By Balazs Paroczay
Vice President, Global Sourcing
Talent acquisition has evolved at an incredibly rapid pace over the past 15 years – probably more than it did throughout the entire 20th century. And with it, we also saw the rise of candidate sourcing. Today’s recruiters have tools at their disposal that their predecessors could only dream of, being able to find candidates of all skill levels all over the world. Organizations that equip their recruiters with these innovations, while enabling rapid communication throughout their recruiter community, are finding better candidates quicker in this ultra-competitive job market.
A brief history of sourcing and recruitment technology
At the beginning of the 21st century, the internet made available a massive amount of digital data that gave recruiters an entirely new way of identifying, assessing and engaging qualified passive candidates. Those “sourcers” who refined the best search tactics, developed secret sourcing “hacks,” or used smart and complex Boolean queries that allowed recruiters to combine keywords or phrases with words like “AND,” “NOT” and “OR,” became pioneers in this new field.
Working with recruitment marketing software became easier. Organizations eventually democratized the sourcing process and began employing hundreds, even thousands, of sourcers scattered across regional hubs. This showed that sourcing was not strictly the domain of technology geeks and could be taught to any recruiter. But it also led to a disconnect between those responsible for finding and engaging candidates and their internal stakeholders. Collaboration and trust between sourcers and partners like talent acquisition, human resources, and hiring managers suffer under this setup, compromising overall satisfaction, quality of hire, and even candidate experience.
To address this disconnect and make the most of the capabilities and connectivity that today’s technology provides, Cielo built a solution that bridges the gap between sourcing and other functions in the hiring process. We call it our Distributed Sourcing Model, and it can deliver top talent to an organization quicker, help recruiters expand their expertise and connectivity, and provide a more positive experience for candidates.
What is Distributed Sourcing?
We believe sourcing should not simply be a specialized task for dedicated sourcers. Everyone involved in the selection process – recruiters, hiring managers, future colleagues and peers, HR – needs to contribute. This core philosophy drives our Distributed Sourcing Model, which harnesses the knowledge of experts throughout our organization instead of just relying on the sourcing acumen or skills of a single sourcer. For us, the knowledge needed for success is within our own network of 2,000 recruiters around the world who seek, engage with, and hire candidates for organizations across most industries.
Typically, the recruitment industry uses decentralized sourcing methods that rely on offsite or offshore resources that are detached from and unfamiliar with the client organization’s culture, goals, hiring-manager preferences and team nuances. Our method goes beyond that. We inform and equip our recruiters within our client organizations to source for themselves by providing them access to technology and expertise across our entire organization.
How does Distributed Sourcing work?
In previous models, a recruiter would either work with an offshore sourcer or run their 360 recruiting desk, meaning they are responsible for the entire recruitment cycle as well as finding their own clients to recruit for.
There are challenges in both scenarios. Working with an offshore sourcer means the sourcing function is disconnected from recruiting. When the sourcer goes to hand over the candidate to the recruiter, critical information may get lost, misinterpreted, cultural nuances will not be heard, and misalignment often arises between the parties. Recruiters who run a 360 desk, as talented and resourceful as they may be, often do not receive the right training on deep-dive sourcing. They also just do not have enough time to conduct sourcing in the proper way because of all their other responsibilities. This model brings sourcing close to the business, but it does not give recruiters the tools and enablers they need to succeed.
Both of these methods can lead to a less-efficient hiring process that results in:
- lower hiring-manager satisfaction
- longer time-to-fill
- a poor candidate experience
- lower Quality of Hire
Cielo uses a Distributed Sourcing Model as part of its recruitment process outsourcing approach. With this model, every single Cielo recruiter has on-demand access to the knowledge, experience, and expertise of a network of 2,000 professional recruiters worldwide.
For instance, one of our Ohio-based recruiters recently reached out on our company’s intranet looking for ideas and support to help her in filling positions in a remote location. Within the hour, she began getting resources and tactics from fellow Cielo recruiters all over the globe.
In addition to enabling communication among fellow recruiters and subject matter experts, our Distributed Sourcing model leverages recruitment technology to help them work smarter, not harder. For instance, if they need to create a social media campaign for finding candidates, they can work with our brand team and get recommendations in a timely manner.
If they need to gauge the effectiveness of a certain sourcing channel, they can either readily access the appropriate metrics through our analytics platform, SkyAnalytics. They also can reach out to the worldwide community and learn from others’ best practices. Our SkyRecruit platform even automates Boolean searches overnight, so recruiters have results waiting for them the following morning. There is promising potential for machine learning and artificial intelligence to supplement a Distributed Sourcing Model.
Sourcing will continue to evolve, and we’ll continue to invest, grow and improve right along with it. Distributed Sourcing is the next step and can improve the return on investment in recruiting initiatives. It helps recruiters expand their expertise and connectivity, provides a more positive experience for the candidate, and delivers top talent to an organization.
Follow Balazs Paroczay on Twitter @TheBalazs and connect with him on LinkedIn.
