We will not keep you waiting for the next Sourcing Guru Interview! Happy to share the one with Aaron Lintz — speaker at major sourcing conferences, community leader, and Sourcing Challenge Show moderator.

Enjoy!

How did you start recruiting? Why are you still there?

My first exposure to recruiting was making calls after hours for an executive recruiter. My job was just to leave messages with HR executives at large corporations in the US. It paid well, and it was easy. The next job I dove in was in a small engineering staffing firm specializing in aerospace and defense.

I fell in love with the hunt for hard-to-find people and the satisfaction of helping people land great jobs. I quickly discovered how strong computer skills and sourcing knowledge separated the good from the great recruiters.

You came to recruitment/sourcing from digital marketing. Does it help/hinder your career? Btw how did you decide to switch?

At the same time, I switched to learn to recruit from digital marketing, this industry shifted to embrace Social Media, SEO, SEM, and email marketing. These skills are outside the scope of traditional recruiting, but those with experience in the business learned quickly and became consultants to help clients and agencies reach bigger and better audiences. Just in the last 2-3 years, Employment Branding came into its own as a true hybrid of the two skill sets.  I was just learning to recruit, but I took the skills I had to promote our jobs and make our company easy to find on search engines. I saw it as a way to become invaluable to my employer and it worked.

Speaking about career aspirations, as a kid, what did you want to be?

I was not much for plans in my younger days. My vision of success was based on material things that impressed others. I’ve come to learn how family makes me happiest of all.

You are a recognized sourcing guru. Where do you get ideas from? Who the thought leaders in your sphere you are following yourself?

My goal is to find useful data to help our recruiting efforts, so all tricks need to be weighed on that criteria. The tools we use determine how we spend our time. If you go the free route, you will spend hours researching instead of contacting potential candidates. The non-recruiting tools I tend to string together help me solve the challenge of scaling our recruiting efforts.

There are too many great people in this business to thank. I would like to thank the people who took a chance and hired me. These people gave me the opportunity to become successful: Robert Callahan, John Ricciardi, Irina Shamaeva, Eric Knauf, and Natalie Glick.

The people who inspired me and continue to elevate the industry deserve credit. The same goes for the current generation of speakers and hopefully the people reading this who are inspired to grow this craft by sharing what they know with the masses.

As a recruiting expert tell us about your three favorite sourcing tools?

Here are 3 Chrome extensions that I am using nearly every day:

Chrome Extension Manager helps me toggle from normal to research mode in an instant.

JSON Viewer Awesome has been an eye-opener for me to help better view the JSON responses.

User-Agent Switcher for Chrome helps to find which websites have a mobile version that can be easier to scrape.

We have recently participated in Sourcing Challenge Show – Tools Edition. As one of its’ moderators could you please tell us about it in three sentences? What is the mission behind it?

One of the harder parts of our job is staying aware of the latest tools and technology. We save people time by recording product demonstrations and asking tough questions of the vendors. The Sourcing Challenge Show also negotiates a limited-time promotional rate to entice people to invest not just in the tool, put in the time and effort required to get the most ROI.

What makes a person a good recruiter?

Recently I have seen some suggest that all recruiters should be sourcing thanks in no small part to the training and products they sell. This myopic view undermines the value of dedicated sourcing team members with the false assumption that division of labor always causes problems. They undervalue proactive recruitment, competitive intelligence, and optimistic strategies that well-versed sourcing teams can provide.

While some of the best recruiters I have worked with are also good sourcers, that is not the characteristic that stands out to me. The best recruiters are exceptional at anticipating change and using the people skills required in negotiations. They have calculated risk-takers who ask for help and have a systematic approach to managing their time.