A misleading headline has appeared atop a new article on Workforce:  Sourcing Disappears as Applications Pile Up for Overwhelmed Recruiters.  The article is based largely on the opinions of John Younger, CEO of Accolo, a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) vendor.

It's misleading due to its exaggeration. Whether for management or individual contributors, sourcing never disappears for strategic or other hard-to-fill roles, though some of the more basic methods related to higher-volume positions may (e.g., dropoff in job board posting / resume database trolling for common requisitions where hiring needs have stalled).

However, in weak economic periods, smart companies focus on building their pool of talent in niche, recurring demand areas. This is because normally hard-to-reach talents are more open to hearing about things, getting added to databases for email notifications, etc., but they aren't going to send you their resume on their own -- you still have to reach out to them.

Smaller staffing firms and RPO vendors may not have the luxury of doing this kind of talent banking investment, because they want to deliver candidates that can be used now, but I'd even go out on a limb to say that's being short-sighted.

To John Younger's credit, I agree with his points on diversity, but not about passive talent.  While I agree the label may not be appropriate, and active is probably a better term (everyone is on a continuum from very active to hardly at all active), there are still plenty of in-demand professionals who are so far towards the non-active end of that continuum that they really must be treated like "passive" talent.  As a result, there are plenty of companies with people sourcing every day for them (and happily, many are our clients who want to learn how to source better!).