I am not #SourceCon. We all are.
As someone who has been in sourcing for nearly a decade now, I’ve watched the function ebb and flow through recessions and boom times. When I first started sourcing back in 2002, it was a boom time for sourcing. Everyone was excited about it and wanted a sourcer to add to their team. Around 2007, things started getting a little tight and by 2008 sourcing was one of those job functions to be cut first from company budgets because “it wasn’t a necessary function” to keep a company going. Now, sourcing is making another comeback — everyone wants to learn about sourcing; everyone wants the “secret sauce” for finding every single candidate in existence.
The problem with this is that there is no one “secret sauce” — yes, there are specific potions that will help in different industries, but when you boil it down to the basics, the “secret sauce” comes from community cohesion. And this can come in the form of your recruiting team which consists of recruiters, sourcers, and HR folks, or the sourcing community from which you can learn techniques, yes, but more importantly, from which you can learn the thought processes behind the magic of sourcing.
The whole collective effort of the community is greater than the sum of its individual parts. You — we — are all #SourceCon.