Welcome to SourceCon:
Effectively Create and Grow a Recruiting Firm’s Web Brand Presence via the Efficient Use of the Growing List of Communication Tools
When I assess what has brought about the most change and will continue to bring about the most change in names sourcing and Internet recruiting, I’d say it’s the staggering growth in the creation of new tools that expand the reach of communication and brand management. In essence, the sourcing toolkit has expanded greatly and the subsequent reach provided helps to increase brand awareness to passive and active candidates.
Yet the increase in the number of tools doesn’t necessarily equate to an increase in efficiency in getting your message to the right people and helping to cut down on your sourcing time. It’s one thing to have a tool and it’s another to learn how to use the tool properly. Hence, the ability to effectively increase the reach of your messages, and to control and expand your firms’ brand, will equal the knowledge of how to use these tools.
For this reason, I’d say that for recruiting firms to survive and thrive in 2011 & beyond, it will be an absolute necessity that the names sourcer / researcher branch out beyond the traditional role, embrace the new tools of communication, and learn how to effectively use them to create and maintain a firm’s web brand presence. This has become clear to me, not only in my current role, but reflecting on past positions, and relates especially to non-corporate, third party recruiting firms.
A good Sourcer enjoys research, marketing, and building long-term relationships with people. As I said in my conversation earlier this week, Sourcing as a separate specialty in Recruiting is a fairly recent “job title” as a senior recruiting role. Before the advent of major Applicant Tracking Systems, almost *all* recruiters had to be strong in both sourcing and account management. My Mom was a nurse recruiter back in the 80′s and her eyes glaze over when I talk about Boolean search strings and the various ATS’s I’ve mastered over the years. It’s only when I talk about posting a job or attending a live networking event that she actually has a frame of reference. For her it was about picking up the phone, reaching out to her professional colleagues for referrals and recommendations, and meeting with both campus and industry candidates.
But Sourcing is more than just being able to run a Boolean search query. Much, much more. Sourcing is also about employment branding. As the first line in a *proactive* recruiting process, we are the initial representative of our organization. A large part of our success depends on creating long-term relationships, keeping them warm, and building trust and reliability. On top of that, we need to know the state of the industry both locally and nationally so we are aware of employment trends. Strong research and analytic skills are key to our profession.
