A healthy Talent Acquisition or Recruiting organization has various roles contributing to the team and their mission of filling job requisitions with quality talent. We usually first think of the role of Recruiter, but there are other professionals involved in the process of filling roles. Positions such as Recruiting Coordinator, Lead Recruiter, Recruiting Manager and Talent Sourcer can all be part of a successful Recruiting team. A Talent Sourcer can be many things depending on the team. One thing a Talent Sourcer isn’t… is a Junior Recruiter. Let me explain.
In many Talent Acquisition organizations an entry level into the field is the role of Talent Sourcer. The Sourcer is tasked with filling pipelines with qualified candidates. This begins after collaborating with the Recruiter to gain insight into the critical, must-have skills the successful candidate needs. The Sourcer builds the pipeline with candidates and conducts initial outreach to the candidates by various means: email, LinkedIn message, text, even phone calls. As job candidates respond to this outreach, the Sourcer shares a job description or pertinent information about the position in an attempt to build rapport and get the candidate on the Recruiter’s interview or screening schedule.
The Talent Sourcer is usually the first company contact with each candidate. The relationship and communication can set the tone for all interactions with the candidate and should exhibit the company’s core values. In the case of Recruiting Experiences, we always desire to interact with folks and show our values of kindness, excellence, simplicity and reliability. After initial contact is made, the Sourcer will often do a quick phone or video screen to ensure the candidate does not have any “knock-outs” which may make them ineligible for the position. These knock-outs might be things like requiring remote-only work when the position is in-person, being out of salary range, or only being eligible for contract work when the position is full-time. The Sourcer’s primary role is to find and funnel qualified candidates to the Recruiters by casting a wide net and then engaging candidates in conversation by selling the roles they are representing.
A skilled Talent Sourcer can do much more! A skilled Sourcer functions more like a Researcher. Especially when filling requisitions for tech roles, a Sourcer needs to research various programming languages and platforms that the successful candidate needs to be considered proficient. Knowing where these candidates spend their time on the internet is a critical piece to finding the right folks for a position and having the means to reach out to contact them.
Not everyone hangs out on LinkedIn as many of us in the recruiting world do. There are plenty of paid databases to find contact information on candidates, but the real fun is finding the information for free! OSINT, or open-source intelligence sources are plentiful and allow users to search for and scrape information from various sources in order to find candidates’ contact information. Utilizing professional organizations to try to identify their members and reach out to gauge interest can also be effective. Online platforms like Reddit or GitHub are other places to find qualified candidates for highly specialized roles. Effective Talent Sourcers are always trying to build their professional network to help expand their reach to qualified candidates. Attending networking events is an effective way to meet people in your chosen industries and can pay off in the future when trying to source talented job seekers.
When it comes down to it, that’s what Sourcers are trying to do; find great candidates who become exceptional hires for our clients. The chance to search and find buried treasure in the form of qualified candidates makes the process fun! For many, Sourcing can be a career destination itself, not merely as an entry-level way to become a Junior Recruiter.
