The ’big pitch’ to sell the idea of building such a team to Hewitt’s leaders involved three goals: increase quality and quantity of candidates, and decrease costs. But to accomplish those goals, the right people had to be in place to do the job. “We were going to build a sourcing organisation like no one else,” said Chris J Gould, global strategic sourcing leader. “We were selling a concept that didn’t exist.”

The North American arm of Hewitt had previously “very high use” of career boards to source candidates. The results were not tracked and as a result there was little co-ordination of the boards’ use.

An experienced talent acquisition manager was hired. Then five Hewitt employees in India who had never before recruited were chosen to fill the first group of sourcers’ roles. Initially, they assisted North American sourcers and had no contact with North American recruiters. Their training included working for two weeks on one job requisition.

The department now includes 20 sourcers who have their own requisition load, work directly with North American recruiters and conduct strategic research. Their responsibilities are expanding to a global remit. “Now everyone is a fully trained sourcer,” Gould said. “We went from searching Monster to doing research and executive level searches.”

A sourcing dashboard has been put in place to easily see where all candidates are being sourced from. “If a job hasn’t been filed by a source for some time, then they are told not to use that channel again,” said Tim O’Connor, talent acquisition sourcing and social media manager.

Asked by an audience member what Hewitt’s recruiters now do, O’Connor said: “Now they’re only talking to the best [candidates], and they’re building relationships with the hiring managers.”