By: Anne Rutledge – Executive Director Talent Solutions
Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) – the global advisor on staffing and workforce solutions defines Direct Sourcing as ‘a term commonly used to refer to the process by which a company leverages its own candidate pool (e.g., former employees, retirees, silver medallist applicants) to place within the company, as contingent/temporary employees.’
However, this does not mean that all a business’s hiring will be conducted in-house with no external parties involved. A modern approach to direct sourcing usually uses the employer’s brand in job advertising to maximise the number of quality applicants but outsourcing the direct sourcing program your MSP provider and using specialised software for managing and curating talent pools.
Direct Sourcing helps businesses attract, curate, and engage exclusive talent communities by activating your employee brand, supporting hiring needs.
Setting up a direct sourcing program involves several key steps to ensure its effective and aligned with your organisation’s needs.
Where do you begin:
1. Define Your Objectives
Set a clear foundation by identifying what you want to achieve and what makes more sense for your program. This can be a combination of the below or only one:
- Cost reduction: Reduce dependency on staffing agencies and paying high fees.
- Talent quality: Improve candidate quality and cultural alignment.
- Speed: Decrease time-to-fill for key roles.
- Brand control: Own the candidate experience and employer brand.
- Strategic workforce planning: Build long-term talent pipelines.
2. Identify Target Roles
Not all roles are ideal for direct sourcing. Start with:
- High-volume roles.
- Recurring roles: Positions you hire for regularly.
- Hard-to-fill or niche roles: Where agencies are charging a premium.
Analyse historical hiring data to identify which roles offer the biggest opportunity that match your objectives.
3. Build Talent Pools
Create and nurture communities of talent:
- Internal resources:
- Silver medallists (past applicants who were strong but not hired).
- Alumni networks.
- Employee referrals.
- External sources:
- LinkedIn Recruiter, Indeed CVs, GitHub (for tech), etc.
- University partnerships, industry associations.
- Talent marketing (events, content, newsletters).
To be able to organise your talent community use technology that aids you to organise and manage talent pipelines.
4. Engagement
You are not just collecting names and resumes you need to build a community through engagement.
- Outreach: Personalised messages that reflect their experience and how it connects to your roles.
- Engagement: Share content like behind-the-scenes culture videos, employee stories, blog posts, etc.
- Nurture campaigns: Use email sequences to keep them warm over time.
Candidates are more likely to engage with companies they recognise and trust.
5. Create a Process
You need a repeatable, scalable system:
- Sourcing: Who will source the internal and external candidates, is this your internal Talent Acquisition partner or do you outsource?
- Screening: Set up the methods you will use to screen your pipeline and ensure readily available candidates —e.g., phone screens, video interviews.
- Compliance: Especially if hiring contingent workers—ensure all risk assessments are conducted and documented to aid in faster hiring.
6. Measure Success
Define KPIs from start to of your program, the key items that we have identified are:
- Time-to-hire
- Cost-per-hire
- Source of hire (how many came from your direct sourcing efforts)
- Conversion rates (e.g., outreach to interview)
- Quality of hire
- Candidate NPS
Track progress regularly and share reports with stakeholders to build ongoing support.
7. Continuous Improvement
This is not a set-it-and-forget-it program:
- Collect feedback: From hiring managers and candidates.
- Assess and learn: Try different outreach messaging, platforms, and engagement strategies.
How do you take this further
Direct Sourcing recruitment is best in partnership with an MSP or a Contingent Workforce provider, as part of a strategic CWM (Contingent Workforce Management) programme. By working in partnership with a specialist, companies can use their own EVP (Employee Value Proposition) and employer brand to target and attract the best quality and most diverse talent for the most relevant role.
Your Contingent Workforce partner will use technology including AI in recruitment, for matching skills to roles. Benchmarking and forecasting tools are important in the program to create automated talent communities and provide real time reporting and analysis.
Resourgenix’s Direct Sourcing model looks beyond immediate needs, cultivating talent that evolves with your business. We integrate future skill forecasting, performance assessment, strategic talent pool design, and innovative inbound recruiting methodologies. Partnering with Resourgenix means building a sustainable talent ecosystem that drives long-term organisational success.
