Editor’s note: Between now and the new year we will be counting down the top 20 SourceCon posts of 2013. This is number 16.
If you really want to tell how good at sourcing someone really is, the first task to assign them should be to find a recent, relevant and comprehensive guide to sourcing-related terms and terminology.
That’s because, well, even in a discipline driven by esoteric buzzwords and omnipresent acronyms, there’s little understanding, or even consensus, as to what, exactly, the sourcing function even entails – and, consequently, how to define what’s often seen as the dark art of talent acquisition.
And that goes for the thought leaders and innovators who are at the cutting edge of this nebulous, but emerging, area of talent acquisition expertise. So if they can’t seem to come to a consensus on what, exactly, sourcing itself means, then the baseline (and barriers for entry) for this critical recruitment function are almost always lost in translation for the rest of us.