I've been pondering the myriad industry pieces of knowledge needed in a recruiter. Account management, marketing, sales, industry analyst, legal, human resources. Our profession truly does touch on many aspects of any given business model.

In the last five years or so, I have seen a proliferation of recruiting and HR titles, some of which seem redundant to me, and some which are way too broad. So I posed a couple of questions on LinkedIn Q & A just to see what people had to say, and the responses were very interesting. The first was generically about "titles". Let's face it, people constantly try and re-invent not only themselves but their industry as well. Consider it a marketing paradigm. In recruiting, I've seen a proliferation of titles delineating different functions that have evolved. Sourcer, Internet Recruiter, Staffing Consultant, Staffing Partner, Talent Acquisition Specialist, Sourcing Specialist, Name Generator, Recruiting/Staffing Researcher.

The overall response I got was that many people are confused about some of the delineations. For example, is a "Talent Acquisition" professional any different than a "recruiter"? How is a "Staffing Partner" different than a "Staffing Consultant"? Is a "Name Generator" closer to a "Sourcer" or a "Researcher"? Does "Acquisition" bring to mind the image of forcefully "getting" something through the leverage of greater resources, as in mergers and acquisitions"? Is this a good or a negative connotation? I can see both sides of this. In today's market we have a much greater number of tools at our recruiting disposal, by virtue of the fact that technology has allowed us to expand into different mediums to identify and pursue talent. I see that there truly is an advantage to those entities with greater resources, be they money or personnel. I also believe the good recruiter knows how to leverage his or her resources, whether great or small, to the best of their ability. Even taking into account the bedrock of great recruiting, which is networking, fewer resources mean fewer ways of connecting. Email, phone, instant messaging, social networking sites, face to face meetings all have different levels of involvement. If you work for a company with a strict policy on activities such as instant messaging and internet usage, you may be crippling your effectiveness and putting yourself that much further behind the rest of your competition.

If we break up the recruiting lifecycle into two distinct parts, sourcing and closing, we can start to see a better delineation between some of the myriad titles and the views implicit within this. My belief is that most professionals know what a "full lifecycle" recruiter does...sourcing, account management, negotiation, closing. Simplified, perhaps, but no less accurate. We interface with our managers to define the jobs; we find the candidates, screen, interview and pre-close them, then negotiate. "Recruiter" has taken on some new identifiers in the last few years, but I think we all recognize the basics of the responsibilities.

Which brings us to the interesting proliferation of the "sourcing" role. In the last five to ten years, I've seen a marked upswing in the division between the sourcing and closing roles. I started my own career in an executive research role, finding that I have a talent for truly finding obscure tidbits such as contact information, articles, building out org charts, etc. But having this talent and even experience utilizing it doesn't do me much good without "full lifecycle" recruiting. It is interesting that the Sourcing role is either perceived as a strategic role, with an emphasis on passive candidate generation OR as a junior role. Those who considered sourcing to be strategic understand that it involves a talent that not all recruiters have, but it does require an understanding (preferably through experience) with the full recruiting lifecycle. The difference between sourcing being a junior or more senior role seems to lie within the context of candidate contact. If a sourcing recruiter actually reaches out to a candidate, then they are a "recruiter". If they just scour job boards, resume databases, LinkedIn etc for names to pass off to "senior recruiters" then this is the more junior role, and the comments I received indicated that this skill is perceived as being much easier to teach than account management and closing.

I find this mindset disturbing in some respects. Recruiting is a *people* and *sales* business. Understanding your industry niche/s is probably the most important part, to me, of recruiting. Understanding the profile/s you are looking for indicates to me that you are learning to communicate with your client, the hiring manager. Shadowing account reps or other recruiters to understand what they are looking for by way of requisition reviews and phone screens with potential candidates seems a much better training activity than just sitting someone down with a list of keywords to search on. Yes, it's important, but I feel that only through understanding the position requirements and the screening parameters and how the two interrelate, can someone learn to become a "recruiter". 

The one phrase that popped up consistently was "can't we get along?" Why is there even any sort of rivalry? Sourcing is just as important as closing and account management. If an organization has the resources to have this function separated out, then it should be given *just as much* respect and weight as the "closers". To me, it seems that finding a passive candidate and engaging them to consider a new opportunity can be more difficult than closing a candidate who has been through a full interview loop.

We, as recruiters and staffing managers, need to give serious weight to all the roles that encompass this industry we call "recruiting", and that such skills should be acknowledged, respected, and compensated fairly.