I had the chance to network with Sandra Felmann, a Talent Acquisition Campaign Manager at the unicorn startup Scandit based in Zurich. What stood out to me was her enthusiasm for sharing helpful tips and sourcing strategies on her Instagram and Facebook pages. Her presentations and visuals are incredibly imaginative, and I’m thankful that she made time in her busy schedule for an interview on my blog. Most recently she’s been talking about ChatGPT and integration tools.
About Sandra Feldmann {@Talent.Sourcer.Sandy}
Meet Sandra, a digital nomad at heart who calls Munich, Germany home. As a global talent acquisition campaign manager for Swiss unicorn scale-up, Scandit, she’s on a mission to make the recruiting process as fun and personalized as possible for both candidates and recruiters. Talent attraction and HR tech is her passion, and she’s always on the hunt for new tricks and hacks to take her sourcing game to the next level, especially in terms of personalization, automation, and scaling. With a background in start-ups, she knows what it takes to build a winning team from scratch and grow companies immensely. When she’s not working, she’s hanging out with her mischievous Jack Russel, Barney, or perfecting her opera singing skills.
Tell us about your work experience in recruiting – how did you get your start, how did you progress, where are you at this point in time?
When I first embarked on my sourcing career in 2011, I was a full-cycle recruiter at an agency and I had this silly notion that sourcing was just a mindless task of scrolling through LinkedIn. How wrong I was! My real sourcing adventure began when I joined a German start-up and was tasked with expanding their team from 20 to 100 employees. That’s when I attended my first Sourcing Summit and let me tell you, it was a total game-changer! I was given the creative freedom to experiment with wild and wacky ideas, and it was a blast! After moving on to a larger Swiss scale-up, I gained valuable insights into the importance of automation and scaling. I am now about to write my first book about sourcing and I am excited to present at SoSuHack this year myself.
What are the unique talents you bring to the field?
My unique talent is my creativity. I love to tinker with all things creative. My special interest is creative outreach. And looking at all the messages I am receiving I’d say that there’s still room for improvement 😉
Share your biggest success story in recruiting so far?
For me, my biggest triumph in the world of recruiting isn’t necessarily about the numbers (although, don’t get me wrong, they were impressive too!). The most fulfilling success for me has been mentoring and training up-and-coming sourcers. From interns to RPOs to internal recruiters and sourcers, it’s been so rewarding to help people step outside of their comfort zones and discover what’s possible. I love igniting their creativity, encouraging them to experiment with different outreach strategies and tools, and coaxing their inner child to come out and play.
What is the best advice you’ve received during your career path, and from whom?
The wisest advice I’ve received is to cultivate your strengths, not your weaknesses. This means that many individuals tend to focus on improving themselves by addressing their shortcomings and minimizing their weaknesses. On the other hand, if you concentrate on maximizing your strengths, you will become a master in your field. However, if you concentrate on eliminating your weaknesses, you will become competent across multiple areas but stay a generalist.
What’s your favorite recruiting tech tool?
Ooh, that’s a doozy of a question! It’s like trying to pick a favorite child. While I do have a fondness for efficiency tools like multi-highlight and textblaze, the real standout is Sourcewhale. With this tool, you can revolutionize hyper-personalization by automating and scaling it, all without the need for additional integrations like Zapier. Plus, it lets you create stunning outreach visuals. Talk about a win-win!
What do you hope to achieve in 2023?
My top aspiration for this year is to finally release my book about sourcing! I’ve been putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) for the past two years, and I’m crossing my fingers that 2023 will be the year it sees the light of day. It started as a little cheat sheet where I jotted down all my favorite sourcing tricks, tips, and tools, but it quickly blossomed into a full-fledged project.
Aside from that, I’m excited to ramp up my networking within the sourcing community. It’s always such a blast to connect with like-minded folks and gain fresh perspectives and insights.
Any future predictions on talent sourcing?
In my humble opinion, the future is all about scalable personalization. In the past, we’ve seen automation of personalization, but the next frontier is true hyper-personalization that not only automates but can also be scaled. We’re already getting a glimpse of this with tools like Clay or GetCargo.io, which utilize ChatGPT in a smart way. For example, they scrape the LinkedIn posts of sourced candidates, summarize the information with the help of ChatGPT, and craft a personalized outreach based on that data. I can’t wait to see what other innovative tools will emerge in this space!
What’s your favorite Boolean String?
For checking out your competitors rating:
site:glassdoor.com/reviews “overall rating of 2.7”
And also one that Irina Shaemeva promoted:
site:Linkedin.com/in inanchor:”open to work”
#Amazing🔥
>> For Diversity searches, I use keywords coming from this nice compilation:
https://github.com/humanpredictions/diversity/blob/master/spreadsheets/keywords.csv
Follow Sandra here:
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