Name Gen is Recruiting Research, or is it?
The recruiting industry, as a whole, uses the terms “recruitment research” and “name generation” interchangeably, as if they were synonyms. They are not.
Research is defined as “a continued and diligent investigation or study.” Most name generation and candidate sourcing efforts fail to meet that basic standard.
Often those tasked with generating names of candidates are focused on quantity, when hiring executives are seeking quality. What they really want is “the one” that they ultimately will hire.
Moreover, most of the prospective candidate lists generated by “name gen” are incredibly random. I say this in the true meaning of the word “random”. Name gen lists are frequently without order as if they were created by chance. Few target candidate lists are the product of “continued or diligent investigation or study”.
Name gen is just a list of names
More importantly, you deserve more than a list of prospective candidate names. You deserve a process that leads you to the ideal candidate in the most efficient and effective way possible. A list of names does not do that for you.
A simple list of candidate names with their titles and employers provides little context or insight into which candidates are worthy applicants. With 722 million registered users on LinkedIn, the problem isn’ that we have too few names. It is that we have far too many.
Learn more about recruiting on LinkedIn in our blog post Is the LinkedIn Talent Pool Overfished? or about the rise of digital data in Why Headhunters Fail and What to Do About It.
