How Direct Sourcing Works for You

Your workforce is the engine of your business. A good employee increases your income, upholds company values, and strengthens client relationships. However, the right employee won’t always show up when you advertise vacancies. One wrong move during recruitment and you miss out on a good hire. Not to worry, however, you can beat your competitors to top talents through direct sourcing.  

What Direct Sourcing Means 

Direct sourcing solutions enable organizations to strategically leverage their employer brand and capitalize on their own network of candidate resources to create a centralized pool of on-demand talent. These candidates can be engaged, and re-engaged by a company, essentially becoming a reusable resource without the additional costs associated with the use of staffing agencies. 

Direct Sourcing provides a pipeline of talent that an organization anticipates needing in the future and/or on an ongoing basis.  It is not a pool of all potential talent. Direct sourcing starts with talent curation in which the talent pool is organized into segments based on parameters such as job function, skills, diversity, location, experience level, and more. Segmentation is limited to selected segments and forms the basis for the next step in direct sourcing development: talent sourcing.   

Traditional approaches to direct sourcing focus on known talent, including people who showed interest in working for the company in the past but were not selected, former employees, candidates who completed an earlier engagement, and referred workers.  It may also include those reached through direct access to job boards and social media sites.  

Best Practices in Deriving Benefits from Your Direct Sourcing Program 

• Expand your reach to passive candidates through relationships with professional and community associations. 
• The most critical element of direct sourcing success is candidate nurturing.  This transforms a talent pool to a talent community whose membership has been carefully selected, pre-screened, and continually engaged even when not on assignment. 

Direct sourcing works well with volume hiring. This is especially true if you’re looking for the same qualifications in geographically concentrated areas. 

• Remember, not everyone can succeed with self-sourcing. Considerable skill and effort are required to effectively curate, recruit and nurture a talent community.  In a curated direct sourcing program, you own the talent community but can benefit from the assistance or even administration of a talent consultant offered through a Direct Sourcing firm or MSP. 

Advantages 

Businesses and Academic Institutions love direct sourcing because: 

• It’s faster: Because you have trusted professionals in your database, you don’t waste time on extensive screening when filling urgent vacancies.  
• It saves money: You avoid excessive recruiter commissions; some agencies charge up to 30% in hiring fees. Moreover, you can pick someone who matches your budget from the talent community.  
• It fosters stronger relationships: If you hire through an agency, reengaging the talents on subsequent projects can raise contractual issues. The best part is you can rank contingent workers according to their results. This way, you work with only the best talents in the future. 
• It promotes company culture: Contingent workers remain loyal to your business when you periodically re-engage them.  They understand your company values and work passionately because they care about your business. 

We Can Help 

You may recognize the value direct sourcing can bring to your organization but are delaying due to the effort required to get started, the time it will take you to see a return on investment, or where direct sourcing fits in your list of strategic initiatives.  However, you don’t have to do everything by yourself.  

Let’s discuss how nextSource can help you create a hassle free, high impact direct sourcing options today.