Recently I was in a conversation with my old friend Karen Mattonen about Sourcers vs. Recruiters. I  heard her rant about how as recruiters we were sourcing before Sourcers even existed and how recruiters who do full life cycle recruiting are better because they do all 30 steps in the recruiting life cycle. First let me say that I enjoy my conversations with Karen, she is passionate about so many things, but sometimes she gets so worked up on her topics of passion that I feel like half way across the country I can still see the veins popping out on the side of her neck as she puts all her might into her discussion.

But being the guy that I am, I have a tendency to tune in and out of the conversation. At one moment in the conversation I caught myself daydreaming about a pizza and realized that I had faded out yet again. The closer dinner time got the harder it was to focus on what she was saying. Then I heard her sound like she was asking me something and I realized I had to tune back in because I was clueless as to where she was on her rant.  She was telling me that she had to go. We said our goodnights and mushy stuff and… what else was I supposed to do except for the only thing a man would do, enjoy my dinner.

As I laid back feeling lazy after dinner, I started to ruminate some of the parts of the conversations. My first thought was “I need to eat dinner before I get on the phone with her the next time”, and then I thought; why was she so adamant to differentiate between Sourcers and Recruiters?   Is it that recruiters are really better?

As I pondered this I had an epiphany, or was it that I passed out after that large meal and had a dream? I don’t know but what occurred to me was that perhaps the reason why I faded out of the conversation was because trying to define which is better Sourcer or Recruiter is like trying to decide whether a person who can build a car completely from beginning to end is better than individuals at an assembly line at Ford motor company. 

Can you imagine if Ford insisted that having one person build a car at a time was the way to go?  What would have happened to all modern manufacturing? Also, I could imagine Mr. Ford could make a point for one person being better able to build a car, after all he had just proven just that. But the fact is that he created a new way of building a car thru the dividing of processes and now cars can be built much faster and cheaper.

Recruitment has changed. The new recruiting landscape through the efficiencies of modern communication allow us to engage candidates in so many different ways, as Sourcers/Recruiters we don’t just talk to our candidates in a different parts of the world; now without even talking with them we can know what restaurant they are eating in and be part of their meal conversation.  The way we communicate has changed and therefore the recruiting landscape has changed with it. People are now tweeting, retweeting, posting updates, linking and connecting thru many apps. Now when we are on the phone with anyone; all we have to do is perform a quick search online and we find a lot of information about the person with whom we are speaking with.

So, here is the skinny, new landscape = new rules = new definitions.

Sourcing, candidate research, candidate development, phone sourcing and all the different parts of the sourcing process with all the different labels all form part of the recruitment assembly line process. Sourcers and Recruiters don’t really need to be compared, they have different functions. The larger the recruiting needs the more recruiting horsepower a company needs the more people need to work together to make the final product. There is no way a large company can fill all their hiring goals with single full life cycle recruiters. (I know, many will debate this point too)

You can argue that FLC recruiters earn more money, that they build better, stronger, longer reaching networks or that they are can reach a better caliber of candidate that will last longer at a company, like my friend Karen was adamant about. What I say to that is; there is still need for the service that FLC recruiters provide but, are those reasons to label them as better? Why the need to label at all for that matter? Perhaps it is better to leave this line of thought for others who feel the passion for it.  

The one thing I have learned from nearly 20 years in recruitment is this. Recruitment is cyclical; there are constant changes in technology, demographics and business forces that cause it to continually change. Maybe those passionate discussions are part of the grand design to help us recognize the differences and embrace the new recruiting day.  

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BIOGRAPHY

Moises Lopez has more than a 18 years of experience in recruitment/sourcing, both within corporate and consulting environments serving. He is especially proficient at leveraging technology to enable recruiters to find, and engage more of the right people quickly, as well as to provide more value to client customers. He has developed a high level of expertise in leveraging databases, social networks, applicant tracking systems, and the Internet for talent identification and acquisition.  He supports the delivery of large-scale technology and system integration and consulting solutions for Fortune Global 500 companies and large public service agencies as well as multiple industry groups by developing, executing and managing sourcing strategies to create pipelines.

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