I am taking a break from my series on lesser sites, to write this post because of a few interactions I have had over the last week or so with “sourcers”. These interactions led me to wonder what is wrong with sourcers these days.

I have been contacted several times, by sourcers asking me were they could look for certain niche skills. I provided several locations, tools etc. Then they basically shocked the heck out of me by saying, and I am paraphrasing, “you mean I have to contact people that may not be looking”. As you can imagine I was floored. I mean really this is part of what we do; I would argue a core competency. Yet here they were asking.

Once I picked my self off the floor, I asked them, how they do it. Well this time I was not floored, again paraphrasing “I see how applied, look on Linkedin and job boards, that’s all.

Of course I did not leave it there; I asked how their manager and hiring managers feels about that. Now I got surprised again, and again I am paraphrasing “my manager wants it that way, and my hiring managers don’t ask”. I then said how many hires a year do you make? The avg was 18. I said and does your manager think that is good? I got back a “sort of”.  They said their managers understand there are only so many places they can search. Of course I followed up with what about your hiring managers, the answer was “no”.

At this point it became obvious to me that there are a lot of DB sourcers, and managers out there. Staffing professionals that just don’t realize there is life outside of DBs. That there are people out there who hire 100s a year by looking in places other than the DBs. What also because obvious is there are a lot of companies out there that don’t know any better, or don’t care.

Now what’s my point? My point is, that for some reason mediocrity has become the norm, and weather by design, laziness, lack of knowledge, or desire there are a lot of staffing professional out there that just do the minimum. Now why should you care? Well you should care because they are taking up jobs that they really can’t do, they are setting examples that impact how all of us are viewed, and they are what’s wrong with staffing.

Now before anyone says anything I only partial blame these people, I also blame their managers that seem to not only accept it, but authorize it. I also blame us, that’s right us, those of us that do get it and do it right. I blame us for not saying something.

Now what can be done about it? Simply we need to train the managers and professionals, so they know what staffing is really about. Organizations like “Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals” can help push an agenda that helps these people get the training they most definitely need. What I do know is if we do nothing, then our reputation will suffer, and in the world of staffing your reputation, along with your numbers means everything.