Everything You Need to Know About Direct Sourcing
We all know that hiring, onboarding, and training of the workforce is both time-consuming and costly. That’s why it’s so painful for many organizations during the pandemic. Sharp drops in demand across numerous industries have forced many to shed headcount. As recovery may occur in unpredictable ways, hiring authorities face an excessive burden to engage in traditional sourcing processes and all that entails. Enter the practice of direct sourcing, an innovative method for talent acquisition and management.
About Direct Sourcing
First, what is direct sourcing? It is the creation, population and management of a talent pool populated with professionals meeting needed skills and capabilities who are available for engagement when needed. Best in class direct sourcing solutions go beyond stagnant talent pools to the creation of highly interactive talent communities. Direct Sourcing can be delivered by self-sourcing where your internal personnel take responsibility for program design, curation, recruitment and candidate nurturing, or it can be delivered with the assistance of a third party talent consultant – often within a Managed Services Program or other Contingent Workforce Management program Here’s everything you need to know about direct sourcing in a digestible format.
Benefits to Direct Sourcing
Direct sourcing yields numerous benefits. It enables faster hiring often at reduced cost. It provides a great path for engaging niche talent not reached through traditional sourcing methods. It offers greater flexibility in hiring for projects. It can enhance your employer brand, making you more competitive in the war for top talent. By drawing needed talent quickly from the pool of pre-qualified, pre-screened candidates, it increases your business agility, scaling your workforce up or down as conditions change.
Direct sourcing is easy to try without large, upfront investment. Consider fielding a pilot program for direct sourcing to help determine if the practice is right for your needs. Build a talent pool of one type of worker role or for several roles within one preliminary location. If it yields favorable results, then you can roll it out across a larger segment of your organization.
Is there a Downside to Direct Sourcing?
Direct sourcing requires strong engagement in the form of building your talent pool from current and past employees, contractors, freelancers, and so on. Even if initially well designed, talent pools rapidly become stale without continuous interaction with candidates before, during and after each engagement.
When self-sourcing, Direct Sourcing puts the operational burden you. When you use a staffing company or other supplier, they assume responsibility for screening, verifying credentials, onboarding, and ensuring legal and regulatory compliance.
Direct Sourcing takes time and effort to establish a robust network of qualified candidates before the cumulative effects of a direct sourcing strategy is felt. So, be prepared to spend time building and maintaining the pool of talent that will feed your practice. The risk is giving up too quickly if you don’t see results right away.
Finally – although the issue is not specific to direct sourcing – the engagement of non-employees requires an administrative plan addressing contract negotiation, rate establishment, worker payment, tax reporting, performance issue resolution, offboarding, and more.
Connect with nextSource
Unsure of your workforce management options? nextSource can deliver all aspects of a high performing direct sourcing solution, including management of workers while on assignment. Allow nextSource to shed some light. Contact a representative to learn about options and create a workforce strategy that works for you and your business.
