The year, 2022. The blood, sweat and tears of a recruiter are the highest prized commodity in the world.
Each recruiter has on average 17,289 open Reqs. They are in a state of constant sourcing.
They sourced on LinkedIn, they sourced on GitHub, they sourced on Tinder. They ask the Uber driver for their Resume just incase they happen to be a senior full stack developer who lost a bet.
One Russian dictator asshole and a few greedy tech billionaires later.. 17,000 recruiters fight, hunger games style for one req.
Each req has 800,000 applications. Recruiters spend most of their time reviewing applications and searching "cheap ways to heat your home" on Google.
Something has been lost in the utter insanity of the past few years. We are doing a lot less sourcing. Here is my attempt at making the case for recruiters to be sourcing, irrespective of req load.
Sourcing is commonly attached to specific roles in your company. So less open roles and more applications means less sourcing to do, right? I'm going to make the case that sourcing candidates should be a ritual that is independent of roles or application volume (Whaaaht?!?). Here is why.
The Value of Sourcing
Sourcing has a number of business benefits that are independent of the individual roles you are sourcing for :
1. It reduces time to hire.
You know what roles operate within your business whether they are live or not.
An up to date market map and long list of candidates ready to go means high quality outreach starts on day one, rather than after a couple of weeks sourcing.
2. Talent Intelligence.
Regular sourcing in a specific skill set or location delivers vital talent intelligence to your business.
In recruitment, it can be used to find skills competitors with reputations for poor employee experience. But outside of recruitment, talent intelligence can be used to select a new location to open an office, or it can help M&A decide on what businesses to approach for investment. These are enormous value adds.
3. Better DE&I Outcomes
Sourcing for roles that are not under an extremely high "I need them in yesterday" priority means recruiters have the time to build more diverse candidate pools.
4. Your recruiters are more able to partner with hiring managers
Recruiters who are sourcing consistently are more likely to be viewed as SMEs in the specific talent space they are supporting in the business.
The Cost of Sourcing
There is of course an opportunity cost to the recruiters time.
Sourcing is labour intensive and that time could be spent on other projects or initiatives.
I can't prescribe to you how much time should be spent sourcing when there are no live roles, but as a recruitment leader, it is important that you understand the value of sourcing out width your open roles, so you can better make that value judgement for your team, and add maximum value to your business.
Tips
While I can't prescribe how much sourcing, I can certainly give you a couple of tips on how you can implement rituals to make your sourcing more consistent.
- Sourcing Sprints
From now on, your team spends one hour per day sourcing. The aim is 15-20 good candidates per day. Suggest they make it the best hour of their day. Put on an album, make a fantastic coffee and go for it for an hour.
Your team also has 3 sourcing sprints a week. Monday Wednesday Friday. This is a team get together on a video call.
One recruiter is the 'leader' and decides what the team is sourcing for. They hang out, shoot the breeze and get some focussed sourcing done.
It could be a difficult role, or sourcing for someone on holiday, a D&I piece, anything.
The important thing is it's social, there's a team goal, and they are accountable to each other.
- Rebrand sourcing as part of “R&D”
Essentially use terminology that indicates to your team that their sourcing has a broader purpose. Market Mapping, Talent intelligence and reporting can all come under this category. It means sourcing doesn't just disappear from your business when you have a lot of applications or a smaller workload.
So there you have it. The case for always on sourcing. It’s an underused initiative, but correctly managed, the benefits to your business can extend far beyond Talent Acquisition.
Book Update
I've got the theory part done and i'm working through some practical scenarios. If you have any specific recruitment scenarios that you would like me to address in the book in a data driven manner, email me or hit me up on LinkedIn.
Well... that's issue fifteen. If you have any questions about it, or any feedback on this issue of The Data Driven Recruiter, grab me on LinkedIn for a chat.
I'll see you next week!