The role of “Advanced Internet Sourcing” in your sourcing plan

After about five years of recruiting, and about three years of being a certified Advanced Sourcer, I wanted to speak about the need, and the place for advanced sourcing. I find that the majority of advanced sourcing training points to this set of tools that eliminates difficult sourcing, shortens your sourcing time, helps you develop other ways to find candidates. The problem I have is that most training is bandaid training as opposed to a “cure”.

Advanced Sourcing are “tools” to assist in your recruiting efforts, and should NEVER replace a traditional sourcing plan of getting people on the phone. We as recruiters have a huge power to impact people’s lives as a whole every single day. It is incredibly tempting for anyone learning advanced tools to assume that they can simply do everything online and never have to pick up a phone anymore. The phone is and will always be the most valuable sourcing tool.

Careerbuilder writes, “Most highly qualified people will not likely volunteer referrals unless you have shown them their due interest, and they have decided that your opportunity is not a good fit for them personally. Only after will they be likely to give you the name of someone who might be worth your time.”

You will never, I repeat that, never ever achieve any sort of candidate pipeline unless you are able to establish a good personal connection. Advanced Sourcing are “tools” that can help you contact people

With a good group of Advanced Sourcing tools like PIPL, Whitepages, LinkedIn, Googlemaps, and a few others, you can get access to phone numbers easily.

Buckman Enochs Cross writes, “Social media works. Job boards work, but neither one is a silver bullet. There is no such thing when it comes to successful staffing. Recruiting on job boards or through social media is no different than recruiting anywhere else. Without a well-executed strategy for how and why you are using that site, whether it is a job board like Monster or a social media biggie like LinkedIn, you will likely fail.“
The good Advanced Sourcing plan is key to any recruiting efforts, and has huge potential value when used as a supplement for traditional recruiting efforts. For example, with a good sourcing plan, less disconnected candidates, more direct contact to people, more submittals, more interviews, and better overall results. I highly recommend a mixed holistic sourcing approach, and a strategic element to all great sourcing plans.

-Staff or Die