ and get 
frustrated because the top 10 Google results won’t bring you any further.
I have divided this up into four sections: sourcing, information retrieval, productivity and platforms. Also, you can find some new ATS players, as I can’t help it to follow this space and report about it.
SOURCING:
Sourcing has been made quite easy with all the tools out there nowadays. If you don’t know where to begin this list is quite useful. Some are free, some you must pay for– however I recommend learning to google x-ray sites yourself since it is basically what these tools do.
Excellent tool, in my opinion one of the best. Also useful for information retrieval. Not expensive, not cheap. Let me show it to you with a video:
Recruit’em (Now Recruitin)
Tool to generate boolean strings for people who like a nice GUI on sites like LinkedIn, Google, Github, StackOverflow, Xing & Twitter.
Have been using Entelo for a few days and it is a pretty reliable sourcing tool, with excellent functionality and web hooks into your ATS. Pretty expensive, though.
Use this string to search for resumes online: intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR inurl:CV) -job -jobs -sample -samples -template -”resume service” -“resume writers” -“resume writing” (Location) AND (Study) AND (keywords)
Edit location study and keywords to your liking and get resumes. Also, think broad and bold. Every page that has a user base (from Couchsurfing to Strava) is x-rayable. Do not begin at Linkedin, where everyone is, and do not stop at Github. Think bold.
** Webinar from 2012 ** Still relevant. Watch and learn! Get your FREE LinkedIn Custom Search Engine HERE
You might be using Slack for internal comms, but there are also lot’s of public channels where you can scout people from. Check out //www.chitchats.co/ to search for public chat channels.
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL:
One of the most important things to get is information from people you find. The art is not to abuse this information — which is quite hard for the shitty recruiters.
A good tool in your chrome that aggregates information such as email, phone numbers & social media pages. Also a ‘Project’ page where you can store the people you find. Good bunch of people too just got a massive investment so here to stay!
Same as Connectifier, but then not so good.
When you find peoples websites, paste the URL and mostly get their email from the WHOIS registry.
PRODUCTIVITY:
I love hacking all kind of free programs together to get a healthy and productive workflow. These two apps are must haves for all your talent stuff.
Sidekick is a free app from Hubspot that will let you track your emails. Bit controversial but I always like to know if people read the highly personalised emails I send out — especially to give me an idea when and how I should follow up. Sidekick works with Google Mail and Outlook.
The biggest thing I hate about the whole talent game is the scheduling of stuff. Calendly is an excellent tool to schedule calls or Skype interviews with potential hires. You open up your calendar to them, send a link and they can pick a time instead of the usual mail slinging which costs valuable time.
This calendar app is super useful for scheduling as well and it runs as a full calendar program as well, has excellent timezone support and is fast.
RECRUITING PLATFORMS:
Lots of platforms out there right now to match you with people, here are my favourites:
Chatroulette1 for technical interviews by my lovely friend Aline Lerner. I also recommend everyone to read her blog when you are hiring technology, people. Well written, data-driven, smart, ballsy — can’t recommend enough.
My friend Hung Lee handles this platform, basically trying to kill the job description. They make you ‘design’ your job based on a ten variable graph and match engineers and companies together.
Seems I am only posting friends platforms here, but Pedro of Landing.jobs and I also go way back, even crashed on his couch in Lisboa when I was training some startups over there. Previously called Jobbox.io they have landed in London and built a platform for getting tech jobs based on a referral system. They welcomed their 10.000th user yesterday, congrats!
More friends, curated tech talent, perfectly matched. Built by developers, for developers. Very thorough screening of candidates and good talent on this platform, very much worth checking out when in need of Developers!
I think everybody knows Hired, heard some good stories although I have never used them or made a hire through it. Matching Database, very solid marketing machine behind it. The obvious choice.
APPLICANT TRACKING SYSTEMS:
I do not want to go too much into depth on ATSs as you guys know that I am kind of biased to Workable and Lever. But these two Dutch vendors should be put on the map.
These guys sprouted from one of my favourite Dutch design/UX minded job-boards Fontanel. What Homerun does differently than any ATS (and what I admire them for) is the focus on the design aspect of your job page combined with a Trello-like dashboard for the backend. Well designed and already trusted by some of the top Dutch startups as Blendle.
Recruitee is an ATS-startup that I met during my training sessions at Rockstart, the startup incubator based in Amsterdam where I am part off. They provide a good, solid foundation to your recruiting admin side and launching a sourcing tool in the not so near future. Good alternative to check out while hunting for the ATSs out there.
So that’s it, my toolbelt and some tips open sourced. I will probably release a part II in the coming six months as the HR-tech space has been very innovative.If you like this stuff: Follow me And leave a comment if you want to add to this post or just have something nice to say.
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