Catenon S A : 7 Essential Tips to Maximise Success in your Direct Sourcing Program

According to the latest report 'Direct Sourcing and the Future of Contingent Workforce Management' by Talent Tech Labs (TTL), they argue that the biggest evolution of contingent workforce programs over the next twenty years will be the rise of Direct Sourcing. One of the greatest challenges for recruiters is identifying and activating passive talent; direct sourcing can help to mitigate this problem. Therefore, educating yourself about direct sourcing now, will allow you and your company to hire the best professionals.

What is Direct Sourcing?

Direct sourcing is when a company leverages its employer brand to systematically attract and curate a private database of contractor candidates organised into talent pools. Because direct sourcing is more efficient and scalable than multi-agency staffing, companies can pay contractor markups up to 50% lower than typical staffing agency rates. Direct sourcing is most often outsourced to a third party as Managed Direct Sourcing (MDS). However, it can also be administered by an in-house internal team which is called self-sourcing.

Moreover, direct sourcing is the use of technology and process to enable organisations to use their own brand to attract and hire temporary labor. Its 3 main components consist of:

• A sourcing technology or strategy for getting candidates into the recruiting funnel
• A curation process (this is typically tech and service-enabled)
• A compliance component (this is for handling things like payroll after you make a new hire)

Direct Sourcing is still in its very early days in terms of market penetration; TTL estimate that around $1B of annual contingent labor spend is currently managed via Direct Sourcing, with about 5% corporate adoption. Looking ahead, they expect this figure to grow 10-15x over the next 5 years as more clients embrace the model and expand their scope and spend under management.

7 essential tips to maximise success when implementing your direct sourcing program:

1. Preparation and Project Planning: Raise Recruiting has partnered with the SIA to conduct a comprehensive direct sourcing market and best practice study, which is to be published in May 2021. In the survey results, leading practitioners of direct sourcing programs credited the following factors as most highly enhancing their 'organisation's direct sourcing capabilities and performance,':
   • Have clear ownership and accountability of contingent direct sourcing within the organisation. (54%)
   • Have a clear corporate understanding of co-employment risks and mitigation strategies related to contingent direct sourcing. (50%)
   • Have visible senior-level executive sponsorship of the contingent direct sourcing program. (44%)
   • Have an ROI-based business case for contingent direct sourcing. (42%)
   • Maximise use of employer brand in job advertising and sourcing. (41%)
2. Start With Your Best Opportunities: If your goal is to get as many placements as possible through direct sourcing, a best practice is to focus on the roles you have the best chance of filling.
   • Repeat Positions: where there are repetitively frequent needs that can be reasonably forecasted and given a priority window once the pool is full.
   • High-volume: or seasonal bulk-hiring needs of the same positions where job advertising will effectively attract active candidates.
   • Specific job functions: or areas that would benefit from targeted recruitment and sourcing campaigns.
3. Defining Success: Realistic First Year Expectations: Since every contingent worker sourced from direct sourcing saves money, the percentage of total placements is the key measure of your program's performance. In our experience, direct sourcing should fill 25%-to-70% of the job requisitions typically placed by staffing suppliers during the first year.
4. Use of the Employer Brand: Direct sourcing uses the company's brand and employer value proposition as a magnet to attract candidates. A fully leveraged employer brand could include: Programmatic Job Advertising, Jobs Linked From Careers Site, Inviting Full-Time Employees Applicants, Alumni, & Retirees and Social Marketing to Promote Referrals.
5. Systematised Forecasting and Talent Pool Curation: Forecasting vs. Reacting; direct sourcing collaborates with hiring managers to forecast future needs and proactively attract and pre-qualify talent ahead of upcoming requisitions. Next a Talent Pool Database needs to be built and curated; direct sourcing builds and curates a private talent pool for the employer, which is an asset that grows in value over time. The best place to begin forecasting talent pools is to look back at the previous year's contingent hiring to build a baseline.
6. Using Advanced Direct Sourcing Technology: Platforms specifically built for contingent workforce direct sourcing are better suited to a successful practice than full-time-employee (FTE) applicant tracking systems (ATS). In Talent Tech Labs experience, the following features and functionality enable the rapid scalability of direct sourcing: Talent Pooling with AI Matching, 2-way SMS Text Messaging, Exceptional Candidate Experience, Easy-to-Update Candidate Profiles. TalentHackers is a great example of advanced technology for sourcing; the award-winning company, TalentHackers is the first nodal distributed network platform for the search and recruitment of technology and digital professionals based on paid referrals. Through the dynamic distribution of offers, performed by our algorithm, these reach more profiles than any other platform, activating passive talent, that which is not actively looking for a job. We use Data Intelligence to identify professionals in the IT Community, drawing conclusions about the ideal time, channel and message to impact potential candidates and their environment, and thus maximise the activation of that talent. Hence, impactful direct sourcing can be achieved via the use of advance technology and platforms.
7. What do candidates want? It is important to take into account what potential recruits want from the recruitment process as a whole. The following list consists of things to consider from the applicants point of view:
   • Fair and simple application process
   • Engagement in 'moments that matter'
   • Timely updates and feedback
   • High tech, high touch

How to achieve direct sourcing success?

Direct sourcing is the leading contingent talent strategy to create cost savings and improve hiring speed, quality, and candidate experience. With direct sourcing still in the early stages of adoption, there is a great opportunity for a competitive advantage for first movers.We are on the cusp of a direct sourcing revolution. The playbook for implementation is clear; the steps outlined above are the steps you can take to translate vision and strategy into concrete plans and tactics that will reap the substantial benefits that direct sourcing will deliver.

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