balazs & the magic sourcing world

Great companies starting their journey of building an in-house sourcing function are usually aiming for cost saving in the first place. This is the most regular answer they give when interviewing them: become less dependent of 3rd party agencies and thus to save cost on agency fees.

This is an obvious drive behind such a capability build although gaining a real financial advantage via sourcing is not that obvious.

There are some pretty traps here that corporations often accidentally fall into so I decided to gather them and share back with the community. Hope this will help some of you shape better (and more consciously) the sourcing journey.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the pair post of my very last one: 25 questions you need to ask before setting up a sourcing function. No, I am not [yet] fully addictive to blogging, however, as the previous post was pretty lengthy I thought it might be handy to have (more or less) the same content but in a prezi style. Hooray!

So… here you are. Feel free to show your boss when trying to convince them why to build an in-house sourcing team. Plenty of reasons, my friend – everyone is doing it now. Right now!

Read the rest of this entry »

Setting up any sourcing function (in-house, agency or an RPO-type megacenter) is a massive exercise.

Many think that hiring a handful of experienced sourcers will make the game. Great sourcers know what to do (and how) and their previous expertise will automatically solve everything.

Others more believe in focusing on the continuous learning and development part of sourcing. These leaders are often aiming to build a sourcing SWAT team that is perfectly trained on the latest and newest trends (and tricks and tips and armed with techs). While there is nothing wrong with this (really, nothing! it’s great) the story just should not have an end here.

Interestingly, only a few leaders realize that sourcing is actually a service and as such it is not enough to only focus on the people and the tech/training sides but “boring” things like service level agreements, communication plans, products and deliverables, measures etc-etc. (things that usually characterize any other business services) should all be in most-focus for the sourcing leader, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the story of the last 3-4 months when I switched off from work and decided to reboot the engine of my life.

I resigned from Randstad at the end of July 2016 (producing my ever longest sugar sweet emotional farewell video) and joined GE in a refreshing and brand new European Sourcing Lead role.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was an amazing experience presenting on #sosuasia last week!

Although we hear way too little about the guys and what they do in Asia, it is so impressive to see how much keen they are to implement and develop sourcing within their Talent Acquisition function. Being a late joiner in a game does not necessarily mean that you are late to win. It simply gives you the opportunity to not go through the same mistakes that the pioneers had to and also gives you a more sophisticated approach as you can already leverage the essential experience of others. Like the youngest in the family – huge advantages! Read the rest of this entry »