Interview with Balazs Paroczay

Jonathan Kidder

2 years ago

I feel incredibly honored that Balazs graciously agreed to be interviewed for my blog! He is widely regarded as a legendary sourcing trainer within our industry, and I have had the pleasure of hearing him speak on multiple occasions. Balazs infuses the talent sourcing space with excitement and creativity, and I greatly admire his contributions.

Balazs Paroczay is a renowned Sourcing Leader, Talent Acquisition Strategist, and Keynote Speaker with a global presence. For over fifteen years, Balazs has worked with numerous global organizations, assisting them in establishing top-notch sourcing functions and organization-wide sourcing capabilities. Balazs leverages his expertise to help Talent Acquisition teams enhance their core sourcing and recruiting abilities, enabling them to identify, attract, and engage critical talent. He is particularly skilled at social networking and has made significant contributions to the global sourcing communities as a thought leader, blogger, and conference speaker.

Tell us about your work experience in recruiting – how did you get your start, how did you progress, where are you at this point in time?

Hey there, Jonathan! 🙂 I’ve probably repeated this story so many times that it might bore people, but here it goes. I have an art background, but by chance, I stumbled into sourcing when I was 24. At the time, I was only supposed to support a small, local headhunter agency for a few days by hanging posters at universities, but life had other plans for me. One of the headhunters asked whether I had interest in a researcher position… and the rest is history.

Fast forward 20 years, and I’m now running my own boutique strategic sourcing consultancy, The Source CODΞ Agency. Our team helps corporations build powerful sourcing capabilities through our unique Sourcing Masterclass training and strategic leadership projects. It’s been quite a journey, and I couldn’t be happier with where we are today!

What are the unique talents you bring to the field?

Hmmm… I’d say I have three unique talents that set me apart. First, I have extensive hands-on experience in both sourcing and sourcing leadership, which is quite rare in our industry. When I train recruiters, I bring my practical sourcing skills to the table and provide in-depth, up-to-date advice. Simultaneously, I work with leaders to improve their corporate talent resourcing strategies, helping them achieve an even better state of organizational-wide sourcing capability.

In addition to my sourcing expertise, I have a background in theater, specifically opera. It’s a complex form of art that requires a very diverse creative angle. This artistic background helps me bring in a specific perspective to everything we do. It provides me access to design and design thinking, a constant pursuit of “the gorgeous”, and a commitment to relentlessly build fantastic business experiences. All the world’s a stage, huh?…

Lastly, I’m from Hungary. Well… while being born in a small and economically challenged country may not be a talent in itself, it has taught me a few things. I’m proud of the progress I’ve made over the years and quite often humbled by the achievements I – and together with my team – we’ve earned.

Share your biggest success story in recruiting so far?

Haha, you’re not kidding – your questions are tough! 😀 But I’ll do my best to answer. I believe my biggest success is that I have a talent for making people fall in love with sourcing. Not only do I enjoy my profession (which can be contagious), but I also help recruiters appreciate the beauty and value of our art and science. For some, sourcing can be like an ancient, ominous temple where they may see me as the priest that illuminates the dark corners and reveals its true splendor. Ha! the background in art…see what I did here?! 😀

What is the best advice you’ve received during your career path, and from whom?

Can I have two? The first one came from my former manager at MSCI, Zita Kulcsar. I was working long hours, and Zita warned me about the risks of burnout – even when you love your job. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate her wisdom, but as time went on, I came to see how right she was. It’s so important to take care of yourself, no matter how passionate you are about your work. Once you’ve experienced burnout, you’re at constant risk of it happening again and again.

The second piece of advice came from Glen Cathey, during a conversation we had in Amsterdam. Glen said something that really caught me off guard: ‘We need to accept that sourcing is not scalable.’ I was surprised, since he and I had spent years working on this very thing within the sourcing community. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Glen was right. Sourcing is a fascinating field, and anyone can learn its great basics, but the deeper you go, the fewer people will be able to truly master it. It took me a while to fully accept this wisdom, but I’m grateful to Glen for opening my eyes.

What’s your favorite recruiting tech tool?

My brain, obviously 😀 But I also love Instant Data Scraper, Linkclump, our Candidate Lookup Tool, or OneTab – just to name a few. If I had to list all the tech I depend on, I could probably come up with at least sixty other tools!

Let’s explore your extension further: Candidate Lookup by CODE

CODΞ’s Candidate Lookup tool allows you to cross-reference individuals across various social media platforms and search engines. This powerful tool is perfect for piecing together someone’s digital footprint and identifying the best platforms to connect with them. Currently, it searches over a dozen platforms, and new ones can be added to meet user needs.

Using the tool is simple: after adding the extension to your browser, select a full name or nickname and right-click to access the Candidate Lookup by CODΞ icon. You can cross-reference either option and switch the first name and full name order as needed. To narrow down results for frequently used names, add a relevant keyword to your search.

You can choose to search specific platforms or select the “SEARCH ALL PLATFORMS” option. Custom platform selections can also be saved for future searches. We hope this tool proves to be immensely helpful for your sourcing needs!

Best regards, The CODΞ team

(Download the extension here)

What do you hope to achieve in 2023?

On a global scale, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the economic crisis won’t get worse than it already is. Some days, though, my optimism wanes. I’m hoping we can continuously evolve our sourcing training offering, the Sourcing Masterclass, and empower hundreds of recruiters around the world to improve their skills and succeed in their careers. Is it too selfish to say that I just wish that I can keep dealing with the things I love most in life: sourcing, strategy, training and building a little agency?

Any future predictions on talent sourcing?

The field of sourcing is currently experiencing an increase in practice and expertise. In fact, adoption has never been higher than it is now. We’re seeing industries, such as insurance, manufacturing, and retail banks, join the sourcing game despite not traditionally having to source candidates before. Even companies like the Big Fours and Engineering R&D centers are now applying direct sourcing techniques to build their graduate talent pools. Furthermore, job families such as nurses, CRCs, or licensed truck drivers are among the most in-demand professionals on the market so recruiters must directly source them. As the world changes, recruiting changes with it, and thus sourcing is impacted as well.

Technology is expected to have a significant impact on sourcing, though it’s still unclear where exactly this impact will be. For many years, we believed that sourcing would be fully automated, but even today, we barely see at least a partly well-automated sourcing procedure. However, engagement has proven to be a promising area for automation. Interesting, right?

On top of all of it, I think, there will always be a small pool of sourcing snipers – the top guns – who will be able to save the recruiting world. 🙂

What’s your favorite Boolean String?

I love natural language search patterns. Looking for websites that have shared their team members online or certain spoken phrases that will retrieve hidden human data. Some nights, I even enjoy browsing the web just for fun and to see what kind of interesting information I can uncover.

Boolean String Examples:

inurl:”our team” software engineer

“I am a data” site:de -amazon

You can connect with him and his team on THE SOURCE CODE agency [website here]

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