My Sourcing Story : Q&A With Roanne Yee, SYZYGY AG

Name: Roanne Yee      
Country: Frankfurt, Germany
Company : SYZYGY AG
Position: Senior Talent Manager
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roanneyee

Q1. Can you tell us about your current role and what problems you are solving on a day-to-day basis? 

SYZYGY is an award-winning full-service digital agency group. Whilst it has a German base, it also has multiple international offices and brands spread across 8 cities. With currently 600+ employees and growing rapidly, we have a lot of open positions, many of which are considered to be both rare and niche roles in the German digital market.

Until recently, recruitment had been a decentralised process shared by several HR team members and quite frequently external headhunters. I joined SYZYGY a month ago to establish recruitment as a specialised discipline within the HR team in Frankfurt.  Together with my recruiter colleague, our role is to focus on implementing seamless recruitment processes, and maximize hires through internal active sourcing. This also includes enhancing the use of social media channels for recruitment and employer branding. As internal recruiters, we see ourselves as authentic ambassadors of our company, able to convince passive candidates more effectively than headhunters.

Q2. What are the biggest challenges you currently face as a recruiter/sourcer

Our recruitment team at SYZYGY have multiple challenges to meet: Germany’s declining population, which has severely narrowed the employee market, particularly where we look for qualified German speaking talent. Additionally, the creative industry has seen a huge transformation over recent years, with fewer talents willing to work in permanent roles and qualified digital talents being snapped up by heavy competition from either agile start-ups, or big corporations in the consulting and financial sector.

Due to strict data privacy laws in Germany, access to databases and the ability to pipeline talent are limited for recruiters.  This means developing clever long-term sourcing and pipelining strategies is crucial, and building a sustainable and attractive social employer brand is a top priority.

Q2. How do you define sourcing? Sourcing is…..

Detective Work and Problem Solving:

• Gather all Evidence and Facts,
• Hunt your Passive Candidates,
• Identify the Prime Suspects,
• Analyse and Understand their Motivations, Personality and Circumstances, and then
• Create the Ultimate Pitch.

Q3. Sourcing tools I use daily?

• Xing
• LinkedIn
• Google
• Behance
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• Trello
• Notepad (… and lots of Coffee)

Sourcing is 1% search and 99% persuasion.

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

Sourcing is 1% search and 99% persuasion.

Anyone can learn Boolean, do an advanced LinkedIn Search and filter out a list of qualified candidates to reach out to with a job description. But creating engagement is the essence of a recruiter’s job.

Before you source, you need to create your pitch (and this is not just a job description and a link to your website!) Start by gathering information about the business, the company culture, and the role. Dive deep – interrogate the hiring manager, interview members of the team – what drives them, what are their challenges and what is their vision? Then you need to analyse your target candidates – demographics, motivation, where do they come from and what is important to them. Now you can start to craft a winning story and give your open role it’s own “unique selling proposition” – keep it simple but compelling – this sort of communication will engage and attract those passive candidates and make you an Expert Sourcer.