Top 6 Benefits of Direct Sourcing

The labor market of today has experienced dramatic and rapid change. That’s being reflected in the way we work. Of particular importance is the rise in contingent workforces. With this rise, employees are now placing a higher value on work flexibility over stability.

For companies, incorporating direct sourcing into their talent acquisition strategies makes it easier to access and connect with the best candidates, regardless of geography. Although it’s not an extremely new concept, direct sourcing with the help of partners like High5 means a continuous recruitment pipeline for organizations actively seeking to fill top positions. 

While direct sourcing will look very different depending on the size of an organization and its particular talent needs, the benefits of direct sourcing as a recruitment method are undeniable. This means companies are reworking their recruitment strategies to earn the following benefits of direct sourcing organically.

Cost savings

Traditional staffing solutions come with a cost. That cost is only going to rise as organizations depend more on contingent workforces. The savings made possible by adopting direct sourcing come from multiple sources.

The most commonly cited is that enterprises can avoid the traditional costs of recruitment and training because the candidates sourced directly can be more targeted. They will have the specific skills needed for the role that needs to be filled, and will have been vetted already. 

There’s also the fact that traditional staffing has no guarantee of resulting in the best candidates. That can lead to higher turnover rates and the need to begin the recruitment process all over again. Direct sourcing via a talent marketplace ensures that the right candidate is offered a position. The result is reduced hiring costs.

Rapid hiring cycles

Hiring with greater speed doesn’t just save money. It can also give organizations a much better strategic advantage, especially if competition is high for the relevant skill sets. Technical skills, in particular, are in high demand, making them hard roles to fill without a more targeted strategy. Using a talent marketplace dramatically speeds up the hiring cycle when recruiting for talent on demand.

You can expect the hiring speed of direct sourcing to be around one week, and occasionally even less, which is one of the major benefits of direct sourcing. Traditional recruitment is more likely to be a month-long process. With the right direct sourcing platform, engaged talent will be managed for you. As the need for a specific role arises, those candidates can be communicated with and hired. When it comes to saving the time of your recruiters, direct sourcing is hard to beat.

Easier budget management of contingent workers

Hiring teams in most organizations will have the responsibility of managing the overall costs of temporary workers. The problem is that there is, too often, no central process in place for managing those costs. 

That lack of a central process leads to recruiters making hasty decisions that can lead to excessive salary costs. There is an immediate lack of control in recruiting, or visibility in terms of how budgets are being used. 

Eliminating rogue spending is one of the key benefits of direct sourcing in recruitment. This does a lot more than simply cutting recruitment costs. It also ensures a more consistent hiring strategy and more aligned talent consistency within the organization.

This isn’t at the cost of nuance either. Direct sourcing also ensures that communications between teams and candidates are managed more effectively. 

Improved relationships with candidates

Temporary employees mean that the issues associated with attracting and retaining those employees are avoidable. However, re-engagement remains a priority. The focus, then, will be on ensuring that relationships with the top talent are positive.

As well as the faster speed of direct sourcing, which improves the employee experience in itself, other relationship benefits become obvious. Contingent workers will choose flexibility, and they will be more likely to engage with the enterprises that deliver a more seamless yet flexible hiring process. 

That leads to a more positive experience, which results in re-engagement and rehiring being easier to guarantee. With hiring agents, it’s likely that organizations will not have access to talent without going through that agency. With direct sourcing platforms, relationships can be continuously managed.

Better workplace culture

Currently, permanent workforces are being replaced by independent contractors, freelancers, and a growing number of external, temporary team members. That can lead to a shift in workplace culture that can be hard to turn into a positive. 

The problem is that workplace culture is a strong indicator of workplace loyalty. All employees, whether they’re full-time or temporary, will not be as invested if workplace culture is disjointed, and top performance will be a struggle. As more organizations turn to contingent workers, it’s vital that they take advantage of direct sourcing with a focus on culture. 

That’s going to rely on taking more control of the hiring process, but it does mean that those temporary workers have a seamless hiring experience that leverages workplace culture. The result will be that everything from the first contact to onboarding is an inherent part of the organization’s culture.

Easy to scale

A direct sourcing technology, such as a marketplace platform that acts as a talent management tool, does a lot more than simply make it easier to find, connect with, and re-engage the talent. It will also make it easier to fill vital positions during rapid growth periods.

Should the business earn a new client and need fast access to skilled workers, they will already have access to a list of pre-vetted and qualified talent. When it comes to scaling, recruiters need the supply of workers to match the demand for those workers. Direct sourcing platforms ensure that HR teams have access to workers as and when they need them. 

That results in a business that’s more agile and can more easily scale. 

In Summary

The benefits of direct sourcing as a recruitment strategy are undeniable – lowers costs, sped up hiring cycles, and enhanced engagement with your temporary workforce. It takes planning to make it a strategy that benefits an organization, and mistakes can be made with those enterprises that attempt to introduce direct sourcing too quickly.

However, once integrated into the recruitment process, there are immediate benefits of direct sourcing that other recruitment strategies simply can’t match. That’s making direct sourcing more common in business models of all sizes. 

If you’d like to find out more about how a talent marketplace like High5 can deliver all of the benefits of direct sourcing to your enterprise, contact our team today.