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Permalink Reply by David Pritchard on April 18, 2009 at 7:41am

AMEN

Judy golden said:

I was a recruiter and very successful. Then came the profit oriented shift to Sourcing or cybersleuthing = to me just plain hacking. I would not go that route. I am not considered hireable
With the current downturn some people may have the opportunity to put integrity back into recruiting.
Its not all about tricks and tricking people

JGolden

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Permalink Reply by Keith Halperin on April 18, 2009 at 9:16pm

Back to the "Death of Sourcing".
I'm interested in finding out what types of sourcing folks do, and how much you charge for it, e.g.:
1) What types of internet sourcing services do you perform- board scraping, deep googling, x-raying, etc.?
2) What types of phone sourcing services do you perform- voicemail mining aka "The Slow and Dumb Method," rusing, non-ruse direct calls, etc.
Also, what kind of searches are beyond your capabilities: too hard, take too long, etc.?

If you charge a low rate, why are you as good as people that charge much more?
If you charge a high rate, why are you better than people that charge much less?

I'd like to get a general idea, let our readers know, and then start putting together a directory of sourcers.

Thanks,

Keith Halperin keithsrj@sbcglobal.net 415.586.8265

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Permalink Reply by Thomas on April 20, 2009 at 5:10am

Hi

This is a wonderful opinion. The things mentioned are unanimous and needs to be appreciated by everyone

scott

Job Search Advice

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Permalink Reply by Deb Ryan on September 22, 2010 at 11:45am

This is refreshing news. I find the whole Boolean stuff very confusing. I like the direction you think the recruiting profession is going towards, more my style.

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Permalink Reply by Eva C Coppola on September 22, 2010 at 12:22pm

In strong agreement with you John - - particularly in the "people" (I read integrity) arena - to explain; I am a soon-to-be-former recruiter who loathes the industry because such a huge percentage of people who call themselves recruiters are merely commoditizers of other human beings. YUCK. My motivation to do this work was to parlay my technical background as a COBOL programmer (and all-around techie) and my strong communications, cultural, linguistic, and inter-personal skills (adding good instincts to the mix), and be a uniquely strong and resilient (technology) recruiter who would be valued for that combination of experience, classiness, and ability. It seemed that for a short time I had gotten some of that recognition. My candidates definitely appreciated my approach because I actually knew what I was talking about, and I actually respected them. It was unfortunately short-lived, and in one day, I was treated as obsolete - - hiring pretty much stopped altogether, and my skills were not considered valuable beyond the company's need for "lists". In my struggle to regain the respect I had (at least I thought I had), I became more and more frustrated and disgusted with the way the industry runs.

I have returned to my techie roots (studying Java), and am now preparing for interviews and the SCJP certification exam (Sun Certified Java Programmer).

I guess there will come a day when I will again be on the other side of the desk with a recruiter looking to make some money on placing me as a Java developer, and I'll have to avoid all but the few who show that they actually have integrity.

*sigh*.

John Sumser said:

You know, Maureen, the great thing is that the twin arches on the uniform look just like a Star Fleet Insignia, if you squint your eyes. You save on your clothing budget at the same time.

People who do actual telephone sourcing are really courageous. The willingness to hear "No" while relentlesly pursuing an objective is laudable. I'm sure that the core skill will endure. It's really hard to build relationships and keep them current.

The vast majority of people who do sourcing these days are glued to their computers running nuanced Boolean search strings. Their output isn't a warmed up connection, it's a list. Why sometimes it even comes from the "deep web".

The shuck and jive about sourcing is about this particular aspect of it. The technical skills are transient. The people skills are not.

My original post wasn't about "phone sourcing". Now that I've had some time to think about it in public, there's some merit to what you are saying.

My guess is that the number of real seasoned pros who do the human side of sourcing is pretty small. My guess is that technology that makes finding people a lot easier will increase the demand for relationship builders. That's a great place to invest good people skills. Building good search strings doesn't get you much when the machine does it for you.

The other thing that is becoming apparent to me is that the term sourcer is no more useful than the term recruiter. We don't have good specific shared meanings for these roles. Generalizations break down in a hurry when we use the same words to mean different things.

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Permalink Reply by Christine McKenzie on October 1, 2010 at 11:11am

I agree that people information is easier to find today then it has been in the past. Everyone has a profile somewhere, has been mentioned online somewhere or even shopped for something online at some point. While all of this information is available, I do believe that increases the haystack. Finding the needle within can be equally as challenging as it was in the past, if not even more challenging then ever. I couldnt agree more : building enduring relationships is key to the future.

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Permalink Reply by Glen Cathey on March 19, 2013 at 9:40am

Just thought I would weigh back in on this line of thinking as it doesn't appear to be going away any time soon (the concept that sourcing will die), if Dr. john Sullivan's 2013 article is any indication:

http://www.ere.net/2013/02/04/the-end-of-sourcing-is-near-the-remai... 

Sourcing will never die - it will only evolve: 

http://booleanblackbelt.com/2013/02/the-end-of-sourcing-1-0-is-near...

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Permalink Reply by Maureen Sharib on March 19, 2013 at 10:38am

Huh.

I see this discussion might come alive again.

I hope so.

Four years is a good long time to let things percolate.

Here's what I can tell you.

Last year we had one of our BEST YEARS EVER.

Not the best but a 3rd or 4th in rank in 16 yrs isn't bad!

I also see John you never came forward with an answer to my:

John, are you saying all the members on LI are Americans with college degrees?

I'm not rubbing salt into your wounds; however - misconceptions like yours are/were/ (at the time) are/were common among the population and LI does NOTHING, in my opinion, to correct them.

In my opinion it profits them to let people think EVERYONE IS ONLINE.

In my opinion they sell their subscriptions to BOTH sides of the equation (what ever happened to the concept "conflict of interest"?) with a wink and a nod instead of a truthful presentation and assessment of the products offered.

$200million members?

In my opinion, my rear end!

(By the way, and once again this is MY opinion, I'd bet dollars to donuts LI is being looked at very closely (past sale practices) just as TheLadders was.  Their product webpages change constantly to stay ahead of probing and scrutinizing eyes.  They just changed up their Recruiter Pro and Jobseeker Pro pages.  The class action guys love big targets like them and need a new one.)

Yeah, and what Glen just said.

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Albright on March 19, 2013 at 10:43am

I have found ZERO need for phone sourcing in quite a few years.  Everything I need to know is available to anyone with half a brain on the internet. 

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Permalink Reply by Maureen Sharib on March 19, 2013 at 10:59am

My mistake.

I see this is a long and varied string.

I'm sure you acknowledged my question somewhere John so please accept MY APOLOGIES!

SM is getting so confusing...

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Permalink Reply by Will Thomson on March 19, 2013 at 11:02am

Jerry, you are right.  Everyone is on the net these days.  When my 5 year old can zip through my Ipad quicker than I can and my 70 year old father is on Facebook nightly, you know stuff can be found on the Net.

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Albright on March 19, 2013 at 11:08am

I'm certain there are quite a few "non internet" people as well.  Though, as a recruiter, I find no need to drag those people out of the basement only to have them realize they want no part of the greater landscape and are quite happy right where they are.

 

No need whatsoever to uncover the people who are not engaged enough to at least have some sense of internet basics.

 

Have at 'em Maureen!

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