The job title ‘sourcer’ should not designate merely a junior recruiter or stepping stone to another position. 

“Sourcing is a profession,” Johnny Campbell, chief executive of social recruitment firm Social Talent, told the Talent Sourcing Conference UK (#TSUK) last month. He also told the audience at #TSUK, organised by talent acquisition consultancy Talent Works International (TWI) and sponsored and hosted by job site Monster, that a sourcer must be agnostic, as defined by Wikipedia “the view that ultimate certainty is impossible”.

“You have to be open to every avenue,” he adds, explaining that “sourcing is not spending all day on the internet”. Speaking later that day, sourcer Katharine Robinson, better known by her Twitter alias @TheSourceress, told the audience that she actually did “spend all day on the internet, so you don’t have to”. She later clarified to Recruiter that this wasn’t entirely true, and that there are “several different flavours of sourcer” with different specialisms, but that as the newest, “most mysterious” sourcing method, online was the one that “most fascinated” the recruitment industry.

Recruiter asked Robinson whether fellow guests at a dinner party knew what it meant to be a sourcer. “Generally no,” she replied, adding: “There is a question – should they? At the end of the day most people just want to get a job.” Similarly, she says, people aren’t necessarily interested in the supply chain that got their fruit and veg to a supermarket, as long as it’s there for them to buy.

Marie Ashton, TWI’s head of client delivery, said: “The future is in proactive sourcing, identifying people before they’ve even had a chance to walk through the door, regardless of how active or passive they are.”