Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.08: The Death of Sourcing

(Feb 27, 2009) Sourcing, as currently practiced, is a short term phenomenon. There is money to be made in the field today because the techniques required to find people are arcane and confusing. Additionally, with the strong exception of Avature and Broadlook's products, there are no useful tools for the automation of the process.

Meanwhile people are getting easier and easier to find.

The next waves of innovation in social networks will be all about making the membership accessible to each other. Right now, finding additional network nodes, new friends or interesting potential connections is a black art. You've got to be a Boolean Black Belt. You need a guru. There's an entire consulting industry built on specialized knowledge.

You may rest assured that this situation will not last.

The web is best when it tears down the friction that separates information from the people who need it. The folks who work hard mining data manually today will be flipping burgers in the near future. The skills required to move forward are unlike the ones being taught. Contemporary sourcing is a dead-end occupation with little in the way of transferrable skills.

Next generation recruiting is about relating intimately, not about mutual discovery. It's about fidelity and long term value exchange, not one night stands. It's about data that updates itself because the relationship is constantly working. Finding each other? Easy. Building an enduring relationship? Hard.

For a while, sourcing will be a high dollar, easy pickings income source. But, in the relatively short term, the need for the expertise will evaporate. Former sourcing luminaries will be familiarizing themselves with the alarm on the French fry machine and the relative difference between Rare, Medium and Well done.

Evaporate, as in "What air freshener scent would you like with your car wash?"

So, what do you do if you're a sourcer (or any kind of Recruiter, for that matter)?

Get really good at being a productive member of an online community. Join stuff, volunteer, get experience.
Develop repeatable methods for discovering new communities and joining them.
Develop community management skills (Jason Davis is a good role model).
Stop acting like an email address is a relationship or a list is a community.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendfeed. Catch up with me.

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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.