Sourcer

What a sourcer does

A sourcer’s day is mostly two things:

• Searching: Boolean queries on LinkedIn, GitHub, niche directories, conference attendee lists. Finding 15-30 candidates who fit a tight spec.
• Outreach: Sending the first message. Personalized enough to get a reply, fast enough to ship many in a day.

The hand-off from sourcer to recruiter happens when a candidate replies. The sourcer found them; the recruiter takes them through the process.

Sourcer vs. recruiter

The simple version:

• Sourcer: who haven’t applied yet. Outbound only.
• Recruiter: who have applied or who replied to outbound. Inbound + everything downstream.

The two roles share tooling but the daily work is different. Sourcers spend hours in LinkedIn Recruiter and message templates; recruiters spend hours in candidate calls and calendar coordination.

When SMBs need a dedicated sourcer

The threshold is usually around hiring volume:

• Below 20 hires/year: the recruiter sources too.
• 20-50 hires/year: starting to make sense, depending on role mix.
• 50+ hires/year, with many senior roles: dedicated sourcer is the right call.

The other trigger: when senior outbound roles consistently fail because the recruiter doesn’t have the time to source well.

Where Join fits

Sourcers in Join use the talent pool as their workbench — candidates they’ve contacted live there with the outreach history attached, ready to surface when a matching role opens. See the features page.