Sourcing and Talent Pipeline Trends to Kick off 2023

A panel discussion built around a live audience poll on sourcing priorities looks at what is actually working for talent acquisition teams as they head into a tighter, noisier hiring market. Passive talent pipelines came out as the top priority among attendees, and the conversation digs into why that is and what it takes to do it well.

Key points covered include:

• Why relying on inbound applicants no longer works, and why sourcers need to build relationships with candidates long before a role opens, so the organization can hire best-fit talent rather than first-fit talent.
• The strain on recruiting teams asked to handle both net-new hiring and backfill for attrition with fewer people, and why protecting employees' time off and mental health matters as much as protecting the business.
• A real example of a junior sourcer landing a hard-to-reach senior engineer, who had ignored dozens of outreach attempts, by opening a conversation around a shared interest rather than a job pitch, illustrating the value of creativity and authenticity over templated messaging.
• A framework for treating sourcing as a sales function, with sourcers as the frontline salespeople for the employer brand, and a call to break down hierarchy between hiring managers, recruiters, and sourcers so all three work as equal partners.
• The need for job titles and messaging that resonate externally rather than internal jargon, and for recruiting and marketing teams to stay aligned so employer branding matches what candidates actually experience.
• The case for an internal service-level agreement between sourcing teams and hiring managers, guaranteeing fast feedback on submitted candidates, backed by executive sponsorship so it actually gets enforced.
• A suggestion to build competitive "battle cards" for recruiting, borrowed from sales teams, to help recruiters position open roles against competitors during slower hiring periods.

Together these points sketch out a practical picture of what disciplined, creative sourcing looks like when budgets are tight, teams are stretched, and candidates have more noise to filter through than ever.