How to Become a Technical Sourcer: Skills, Requirements, and Career Guide
As companies continue to expand their digital presence, the need for technical sourcers has grown significantly. A technical sourcer is a professional who specializes in finding and attracting highly skilled technical talent for companies in need of technical expertise.
If you have a passion for recruiting and a strong interest in technology, becoming a technical sourcer may be the perfect career path for you. In this guide, we will explore the skills and requirements necessary to become a successful technical sourcer, as well as provide a comprehensive career guide to help you navigate this exciting field. Read on to learn more!
What is a Technical Sourcer?
Technical sourcers are responsible for finding and engaging talent.
This may sound a lot like the role of a recruiter, but there are some key differences. Technical sourcers only focus on the initial company touchpoints, while recruiters work with the candidates throughout their entire job-hunting experience.
Technical sourcers are responsible for the discovering and reaching out to candidates who may have not been originally interested in the role or company. Technical sourcers spend their time combing through candidates found on social media platforms (LinkedIn) and search engines (Google) to create excitement for positions they're trying to fill. They are often the very first interaction these candidates have with the business.
Technical sourcers are often at larger companies that have separate teams for sourcing and recruiting. Once a sourcer has made contact with a promising potential candidate, they pass the candidate on to a recruiter for the rest of the hiring process. In some company cultures, a recruiter is expected to also do the job of a technical sourcer.
Sometimes technical sourcing roles can be extremely niche, because the sourcer is working at a larger company with different sourcers covering different role-types. If that's the case, the sourcer will need to be very familiar with common requirements of their role niche (for example, product managers, analysts, or engineers).
Responsibilities of a Technical Sourcer
While recruiters are responsible for the candidate for their entire hiring process, technical sourcing stops after the initial contact and handoff. Technical sourcers spend a majority of their day managing and contacting lists of potential candidates. They are constantly tweaking and re-tweaking their reach out messages to elicit the most responses from candidates. Once enough candidates are interested, they pass the names along to the hiring manager or recruiter overseeing the role.
Sometimes technical sourcers are required to do initial phone screens with scripts or questionnaires provided by the roles' hiring manager. The sourcer will take notes during these calls to send to the hiring manager. If the candidate has the desired answers, the hiring managers will choose to move forward. This is often when the handoff to a recruiter happens.
Education Requirements
Do I need a degree to be a Technical Sourcer?
Some job descriptions will mention a requirement of a degree, but often will waive this if you have great people or customer experience.
Some people we've seen do great in sourcing roles:
- Folks who like sending emails, but maybe not taking meetings.
- Creative writers who like to send funky cold emails.
- Anyone with strong interpersonal abilities and soft skills.
If you're new here to bridged, we're glad to meet you! We are huge fans of alternate forms of education, and recommend specific certifications to target skills. While this job works great with degrees, you have other options. Learn more here.
Our Favorite Sourcing Programs & Certifications
Learning Linkedin Recruiter
It's rare for us to list two starting classes from the same place, but a majority of modern recruiting takes place on Linkedin. Get familiar with the tools it has to offer with this class.
Learn more
Recruiting, Hiring, and Onboarding Employees
This course is part of a specialization that spans HR, recruiting, and sourcing. It has 4.7 stars with more than 3k ratings, and has flexible deadlines and a resume-worthy completion certificate from UC Davis.
The Importance of Talent Sourcing
We try to spread our recommendations around, but we loved both classes from Linkedin so much it'd be a crime not to mention. We recommend completing both at the same time!
Learn more
Salary and Career Potential
What is a Technical Sourcer's salary?
We've aggregated thousands of salaries across glassdoor and linkedin, and entry-level technical sourcers can make anywhere between 65k - 85k, depending on their location and skillsets.
Career Path of a Technical Sourcer
While the career path below is very common in the recruiting industry for a big company, these things can vary organization to organization. We chose to show the path where a sourcer transitions into a recruiter, but that can also vary. It's also normal to specialize in a particular field, whether that be engineering, design or product. This heavily depends on the size of the company.
- Technical Sourcer: Spend about 2-4 years here.
- Recruiter: Spend about 3-5 years here. This is also a popular role to freelance.
- Recruiting Manager / HR Specialist: Spend about 5-10 years here.
- Director of Recruiting / Director of HR: Most folks spend roughly 4-6 years here.
Job Requirements and Skills
Popular Job Description of a Technical Sourcer
We've used AI to aggregate the top job descriptions used by hiring managers looking for technical sourcers. When putting your resume together, try to mimic these listings. To learn more about this process, check out our partner Jobscan for a comprehensive resume review.
- Collaborate with recruiters and hiring managers to understand hiring needs and create effective sourcing strategies
- Source and attract highly skilled technical professionals through various channels, including social media, job boards, networking events, and employee referrals
- Screen resumes and conduct initial phone screens to ensure that candidates meet the requirements of the job
- Build and maintain a pipeline of potential candidates for future job openings
- Utilize data and analytics to optimize sourcing strategies and measure success
- Provide a positive candidate experience throughout the recruitment process
- Keep up-to-date with industry trends and best practices in technical sourcing
Top Skills of a Technical Sourcer
We've compiled thousands of job descriptions for technical sourcers to record the most common requirements to save you time. While preparing for interviews, keep in mind specific times you've demonstrated these skills.
- Interacting with potential candidates on professional networks and social media.
- Crafting and sending recruitment emails.
- Identifying and screening potential candidates.
- Creating talent pipelines for current and future hires.
- Managing the company’s candidate database.
- Setting up candidate interviews with Recruiters & Hiring Managers.
- Coordinating with Recruiters & Hiring Managers to determine position requirements.
- Provide reporting and regular status updates to the the acquisition team
Top Tools of a Technical Sourcer
We've also compiled the most common tools listed in job description. If you're serious about becoming a technical sourcer, get familiar with these and be ready to talk about them.
For Sourcing Applicants
- Fetcher
- Zoho
- Capterra
For Monitoring Applicants
- BreezyHR
- JazzHR
- Greenhouse
- Workday
Other Helpful Tools
- Indeed
- ZipRecruiter
For Task Management
- ASANA
- Clickup
- Notion
Key Traits of a Successful Technical Sourcer
Organization - As a Technical Sourcer, you will be responsible for managing outreach to multiple candidates daily, requiring exceptional organization skills to keep track of communications and follow-ups. You should be able to prioritize tasks, manage your time effectively, and create an organized system for tracking candidate information.
Scheduling - A critical part of the Technical Sourcer role is scheduling initial phone screens with candidates. You will be responsible for setting up interviews, coordinating with hiring managers and candidates, and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. You should have excellent communication and scheduling skills to keep the recruitment process running smoothly.
Resilience - The current job market can be challenging for recruiters, with frequent tech industry layoffs and increased competition for top talent. As a Technical Sourcer, you need to be resilient, able to weather the ups and downs of the job market, and stay motivated to find the best candidates for the company.
Relationship Building - As a primary point of contact for potential candidates, Technical Sourcers play a crucial role in building relationships with candidates to establish trust and credibility. You should be able to communicate effectively, listen actively, and build rapport with candidates to create a positive candidate experience and attract top talent to the company.
Research - Technical Sourcers spend a considerable amount of time researching and identifying potential candidates. You should be proficient in researching on platforms like LinkedIn and other relevant social media sites to identify individuals with the required skills and experience. You should also have experience in Boolean search strings to ensure that you find the best candidates for the job.
Difference between a Recruiter and a Sourcer
The lines here are a little blurry, and that's mainly because sometimes both of these roles are done by a recruiter.
A recruiter is responsible for handling the entire candidate experience. This includes meeting with hiring managers to get role requirements, posting and managing descriptions, and walking candidates through their rounds of interviews. Often recruiters also manage the sourcing process too, but at big companies it makes more sense to split the role into two functions.
A sourcer is often an entry-level role responsible for gathering and reaching out to potential candidates for the recruiter. Sourcers spend hours scouring Linkedin to provide recruiters and hiring managers lists of strong candidates that may be good fits for the various open roles. Ultimately, the recruiters are usually responsible for making contact with the candidate and owning the hiring process from there. Sometimes at medium (and even some larger) companies, the recruiting and sourcing jobs are combined.
To recap: sourcers compile and reach out to candidates that may be good fits for role descriptions, then hand off the candidates to recruiters to manage the hiring process. Many recruiters can source, but not all sourcers can recruit!
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Conclusion
It might be a little tough in todays market to break into the sourcing and recruiting fields with the mass recruiting and sales layoffs happening in big tech. BUT, if you feel it's the role for you, now is the best time to learn the skills for when companies start hiring again.
Here at Bridged we are huge fans of stacking micro-certifications to achieve desired career results. We're building a product to make your career planning fun and affordable, and we'd love to talk to YOU! Was this article helpful? Did you land an interview for a technical sourcing role?
Let us know at hello@getbridged.co
Check out our sources!
Glassdoor Team. “Salary: Technical Sourcer (February, 2023) | Glassdoor.” Glassdoor, Glassdoor, 1 Feb. 2023, https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/product-analyst-salary-SRCH_KO0,15.html
