Successful technical searches are research-led. The best IT sourcers dig deep before they build their candidate lists, and understand who they’re leaving out. Here’s how to find one. An internal recruiter is managing lots of roles at the moment and doesn’t have time to work out where candidates for a particular niche, technical position could be hiding. They have access to good tools and some solid boolean skills, but are finding it tricky to work out who to target in a region they’re less familiar with. Inbound candidates aren’t a great fit and shortlists are thin. Sound like a familiar scenario? That’s where specialist IT sourcing services can add value. And that value has nothing to do with the number of LinkedIn messages being sent.
What is sourcing?
The sourcing process is all the things that need to happen to identify and engage with passive candidates who might make suitable hires for a set of open roles. It starts well before the first message is sent and carries on after the shortlist is delivered. Done well, a monthly retainer for sourcing can solve thin pipelines for specialist technical roles, but only when it includes everything in this list:
- Detailed mapping of the candidate market
- Detailed mapping of companies to target within the market
- Well-researched search string strategy, including booleans and use of AI tools to improve targeting and message personalisation
- A considered approach to working through the pile of potential candidates, recognising indicators of relevant experience, and flagging uncertainties
- Outreach to passive candidates, with a personalised angle and contextual relevance
- Ongoing optimisation of messaging, with A/B tests and tweaks based on response quality and recruiter feedback
- Delivery of well-explained shortlists that add to the work of your in-house recruiting team rather than duplicating it
- Weekly feedback on the market, including a view on profile demand, hot and cold buttons with candidates, and tweaks to consider around job specs or comp
That last piece is often missing from sourcer briefs, but it can help hiring managers get a handle on market dynamics, back up business cases for new budget, or feed back on whether roles are specified at the right level. Without it, the hiring team only sees the output of the search and none of the reasons behind it.
Successful searches start with research and understanding
Good IT talent sourcing is as much about who sourcers leave out of searches as it is about who they include. They should be able to explain who they excluded and why, what the remaining candidates have in common, and where they’ve seen relevant experience signalled differently from one role to another. The best sourcers will have spent considerable time upfront, researching the market and figuring out what to look out for within profiles. Highly sought-after candidates might not be using the same language as your job description, but may well have picked up relevant skills alongside their core experience.
This could be knowledge of specific frameworks or tech stacks, a track record of building at scale, or a deep dive into security, payments or embedded. Their GitHub could provide evidence, as might a previous role. In AI and data engineering roles, candidates might have relevant talks they’ve given or papers they’ve written. A sourcer should be able to talk through how they’ve used all of that information to hone search strings, and explain any iterations. Most sourcers will find they tweak them three or four times before they’re confident they understand which signals to prioritise and which candidates are worth dismissing as false positives.
Where do specialist sourcers add value?
Sourcing makes most sense for in-house teams who understand the ins and outs of hiring within their organisations. Recruiters will know about team and company politics, who’s interviewing candidates and the hiring manager’s preferences. But where recruitment processes are ticking along fine, except for a dry-up at the start of the funnel, specialist IT sourcers can help in a number of situations:
- Recruiters are stretched across lots of searches
- Inbound CVs are largely irrelevant
- Required skills are rare, or the role is a hybrid
- The candidate market is particularly hard to target
- Teams are being built or grown across CEE, the EU and the UK
When will sourcing fall short?
Increasing volume doesn’t solve technical searches that aren’t well calibrated from the outset. No number of search strings, LinkedIn messages or CVs delivered will make up for sourcers not doing the legwork upfront to really get to grips with a candidate market and understand what makes one role different from the last. For AI, data engineering, platform engineering, cybersecurity and lots of other technical searches, the most suitable candidates are in work and won’t be refreshing their LinkedIn profiles daily or checking their DMs hoping for some inspiration. So when sourcing IT candidates for these roles, sending lots of identical messages based on an assumption about job titles is unlikely to bear much fruit.
What to expect from a great IT sourcer
Successful shortlists in tech talent sourcing come with lots of caveats and context. Sourcers should be sharing their thinking on why particular candidates make sense for the search, which boxes they’ve confirmed are ticked, where they’re less certain, and where hiring teams might want to probe during interviews. What red flags have they noticed, and what angle are candidates most likely to respond to? Beyond delivering shortlists of strong candidates, you should expect weekly feedback from your sourcer on the candidate market and the search itself. It’s valuable insight into whether job specs are pitched at the right level, where the comp sits in the market, and where tweaks may help widen or hone the profile you’re after before several more weeks are spent down the wrong path. If, after two or three weeks, your sourcer isn’t giving you more insight into the market than you had before you started, just lots more CVs, it’s worth asking where their research process has taken them, and whether the spreadsheet has really grown any wiser.
Why retainers suit sourcing
Sourcing projects are an ideal fit for retainer model recruitment, where the focus is on digging deep into talent markets, nurturing relationships with candidates over time, and continually testing and optimising messages. Specialist technical recruiters with experience in your region and discipline should be able to evidence all of this and show how they complement the work of your internal recruiters. At EvoTalents, sourcing engagements for tech roles are usually set up this way, with the market map and the weekly feedback format agreed before any outreach goes out.
