In some ways, I pride myself on being able to recruit without having to spend a dime on anything more then the basics. I grew my LinkedIn network to over 11,000 direct connections and became a master at guessing email addresses. Boolean searching is not only tricky, but really fun. It brings a smile on my face to find the right person just from Google. Its that needle in the haystack game in many ways.

But who really knows how to do this? Is this a lost (or never found) art form? When I first started in recruiting, my second day began with a resume and a list of law firms. I picked up the phone and called until someone didn't hang up and then until someone was interested. The core to sourcing is truly finding the needle.

Today, there is so much focus on "bang for the buck" that it is seen at taboo to try and source with out having at least two job board accounts, a LinkedIn Recruiter account, and a couple other paid services. There is also a trend that I really like, dedicated sourcers. The question is, how well do they do at maximizing productivity and results? 

Metrics are big now. People and their results are divided by how much you make an hour. This gives a value for your time to the company. It can be a really low number or ridiculously high, depending on what types of positions being sourced and the dedication of the individual. Sure, you can use free sources or free styles that net good results, but is it more valuable to your company to just spend 10's of thousands of dollars to make it a little quicker for you?

How much do you feel your time is worth?