Sourcing in Human Resources

What Do You Mean by Sourcing in the HR World?

Sourcing is the act of proactively searching, identifying, and contacting talented and qualified individuals; it is the initial step involved in talent acquisition and recruitment processes.

Sourcing is of 3 types:

• Active Sourcing: This involves engaging and targeting qualified individuals who are also looking for employment.
• Passive Sourcing: This involves contacting qualified individuals who are not currently looking for employment but may be interested in new opportunities.
• Direct Sourcing: This involves recruiting talented individuals without a third-party organization.

What is Recruiting? 

Recruiting is an HR term that refers to the entirety of the hiring and onboarding processes. This recruiting process includes sourcing, as sourcing is the initial step taken by HR and recruiters.

Sourcing vs. Recruiting

While sourcing and recruiting are not the same thing. They are, however, complementary processes, and their end goal is the same. Recruiting is always preceded by sourcing, as sourcing is often the initial or first step in the recruitment process.

How to Develop an Effective Sourcing Plan?

In order to develop a sourcing plan, you must first understand the business and what it requires. When you understand a business from head to toe, only then can you only realize how to run it effectively. So once you study and understand the business, look for the following things:

• Which department needs more members?
• What responsibilities do those new members need to fulfill the job role?
• What qualities and skills do those individuals need to have to perform?
• What is the objective?
• What resources do you have?
• Which sourcing method would be most effective for achieving your target?

Sourcing does not begin and end with a single job opening and a single hire. The goal of any sourcing strategy should be to ensure a steady stream of qualified applicants for open positions, both now and in the future. This will allow hiring managers to quickly fill critical roles with the best possible candidates, easily and effectively.

How to Formulate Sourcing Strategies Effectively?

In order to create the best sourcing strategy, you need to use both textbook methods as well as use your own ideas. You can implement the following methods to develop or improve your sourcing strategies:

1. Create and Maintain a Pipeline 

This includes recording potential and qualified individuals and their information so they can be called upon later when there is an opening. This can be significantly useful and save you resources and time in the future.

2. Use Your Network

Your network includes everyone you come across and can contact. A wide and diversified network allows you to use those individuals in situations where their expertise will prove useful.

3. Employee Referrals 

Deploying an employee referral program is one of the best ways to easily source qualified and reliable individuals, as those who will refer will be incentivized to recommend the best possible candidate they know of because of the reward.

4. Use Social Media

Social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., can prove to be effective "hunting grounds," as they can increase your reach exponentially. That is because, in social media, candidates can find you in addition to you finding them. This speeds things up and gives you more options to choose from.