In Recruiting, Strategic Candidate Sourcing Is Far From Dead

March 8, 2013

Dr. John Sullivan, a well-known leader in the HR space, recently wrote an article that has received a ton of commentary from the HR world. In a nutshell, it outlines reasons why in talent acquisition, sourcing is on it’s way to extinction. I have to agree to disagree. I think Dr. Sullivan takes an oversimplified look at the role of sourcing in talent acquisition, rather than a refreshing perspective. First, he explains that the method of sourcing will die out because with the advances in technology — and the fact that many, many candidates are visible on the Internet — the process can be automated. This, I agree with. Technological advances offer us an array of tools to find candidates. And, yes, the process of sourcing can be automated. I already have a form of this from my automated search alerts set up on sites such as LinkedIn, Talent Bin, Monster and Career Builder, among others alert me when new profiles match my targeting search criteria.

Limits of Automated Candidate Sourcing

Wouldn’t it be great if there were web crawlers that dropped awesome candidate profiles in my inbox? Yes. But, is that realistic? No. Why? The outcome of a recruiter’s sourcing activity is not a data dump of profiles, and this is what an automated search gives you. This is why recruiting, and in turn sourcing, has become much more strategic. It is not simply locating talent; it involves a combination of planning, locating, evaluating, networking, and engaging. Say you get a dump of profiles from an automated search source; what now? You need to source through all the data to make sense of it. How many of you already use these automated searches? I do. And guess what, they are hardly decent. Even when I source candidates for proactive outreach, I still need to sift through the list. Sometimes, depending on the level of the role, this list can have thousands upon thousands of results. Even when I source candidates and come up with a list for proactive outreach, I am still sourcing through the list that I found myself. Now, you might ask why I don’t narrow my search. I do, I start narrow and work my way out.

Seeing the Full Picture: Why Strategic Candidate Sourcing Is Alive and Well

When recruiters source for talent, we are not just looking for a particular set of skills; we are looking for an overall picture or story of a candidate. This is even more important for higher-level positions. For instance, I was recently recruiting for a position where a background in direct sales was key to success, though the standard career progression for the role was starting in finance and moving into operations. This is something that I needed to source on my own, because a keyword search cannot help me find this profile. Or, as another example, I may be searching for a candidate with experience working in the marketing automation sector, but we may be targeting candidates who have showed a high level of commitment to their roles, and are by no means “jumpy” in terms of career moves. Can an automated search tell me this? Strategic sourcing is not only alive, it’s thriving. I’m excited for more efficient, automated ways of locating top talent. At the same time, I don’t think we should oversimplify the role of sourcing to be only locating talent. It’s more than that.

Do you agree with Dr. Sullivan that The End of Sourcing Is Near, or do you believe it will continue to be an important and active part of a recruiter’s role?

Director of Talent

<strong>Carlie Smith</strong> was the Senior Talent Manager, Sales & Marketing at OpenView. She worked directly with hiring managers and key stakeholders within OpenView and its portfolio to lead vital searches and provided process guidance on recruitment strategy, including talent identification, strategic sourcing, relationship building, and competitive intelligence. Currently, Carlie is the Director of <a href="https://www.circle.com/en">Circle</a>.