Sourcing. It's the tippity top of the funnel for any significant piece of recruitment. If you broke it down to level of effort, it's the biggest thing we do, per hire.
But if you were anything like me when I started in recruitment, you struggle to source consistently, and affects your ability to make hires.
Consistent, high quality sourcing is so hard to get right.
Here's how I went from someone who couldn't source to getting 24 Recruiters in 6 locations to source 100-120 Software Engineers a week, each.
So, how does the average recruiter source consistently?
Structure your sourcing.
Make it the best part of your day
From now on, you spend at least one hour per day sourcing.
The aim is 15-20 good candidates per day. But heres the deal.... you make it the best hour of your day.
Put on an album, make a fantastic coffee and go for it for an hour.
Make it social
Try suggesting sourcing sprints with your team.
A sourcing sprint is an opportunity to shoot all your sourcing efforts in one direction, like a musket volley in a Napoleonic battle (I've reached the age where I learn about Napoleonic battles...).
This is a team get together on a video call. One recruiter is the 'leader'. They decide what the team is sourcing for and they get all the candidates at the end.
You 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 you are accountable to each other.
For example, your team has three sourcing sprints a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Monday, you're the leader. You tell the team you are sourcing for a Data Engineer based in US (East coast). Segment by strings or sourcing tools, or different locations, or different companies. doesn't matter.
Wednesday, it's Laura's turn and she wants us all to hit remote BDRs
Friday is Gene. He's on holiday so we want him to have 100+ candidates to come back to so he doesn't have to start from scratch.
Awesome team dynamic right?
Hold Yourself Accountable
Track the volume of sourced candidates.
There doesn't need to be hard KPIs around sourcing if you understand the value of sourcing.
Frame your ask of 15-20 candidates per day as a guide rail, and the outreach & screen conversion to be another guide rail.
The goal is being over 15+ in volume without reducing your outreach and screen conversion.
Calibrate Regularly
To make sure you aren't generating junk volume, measure the conversion rates of outreach messages and screen calls.
If you see them drop, then sourcing quality is most likely the issue and you can bring it up in your 121 or learn some more about the role.
Learn About Time Management
Maybe you aren't sourcing as much as you like because you can't manage your as time well as you would like.
It's a very common issue and time management is like an arms race (like the one between Napoleon and the British led 2nd coalition....sorry.)
By this I mean, every time you get on top of your business, you get more responsibility and more is asked of you. Will you have more or less time when you're promoted?
So, time management isn't something you learn once and you're done. No, you are always optimising.
So, time management training is a really useful way to remedy the root cause.
Check out Deep work by Cal Newport and Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden. Both excellent resources on time management.
Luke Update
This week I had an awesome chat with Shally Steckerl from Shally's Alley. We got stuck into the topics of data driven recruitment, and Whisky.
in a couple of weeks ill be going live with the Promptmates crew where ill be showing off a few of my home made tools. really looking forward to that one!
Well... that's issue sixty four! 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!