The Recruiting Inferno

To recruiters who have never substantively sourced for people (sorry, but sending out InMauls one at a time or in quantities so large that a Bill of Lading is required, is not sourcing) – and to the hiring managers these recruiters support, Sourcing is not a spigot.

I know you asked for Sourcing’s assistance 24 hours ago but this doesn’t mean that we simply turn on a spigot and out comes a waterfall of people who want to interview with you.

Sourcing is the first date, perhaps days or weeks of missed texts and calls, unreturned emails, a second date, a hiking trip, several coffees – all before the extended foreplay begins. And perhaps more – although you never know…

Sourcing is typically called in after the misery of inbound Post & Pray activity produces a 90% or more rejection rate, driving the hiring manager to their boss who then calls up HR to complain. With Sourcing now “engaged”, Sourcing then asks for an intake meeting (the one that really should have been held in the first place) with the recruiter and the hiring manager to procure the information needed to get down and dirty into the lairs where the Golden Children live. You know what info I’m alluding to – forums, newsletters, websites, associations, conferences, ad infinitum. We use these as jumping off points into the nooks and crannies of people’s lives in search of their digital crumbs that when mixed together with a soupçon of badass engagement produces conversations – first dates.

“Another meeting?” exasperates the hiring manager. “Everything you need is in the job description.” Of course that is simply untrue.

[actually sourcing happens in secret even before the sourcing, recruiting, hiring manager hook-up but this for another post]

Sourcing intake makes everyday recruiting intake look like child’s play. Sourcers are like Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam – reaching out to people they do not know so there’s special knowledge that’s required to instigate the outreach.

We’re Sourcers, Purveyors of the Spigot and Waterfall. So we source. And 24 hours go by and no one has been sent to the recruiter! The resultant exclamation from the hiring manager, “What are we paying you people for?” stings like slap to a fresh sunburn. At the end of this chain of command, Sourcing often finds itself at the ugly end of a snide remark uttered by a recruiter. Failures.

Like Hell we are.

Sourcing doesn’t exist to make recruiting look good – nor are Sourcers subservient to Recruiters (see previous paragraph and extrapolate from “snide remark”). I could toss in the word Partners but that implies the presence of a Service Level Agreement that places sourced people and employee referrals in the same category. Frankly, I believe Sourcing serves at the pleasure of the CEO – think of it as Sourcing Team 6 – to identify people and competitive intelligence that enable the organization’s driver to make split-second changes to road map.

Yes, Sourcing should be this special.