My Sourcing Story : Q&A With Vince Szymczak, Randstad Sourceright

Name: Vince Szymczak
Location : Budapest
Company: Randstad Sourceright
Twitter: @Vinceszy

Q1. What problems are you currently solving in your role?

I am both being called in to and starting a wide range of projects in the domain of sourcing. I recently created the sourcing strategy for one of our new RPO programs utilizing 30 people to support the client in 11 countries. Another implementation I was involved in was a freelance/temporary project where we had to alter the basic RSR delivery model and the tactical elements like where and how the sourcers should search, which were originally built out for perm programs.  I am also working with one of the major employers on how they should create and manage talent pools and communities to decrease time to hire and cost and how can Randstad Sourceright support them in this.

I enjoy creating new solutions, but perhaps an even more important part of the job is when one of our existing programs wants to make a change, become more efficient or simply needs to evolve to a different maturity level. It feels like organizational development mixed with auditing: collecting and analyzing all the data points, interviewing everyone associated with the program, all in order to come up with a solid recommendation plan.

Besides these projects I must look much further and work on level-upping the RSR technology suite and sourcing methodologies for the future – demoing, seeking integration and mapping the possibilities.  What I really love about my job is that every project is new and different, and allows you to perceive talent acquisition and sourcing from one more angle.

“Sourcing is the opening act of the recruitment process, where the candidate and the representative of the company find each other and decide whether there is mutual interest in moving forward.”

Q2. How do you define sourcing

I coined a definition in an article with a different take than the usual definitions.

“Sourcing is the opening act of the recruitment process, where the candidate and the representative of the company find each other and decide whether there is mutual interest in moving forward.”

The main reason to define sourcing this way is the inclusion of active candidates. Splitting your talent pool to two parts, with two separate persons and processes being responsible for the active applicants and the approached passive candidates is very detrimental to the efficiency and the time to hire. Usually it makes the measurement and the source approval (if an investment is needed) harder as well.

Q3. Sourcing tools I use daily?

With many and different projects come many and different industries and markets where I can not possibly be an expert in all of them. I love the Alumni feature of LinkedIn and Facebook’s advertising to give me quick understanding about the market I am working on.

I use “the usual suspects” to find more contact details and information about people, test emails,  and generally sniff around (Prophet, Emailhunter, Context Scout, Lusha, Shane’s Facebook search tool, mailtester.com, https://namechk.com/, etc.). The more the merrier, it’s easy to turn them off and on with Extensity and they have a tendency to stop working/new ones emerging.

What is perhaps less usual are that I like to use semantic suggestive tools like Textio and CrystalKnows. Even if they do not have enough data points to come up with a proper suggestion (which in the case of Crystal I am pretty sure happens rather often), what they do is they force you to think about something you might have neglected before but is an important aspect directly influencing your success!

Q1. Can you tell us the people you admire most in sourcing?

I admire most the sourcers who are working with recruiters and hiring managers with little to no understanding about sourcing but very articulated opinion about its efficiency. Sourcers in certain companies can be the bottom of the talent acquisition food chain, who get the blame if things are not going well but not the recognition when they are. A sourcer who gets into such a situation but turns it around by properly representing sourcing and driving company change has guts and will.

In terms of the influencers I love, that’s a rather long list!

Q5. One sourcing advise I can give to my peers is….

Sourcer, prepare. Do the intake right and make sure you understand the position. It may take 1-2 hours to research what exactly the position/industry means, but you can lose weeks if it turns out you have misunderstood something.

People managing sourcers, make sure your sourcers feel that this is all right. More often than not the reason for improper preparation is because sourcers under pressure feel that every 1 hour should be spent on “productive” things like searching for candidates or calling them.

Vince will be at #sosueu on 27-29 September in Amsterdam.