Sourcing on a global level - what do you use?

OK, yesterday I might have been on a rave because of certain emotions stirred up by politics. Today however, I wanted to focus more on the industry that I am.

I have been recruiting for about 7 plus years. I have been on the agency side as well as the corporate and contract side. I have to say my preference is definitely on the contract side. I wanted to focus this discussion on some of the sourcing strategies you have used in the past. Coming from an accounting and finance background I had been used to cold calling, bouncing around within a company to find names, etc. When I moved to the Phoenix area I thought it best to move to another industry to enhance my background so I moved to Aerospace.

While doing my contract with Honeywell, I found that traditional cold calling wasn't going to get me as far as it did in A&F. So I started enhancing my skills and focused more on the internet searches, AIRS strategies, etc. I was also introduced to patent database searches and more. I could do a lot more digging while using a lot less time and could still do what I love and still hit the phone hard.

When I left Aero, I went to a semiconductor company and went back to the Corporate function side of the world. I was able to get back to pure cold calling, etc. Now that I am doing contract work I realize that time is of the essence and production is more important than it ever has been. I have been researching technologies, internet searches etc. I have done a couple of searches in the past in Mexico, Western Europe and the land down under. The problem I ran into with these searches is that there was a communication barrier.

So the bottom line is what creative resources have you used to find candidates? We all know about some of the old school things, but what are some of the things that you use in order to get the job done?