What is Sourcing?

Sourcing is the proactive half of recruiting: finding and contacting people who never applied, rather than sorting the applications that arrived on their own. Sourcers live inside search tools, LinkedIn Recruiter above all, running boolean strings and stacked filters across titles, skills, locations, and companies, then messaging the people who match. That mechanism has a direct consequence for anyone open to opportunities: you are found through the words in your profile fields, or you are not found at all. Titles that match how the market names your role, a headline carrying your real skills, and a filled-in skills section are what make you surface in a sourcer's results, while a clever but vague profile matches nothing and sits unseen. Understanding how LinkedIn search ranking works shows you the exact levers. Candidates can also source in reverse, using boolean searches to find hiring managers and future teammates at target companies before the roles are ever posted.