Staffing Industry Analysts, a leading contingent workforce consultancy, defines direct sourcing as:
“A term commonly used to refer to the process by which a company leverages its own internal candidate pool [i.e. former employees, retirees, applicants from its own applicant tracking system] to place within the company as temporary employees. The temporary employees are most often placed on the payroll of a third-party payroll provider.”
Direct Sourcing can cover various acquisition strategies. It is also often coupled with talent pooling which assists in making the recruitment process quicker and more efficient by ensuring that constant talent is pooled and engaged even when there are no vacancies available.
Most organisations have an informal talent acquisition strategy in place which requires little effort, however, is often uncontrolled, providing potential risks to the organisation in terms of reputation, uncontrolled spend and nepotism.
A formal strategy requires higher resource engagement and financial investment. If a company chooses to do this on their own, it can increase their costs and diminish any savings that may have been saved in the direct sourcing channel.
Partnering with an experienced staffing partner who can manage the programme and payroll will ensure that the costs are contained and still generate savings, which can be attributed to the staffing provider’s scalability and their ability to ramp up and down as required.
A strong partner is also able to drive the sourcing strategy with clear objectives and turnaround times ensuring the programme is a success as they are measured on key performance metrics and thus have a vested interest in ensuring the programme is successful.
