The Evolution Of Sourcing (according to the research of Andre Bradshaw)

Here is an interesting thing about the evolution of sourcing.

The amazing Andre Bradshaw has pulled together LinkedIn data of 120K recruiters and sourcers to understand when being a sourcer has become a thing and how that changed over time.

What you see below is that around 2007-2010 the job of the sourcer was born. This was actually the moment when giant social networks got very popular and, therefore, the amount of available online human capital data increased massively. (Remember: LinkedIn was founded in 2002, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006.) Also, this is the exact moment when a financial crisis was forming and going on and companies wanted/had to build large-scale sourcing functions to save enormous money on third-party agencies.

Since 2010 sourcing as an independent job became more accepted and we see a rapid and exponential growth of sourcers, globally. Between 2010-2019 tens of thousands of recruiters took a “pure sourcer job” and with 2019 it reached an ultimate peak.

Now this is the interesting part!

It looks like something happened around 2019. If we read the data carefully we see a robust decline of recruiters whose job title would be sourcer only. Why??

I think the answer is what we’ve given in Cielo’s Distributed Sourcing concept. With (and around) 2019 sourcing has finally become mainstream. That was the time when everyone understood sourcing existed and it WAS a thing. Sourcing has become a daily job (a daily task) of recruiters and also become much easier over time. You don’t have to be a weirdo-geeky sourcer anymore to be able to find candidates. Major channels and sourcing methods are also available and accessible for every recruiter. Booom! What was fancy and niche for ten years it’s just a regular thing going forward…

Sourcing has become everyone’s job and every recruiter must have a good level of sourcing expertise.

Sourcing is table-stakes.

We see the rise of a very new Recruiter DNA on the horizon – the recruiter who can equally (and easily) manage clients and candidates while conducting sourcing, applying tools and tech and providing a data-driven consultancy approach to recruiting. They are the new prototype of Digital Recruiters.

Are you one of them?

We run hardcore Sourcing Masterclass courses that help you transform into this new prototype. Check out our training calendar and register to one of the upcoming classes. We hope to see you soon!

Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash