The point you make on list validation resonates the most with me the most and this is also the area that causes the greatest problems in a recruiting/sourcing organization. At a conference about 6months ago, I asked a very pointed question around who actually owns list validation.
(Definition: Confirming that the name/lead is current and valid with company or contact details). I had to ask the question twice given most people seemed to not quite understand the problem:

“Who owns list validation?…..The originating Researcher/Vendor or the Sourcer/Recruiter? No one had a definitive answer as they felt it was the other person’s responsibility/problem.

So here in lies the main problem that most external vendors and internal research/sourcing organizations face when creating acquiring lists.

I have seen fist hand internet guru’s produce hundred’s of names only to find that no one ever called those names…..Why? Are they to blame or is the Sourcer/Recruiter to blame? Were their lists crap (outdated or wrong) or was the Sourcer/Recruiter to afraid to make a targeted cold call so the leads died on the vine?

When digging deeper on the reason, the major issue that keeps popping up time and time again is the validity of the names, specifically as it comes to being relevant with current contact details or no longer at the company where the researcher found the lead.

When I spoke with the Researchers/Vendors (the people that find the leads) they said it was not their problem as they found the names that the Sourcer/Recruiter/Customer requested, so they felt their job had been done…..It was not their job to call the leads.

The Sourcer/Recruiter/Customer felt it was not their job to spend their time validating the large amount of leads that the researchers had produced for them….But rather, they wanted to be on the phone calling leads trying to flip them into contacts and ultimately candidates vs. wasting time trying to track down the latest contact details.

So regardless of the he said, she said finger pointing exercise that ensues, where the researcher felt their job is to ID’d leads and the Sourcer/Recruiters job is to call leads, someone needs to validate the leads otherwise the whole process breaks down with strained relationships between the two parties (or in the case of a vendor, no repeat business) and the countless lost productivity and $$$’s.

I think I have cracked the code on this one now but a day does not go by where I am constantly reminded with situations I see in the industry of sourcing functions or recruiting organizations, thinking that lists = a pot of gold (bazillions of hires). What they soon come to realize is that a list is just the starting point on a complex recruiting/sourcing journey and will require many frogs to be kissed before the find their prince (that was the best analogy I could think up on the spur of the moment :-).

Rob