By
Henrik Rydén
What is social sourcing?
Social sourcing (also called social recruiting, social hiring or social media recruitment) is the term used for recruiting candidates through social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. These social media platforms could be used as talent databases and venues for you to strategically tailor your job advertisements to reach and attract talents that never would have ended up on your career site.
The Impactpool career transition and talent sourcing matrix To decide where to source a specific talent, it is key to understand the world of competencies - particularly transferable competencies. If you study talent working in International Organizations and in the private sector, you will find that some have an easy time jumping back and forth between the sectors. For other talent, there is no crossover at all. Impactpool has introduced an additional division to transferable skills: the division between competencies that are transferable either within or outside an International Organization. To make a strategic sourcing plan, you as a recruiter must determine if the profile is “externally or internally transferable.” Externally transferable profiles are considered core profiles in International Organizations, but the world knowledge bank sits in the private sector. Commercial banking is a concrete example. The world-class expertise in this area sits in private sector companies located in New York, London and other major financial hubs around the world. Financial institutions (World Bank, EIB, AfDB, AsDB etc) are constantly trying to attract professionals from these locations. The table below illustrates the correlation between Non-transferable/Transferable profiles and Internal/External. The green box shows profiles that you rarely find working in a private sector company. These profiles illustrate where a specific International Organization itself is the world knowledge bank. This could be, for example, WHO in their role as global health advocate. The light green box reflects those profiles that are internally transferable between International Organizations. These are also profiles that you would be unlikely to find in the private sector. One example of an internally transferable profile is child protection. It is likely that a child protection specialist at Save the Children secures a similar job at Unicef or vice versa. Between International Organizations, this profile is transferable. However, in the private sector, opportunities for child protection officers are more rare.
The Impactpool talent sourcing matrix
We believe that all sourcing efforts for an International Organization should begin with the question: What sector owns the knowledge centrum for this specific profile?
Once you have identifíed where the profile fits into the table, you have a good starting point for your social sourcing strategy. You can immediately narrow your search and target the right type of profiles. You can start to identify where your profiles are spending time and target these channels for your outreach attempts.
For a profile found both in International Organizations and the private sector, you can discuss with your client whether it is a good time to bring in talents from the private sector, in order to stay on top of ongoing sector-related changes.
When you have identified where the profiles fit, you can start to set up your sourcing strategy. Read this article to learn how you in five minutes can build a strategy that improves your sourcing and outreach outcome.