The Difference Between Candidate Sourcing and Recruiting

Many HR terms are often thrown around interchangeably—especially the buzzwords sourcing and recruiting.

Companies have a difficult time optimizing their operations when they have both sourcing and recruiting departments. Or maybe it's just one person who is doing both jobs simultaneously without being able to tell one from another.

In either case, you end up giving charge of your workforce and miss out on hiring the top talent.

This article will break down candidate sourcing and recruiting to discuss their differences.

Sourcing vs. Recruiting

Sourcing is proactively building your database with suitable candidates for positions that are currently or might open in the coming future. It’s a continuous process of assessing and evaluating candidates to see if they can be potential hires for your company.

Whereas recruiting is a reactive process that kicks into action only when an open position needs to be filled. It involves weeding out the applications to find the perfect fit for the role.

Role & Responsibilities of a Sourcer

1) Hunting passive candidates: Creating a database of the candidates who might not be looking for a job at the moment but are eligible for applying to your organization.

2) Keeping in touch with potential candidates: Sourcers ensure the database's relevancy by regularly reaching out to the candidates to understand their interests, current career expectations, and plans.

3) Aligning with the company’s growth plan: The sourcer has to stay updated with the company’s hiring goals and requirements to satisfy its hiring demand.

4) Networking: It’s an integral part of a sourcer’s job to be on the constant lookout for talent, and they need to connect with the right community and people for this.

5) Promote inclusivity: A sourcer is the first point of contact for the candidates, so it’s essential for them to bring on board diverse candidates without any confirmation bias .

6) Drive talent to the company: Sourcing flourishes when your employer's image is strong and well-liked by prospects. It makes attracting the right candidates to your company easier. They use social media along with other job platforms to boost the employer image.

 

Role & Responsibility of a Recruiter

1) Close collaboration with departments: Recruiters coordinate with all department heads to understand the requirements for open positions and the candidate to onboard.

2) Candidate screening: To fulfill an open position, the recruiter must assess the candidates based on their merits and qualifications.

3) Scheduling interviews: A recruiter bridges the gap between the managers and the prospects for a fair evaluation. That’s why scheduling interviews and managing the candidate journey is a crucial part of a recruiter’s job.

4) Timely follow-ups: Talented candidates can’t be left to go cold. Timely follow-ups ensure that the candidate remains interested and accepts the offer letter.

5) Negotiate offers: The most important aspect of a recruiter’s work is hiring talent with an attractive salary package. There’s already so much competition that any laxity here can cost you an outstanding talent.

6) Create & update job descriptions: Job descriptions represent not just the position but the company too. A well-crafted one can prompt candidates to apply for you, making head hunting easier.

Difference Between Sourcing & Recruiting

1) Goals

Where the goal of recruiting is to screen the prospects to find a suitable employee, sourcing is primarily concerned with ensuring that you never run out of those prospects, irrespective of whether you’re actively looking to fill a position or not.

Sourcing is a never-ending search for candidates who might be a good fit for any position across the organization.

Recruiting comes into being when there’s a requirement for a new team member. Recruiters work right from screening the sourced candidates to onboarding the candidate to the respective team.

 

2) Tools

Since the roles and responsibilities of recruiters and sourcers are different, they use different processes and tools to fulfill them.

Sourcers network through online job platforms like LinkedIn to pick passive candidates. They are also actively looking for suitable profiles on industry-specific platforms like Github.

Sourcers also use social media proactively to build interest in the company and the work culture.

On the other hand, recruiters streamline their work with the help of tools like referral tools and applicant tracking systems.

They have to maintain a constant connection with the candidates, and that’s why they use cloud communication to track and follow up on the conversations.

3) Candidate Communication

Though both recruiters and sourcers interact with the candidates at some point or the other, the manner of those interactions differs significantly.

A sourcer reaches out to all candidates, whether they’re actively looking for a job switch or not. The agenda of interactions is to introduce the prospect to the company and opportunity. The idea behind it is to encourage the candidates to apply for the positions.

Once the recruiters get involved, they reach out to the candidates to build rapport and have an in-depth discussion to gauge their capabilities.

The recruiter-candidate communication isn’t limited to a few conversations. After the sourcer’s initial assessment, it’s the recruiter who holds the candidate’s hand through the hiring process.

Recruiters brief them about the open position and interview stages and then negotiate the offer.

Should You Have a Separate Team of Recruiters and Sourcers?

Unless you’re looking at the details of the two roles, the difference can seem vague. And that’s why many companies try to cut corners and set up a single team to source as well as recruit.

But with technology taking over the landscape, the candidate pool has increased, and so has the work.

You can’t expect efficiency if the teams are struggling with their responsibilities. Also, to optimize your candidate pipeline and talent pool, you need to streamline your team’s operations.

Let’s see how separating the two functions can help you.

1) Enjoy Better Results

Any recruiter’s goal is to reduce the time and cost of filling a position. But if they are doing the job of sourcer too, that’s bound to compromise the hiring quality.

 

Both recruiters and sourcers come with their own set of skills, and assigning one person to do the job of both can lead to poor execution.

On the other hand, segregating the resources will ensure that your recruiters always have someone to fall back on for the candidate profiles.

When the sourcers and recruiters aren’t worried about each other’s work, they can use that time to assess the candidates better and quickly.

It also leads to better overall team productivity since the recruiters won’t be burdened with the constant work and can recuperate themselves after successful hirings. At the same time, the sourcers can replenish the talent pipeline.

2) Avoid Business Loss

If your recruiters aren’t sourcing at all due to limited bandwidth, it can affect your business continuity when you need an urgent hire.

By the time you gather the prospects, evaluate, and assess them, you will be losing each work day with an open position. Especially in a competitive world like today’s, where each hour matters for business growth, think about how much work and revenue you’ll lose due to workforce constraints.

3) Focused Teams

When teams have clear responsibilities and aren’t always catching up with the work, you can expect them to give you better results without burning out.

It also reduces the chances of errors and delays leading to a better candidate experience.

Where Do They Meet?

Irrespective of the role, the end goal of both teams should be to attract, hire, and retain talent for the organization.

And though the roles of both teams might seem overlapping, defining their everyday tasks and key performance indicators can help you keep your teams on track.

Suppose you don’t have the resources to separate out your teams. In that case, you can outsource the process of candidate sourcing or introduce effective tools like an employee referral system and applicant tracking system to help your teams.