Hiring Sourcers

I'm fascinated with the world of sourcing.  As an account manager for six years with various staffing firms, my experience with sourcing prior to 2005 was the filing cabinet in the back of the office with 10,000 manila folders and a phone sticky from spilling coffee with too much milk and sugar on it. Ah, good memories.

After getting involved with the online employment crowd, I noticed this particular discipline starting to get a lot of attention, and names started popping up again and again.  Shally Steckerl, Glenn Gutmacher, Maureen Sharib, Jim Stroud, and Dave Mendoza.  Who were these sourcers, and how exactly did they make money?  Were the technologically proficient versions of a reference librarian?  The human variant of the manufacturer's guides I'd used to such good effect in a previous sales jobs?  Or were they something new?  Were they some kind of protean recruiter evolving along a different path than the rest of us?  They researched, and we sold?

The jury's still out.  Most recruiters, whether they be corporate or third party, still consider sourcing as an essential part of a recruiter's job.  The idea of outsourcing is laughable, unless you count the "junior recruiters" who are hired to download resumes from Monster because the volume is too high.  But the tide is turning.  I promised that I would go through the Electronic Recruiting 101 booklet and let you see some of the nuggets of gold hidden.  Written by Shally, the book of course has a section on hiring Sourcers (p.94)

Hiring Sourcers Do's and Don't

• Sourcers vs recruiters:
• Sourcers aren't junior recruiters
• Not all sourcers are created equally
• One-to-many ratio
• Where to go?

Shally covers each of these points in detail (though in telling you where to go, he pitches ERE and only ERE), and and then to make it really spicy, he shares how to compensate them.

The answer is highly.  Compensate them highly, but only if they're worth it, and if you can track their results to money saved.

by the way - I'll be on a panel with Shally next week.  We're speaking at an exclusive Executives only Briefing at the NAPS conference in San Antonio.  There's still room, the event is free, and we'd love to see you there.  Remember that you have to RSVP separately for this event by contacting Margaret Graziano <mgraziano@keenhire.com>