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Talent Sourcing: There is No Degree For It

Preaching to the choir here, but there is no degree for Talent Acquisition, Recruiting, or Talent Sourcing.  We can get a Human Resource Management degree, and that degree is vital to understanding employment law.  However, there is no such thing as a bachelor’s degree in Talent Acquisition.  We are lucky enough to have some great training and certificates available thru SourceCon/ERE, Recruiter Academy, AIRS, Brain Gain, and Sourcing Certifications. Thank goodness for those. But for us in talent sourcing, we are in the business of research curation. That research curation requires diligence and a constant that doesn’t end in a terminal degree.

So, what is research curation? A Sourcer is equivalent to a reference librarian. If you aren’t aware of that, I can paint a picture for you.  Back in the day before the internet, answers to any questions meant a trip to the library.  In high school, when a book report or paper was due, it meant a trip to the library. Library users were able to use a card catalog and look up most research articles, books, and magazines, on most any type of topic, all on their own. That would be akin to a Google search today.  In every library though, there was a holy section of books. Not accessible to the public to touch on their own but guarded by the reference librarian.  This reference librarian had first editions, full encyclopedias, genealogy, greys anatomy, and other scientific manuscripts, and myriads of other collateral too expensive and specific to leave out for the general public.  They were keepers of specific information. If you couldn’t find it on your own, you enlisted the help of a professional reference librarian.  A Talent Sourcing professional has access to most pieces of information found in the card catalog of data. But if you want the specific, the special, the hard to find, you enlist the help of today’s version of a reference librarian, the Sourcer.

Not every search that a Talent Sourcing professional is engaged with requires a deep dive on the internet with complex Boolean strings. Finding candidates off Indeed and LinkedIn can still be 60% of a Talent Sourcers hires. There is no shame in the low-hanging-fruit game. However, a Sourcer wants to leverage 100% of the workforce, not just the active candidates on paid job boards. To access 100% of the labor pool, a Sourcer must have records and data stored that directs us on our quest for the most qualified. To that, I will give you a peek inside a Sourcers inventory and library.

A Sourcers Library includes:

A good Sourcer can rattle off twenty places to find a single candidate for any job thrown at them. Not because they went to school for it. Not because they received a bachelor’s or master’s degree in it. But because they practiced a good behavioral habit to be curious and care about how they store that research for later use.

For your next Sourcing hire, look to add a training program. Realize the shortage in our industry for trained professionals and invest in them. They need to learn the skills somewhere.  Happy Hunting.

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