Hey, Boss! What You Don’t Know About Sourcing

Most bosses think sourcing is a simple job and most sourcers don’t get any respect for the job they do. While it may look simple, it takes a specially trained resource to do this work well. I’ve heard leaders say, “why does it take so long to google someone?” Well, it’s not so simple. All along the hiring process, there are filters. There may be a person in HR who screens candidates to present to the hiring manager. They may have not met with the hiring manager to clearly understand the nuances the type of person they are looking for. They may clear only candidates that fit within their personal understanding, but not the hiring manager’s. The hiring manager may not have written or updated a clear job description for HR to start with. That lack of communication means that the sourcer often has to read between the lines and make educated assumptions of what the ideal candidate would have on their resume to be interviewed, and ultimately placed the organization.

Sourcing is the first step in finding candidates for open positions in your organization. Many organizations hit their internal applicant tracking system, then hit up job portals, google searches, then source for passive candidates on social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, but there are far more parts of the “interwebs” where great candidates spend their time online. Developing a strategy, doing a little research, and planning your tactics will go a long way in generating better quality candidates. Here’s how.

1) Preparation

We once had a job requirement that required native Brazilian Portuguese fluency for an organization in the U.S. that would only accept American citizens and green card holders. Using all the standard tactics mentioned above, it would be extraordinarily difficult to find these candidates. We researched Brazil, identifying large cities and suburbs, and their top schools. This, we surmised, if found on a resume, would assure fluency in the native language. This was wildly successful and the client was astonished at the volume of quality candidates they received. Developing a strategy first, to determine where these candidates might be found online, is your first step in successfully serving your client. As a boss, you need to ensure they have enough time to research and plan their strategy, prior to the actual search.

2) Avoid Over-Analyzing Resumes

Excellent sourcing professionals scan a resume in approximately 10 seconds. If your sourcer is spending five minutes carefully reading through each resume, they will only scan 96 resumes in an eight-hour day. An excellent sourcer can review over 2,800 in the same eight-hour day. As the boss, encourage mentoring and developing that skill. One way to make this even more effective is to do pre-scans, assigning resumes as A, B or C, then further refining your A’s into A, B, or C. If a source spends 4 hours pre-scanning 1,400 resumes, then refining them down to the A’s of the A’s, you’ll have a much better subset of potential candidates to review in more detail. As the boss, you may want to assign different people on the team to do pre-scans and refining, with plenty of feedback so the sourcers develop more critical thinking skills to scan more effectively.

3) Don’t Under-Analyze Resumes

Sourcers need to read quickly, but not depend on highlighted keywords. By relying on keyword matches, a sourcer will be quickly replaced by software already on the market. Sourcers need to think like detectives, a high-level skill requiring logic and creativity, in order to identify the best candidates. If your sourcers are simply matching keywords, your clients will stop doing business with you because the AI-enabled software available today is cheaper than hiring humans to do it. The software works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. (While I personally don’t see the software as “ready for primetime”, I do see it as a threat to some less thoughtful and creative sourcers, who definitely won’t have sourcing jobs five years from now.)

4) Generate Specific Searches

Mostly sourcers tends to search with basic keyword and title searches which yield generic results of numerous matches. It typically generates results that are often so large that you are unable to review them all. Especially for older job requirements, hitting up the first ten pages of results will capture people most likely already identified. Sourcers starting at page 100 will find more potential candidates. Try refining, and refining again, your search strings. As a boss, encourage the sharing of search strings and creating a library of good quality strings for similar positions so you can pipeline for frequently occurring job orders, especially when working on VMS accounts.

5) Avoid Making Assumptions But Read Between the Lines

Never make assumptions based on resumes because, apart from qualifications and experience, there are inherent soft skills, interests, attitude, cultural fit and alignment of the personal goals of the candidate and the company’s goals. None of these will be explicit in a resume, but they may be implicit in the language used. How can you identify a team player? Who is a rainmaker that executes projects through sheer force of will? How do you find a supportive and empowering manager through a resume? How do you identify a person who is calm during a crisis? By examining what the person has written, the words used, you can expose many of these traits, which may prove useful when the recruiter begins calling. As a boss, ensure that your sourcers write a detailed note to the recruiter highlighting what they’ve found and any issues of concern that should be addressed during the recruiter’s call. Most recruiters will find this very, very helpful when done well. This skill cannot be replaced by software.

6) Don’t Limit Searches

Many less experienced sourcers limit their searches for resumes posted within the last 30 days on job boards. In fact, some clients insist on it. The majority of the candidates on job boards have resumes which haven’t been updated in a while, much longer than the last 30 days. If you limit your searches with these criteria, then you may miss out on the right candidate for the profile. That being said, those older resumes may not be suitable for a variety of reasons, such as having recently found work, moved out of state, or simply stopped looking. Is it, however, a goldmine for passive candidates that may not have updated their resumes in a while because they are not actively looking for a new opportunity. You may be offering them the opportunity of their dreams just by looking beyond the last 30 days. As a boss, create an environment for people to try new tactics and sharing that knowledge so that everyone can be successful in your organization and that success translates into placements which makes your client more successful, too.

7) Neglecting Under or Overqualified Candidates

Don't judge a candidate as too junior or too senior for a position because that person might work with or know someone who is an exact match for your search. As a boss, have your sourcers keep a list of these “B” candidates who may be very, very useful to the recruiter. They can call these candidates and ask for updates on their resumes, especially for those who seem under-qualified. They may have been doing the exact type of work you are looking for but haven’t updated their resume. The recruiter can call overqualified candidates to ask for referrals. When recruiters call a potential candidate mentioning the name of the person who referred them, the candidate is usually much more likely to take the recruiter’s call and listen to the offer, even if they weren’t looking at that moment for another opportunity. Again, software can’t do this for your recruiters.

8) Always Research the Hiring Manager (When Possible)

Hiring managers are not experts in writing job descriptions nor are they expert interviewers. Understanding "cultural fit" is critical. While some may use the term to exclude candidates based on bias, cultural fit is an extraordinarily difficult attribute to identify through online resumes and even during the phone interview phase. People like to work with people who have similar communication styles, work styles, interests, values and opinions. This easily facilitates strong teams, but how can you know from a resume whether they will fit, culturally, within the team? By researching the hiring manager. If you have access to this person, or can locate him online, you may be able to piece together an organizational chart of the people he/he is currently working with. Where did they go to school? What are their interests? What common themes can you identify?

One job requirement we encountered featured a hiring manager who was Israeli, and during the research on this hiring manager, we were able to ascertain that this individual typically hired Russians who had worked previously in Israel. Odd, but once we identified this data, we had a clearer sense of who we needed to find. Another time, we realized that every member on one Sales Manager’s team had been star athletes in college, most on sports scholarships. Hiring managers are the key to placements. Finding out where they went to school, what town they live in, their interests, etc. and matching those to prospective candidates will make them more memorable to the hiring manager, meaning a higher chance for interviews and placements. A sourcer who does this whenever possible will never be replaced by software.

9) Avoid Relying Only on Title

Every company uses different titles for the same roles and responsibilities, especially different sizes of companies. A two-person firm may only have a CEO and Vice President. While the title matches, the person who is CEO at a small firm may not be qualified at all to handle a company of 500, let alone 5,000, even within the same industry. IT job titles can be very confusing - one company’s architect is another company’s analyst. Review the job description details as part of your search. If you’re not sure the title matches your previous knowledge of the position’s description, there are plenty of web sites online to help you identify many of the possible iterations of that particular title to find more qualified candidates. As a boss, share links to these sites with your sourcers to gain a significant advantage over software. 

10) Provide Solutions and Suggest Alternatives, Not Excuses

Sourcers are deep in the weeds, chopping through, searching for the “purple unicorns” - candidates that are very difficult to find. Sometimes, they stand alone with no more options to search. At least they think so. As the boss, time for you to get involved. 

“So, you’ve hit the end of the internet, then?"

Be truthful with your client and have a conversation with them. You are experiencing difficulty in identifying qualified applicants for this position. You may have some ideas and maybe they will, too. Brainstorm. Review your data. What’s missing? Where would this person be online when they are not working? What social media sites might they have profiles on (beyond LinkedIn, even Facebook)? Are there specific sites, like GitHub or StackOverflow for IT or Behance for designers where this person may be? What about forums? Perhaps even looking at Deep Web options where nothing is indexed in typical search engines like Google or Bing. Offer to test a few options, manage their expectations and start trying new alternatives. If it doesn’t work, you will still have learned something and that knowledge may become useful later.

11) Solicit Feedback

Feedback is meant to help you perform better. Normally nobody likes to hear what they have not done well but constructive and supportive feedback taken positively will help you to develop your people and assist them in progressing in their career. If they are listening in on the call and hearing the client’s pain, they can begin to understand the client’s expectations better and make more effort to achieve them. Advocating for your team will build team unity and support.

Having regular discussions with your client is essential in forming a bond and trust. Asking for permission to speak openly about client issues is a good way to start a difficult conversation with a client. As the boss, you are accountable for your team’s work. If the client’s actions or inactions are affecting performance, you should speak up and advocate for a better outcome. Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. It will just make the client go away. 

12) Passive Candidates Are Difficult to Convince But Worth It

Passive candidates are not the “low hanging fruit” of recruiting. They are usually established in a company and may be content with the work, like their teammates, have a supportive boss that respects their work and they may be very satisfied with their jobs. They may feel their work has meaning. Attempting to move a well qualified prospective candidate will require an excellent recruiter with the soft skills to entice the candidate from his/her comfort zone. Recruiters have to spend more time with passive candidates to convince them to apply, but it is nearly always worth it. 

Unfortunately, being unemployed as an applicant makes some hiring managers squeamish. They think there must be something wrong with them if they aren’t already employed. I know, I know. Many well qualified people are out of work due to events that are completely out of their control such as a major downsizing or a pivot in strategy that closed down the project they were working on. These aren’t necessarily things sourcers care about, but they should be cognizant that a recruiter’s time is money. The more time spent convincing passive candidates to make a move can be worth it, but not always. Sourcers should be mindful of this and understand the trade-offs a recruiter might make when it comes to how they spend their time. As the boss, develop your sourcers to understand these factors. Discuss the possibility of them sending a collection of both active and passive candidates whenever possible, so the recruiter has options. This is another valuable technique that cannot be duplicated by software.

The Industry is Changing

As more and more software attempts to disrupt the industry, sourcers need to be ever more vigilant in learning new search techniques in order to remain relevant. The human brain is quite a magical thing. Self-learning AI will never be able to develop relationships or read between the lines of a resume to assess soft skills. When sourcers aren’t thinking about what they are doing, not thinking critically, and doing the bare minimum required to complete an assignment, they will become quickly replaceable by software. Excellent sourcers will always be needed, especially when it comes to challenging job requirements that require a good sourcer’s creativity, empathy, visualization, and strategy.