8 Best Tools For Recruiting In a Modern World

How many times in your life as a sourcer or recruiter did you hear : “Great tools don't necessarily make you a great sourcer/recruiter?”

Well it might be true, but having amazing tools to work with on a daily basis will definitely help make your greatness more efficient. Right? 😄

While starting my new role within folk over a year ago, I had this awesome opportunity to reflect back on the operating system that I’ve been using for the past 8 years. This time, I decided to start from scratch not solely focusing on tools well known for recruitment but actually starting from my needs/pain and looking for the most adequate tools based on my use-case.

So I've asked myself "What would be the best recruitment tools in 2022?”

I thought it could be great to share my findings. Among these are tools that I already used and some are new and shiny ones. For this very first article, I'll focus on Chrome extensions 🤩

Let's scrape some data!

While sourcing for a given role, the first thing I do is to build up my search. Based on the brief I've build with the Hiring Manager and the team, I ultimately deep dive into a market analysis (competitors, companies to target...) and ideal persona (community, online presence...).

Let's say I've found a long list of companies to target, i.e: French tech 120 listing. What I'll want to do next is to collect the name of all the companies within that list to include them in my boolean strings (using your OR builder template 👀 ) so I'll end with something looking like this within seconds

Here are a couple of chrome extension focusing on scraping that could come in handy.

Scraper

A very simple scraping extension to quickly collect data into spreadsheet form. It's really the most easiest extension to do scraping in just one click. It can be quite limiting though.

‍Instant Data Scraper

I'd say it's the most complete (yet complex) chrome extension to extracts data from web pages and exports it as Excel or CSV files.

Phantombuster

One of the most complete tool to scrap data. Its extension won't allow to scrap data directly (unlike the ones mentioned above) but it will enable to connect data sources quite easily by automatically retrieving your session cookies.

Let's organise and segment your search

I've now probably end up with a spreadsheet full of names and URLs. I want to have a look at each one of them to refine my search and start organizing my list of contacts.

To do so I combine the following chrome extensions

bulk URL opener

Allowing me to quickly open multiples URLs at once (in new tabs or windows)👀 Once I'll start having multiple tabs open I usually use Tab Manager Plus

folkX

folkX enables me to save an entire Linkedin search or one specific Linkedin profile (up to you) in a dedicated contact group on folk within seconds.

folkX is already working on Gmail and Linkedin (more tools coming soon 🚀)

Collect some additional information

When planning on reaching out to a person what I'm looking for especially are the following:

• current role informations: company, job title
• professional social media presence: Linkedin, Github, Twitter (if pro), Medium or blog, personal website...
• a means of contact: ideally a personal email or at least a Linkedin profile

As I want to save as much time as possible, I looked out for tools to automate this part and here's the most suited ones I've found:

Amazing Hiring

AH is a paying software dedicated to sourcing but they provide a free (limited) chrome extension to find social media profiles.

Contact Out

Quite similar chrome extension allowing to find contact and social media profiles.

‍SalesQL

Find emails on Linkedin profile (either you're connected with the person or not). It also enables to build list of leads on dedicated groups.

Sending personalized (or even better: individualized) messages

Ok! Now, that I have a list of persons to reach out to and informations about them, how about crafting some kick-ass messages to drive their engagement?

folkX & Messages

As I've been able to collect and centralize information about the people I'd like to contact, I might want to include them as custom placeholders in my messages. And guess what? folk-Messages allows me to do so 🤩