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Patrick Riley - Co-Founder and managing partner
3rd largest shareholder
Joanna(CEO)'s dad



Uber Killed the Dispatcher. Is Sourcing Next?
Patrick Riley April 22, 2016

Ride-sharing giant Uber automated the dispatcher, and in so doing not only created a more transparent process for both sides but increased capacity through increased efficiency. So why aren’t you doing the same for your sourcing?

I own two cars but I take an Uber to and from work every day from my bungalow atop Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. It gets me to our office in around eight minutes (a three-minute wait plus a five-minute ride). If I have meetings in the city that are too far to walk, I take Uber from any point to my destination. If something unexpected comes up and I need to get to LA, I Uber to SFO and get there in 20 minutes, without worrying about parking my car. What I really dig about Uber is that it lets me be faster and more mobile, and removes the stress of tickets, finding a space, running late etc.

It gets me right to work or fun and gives me terrific mobility to be ever more successful in developing new business and relationships.

Before Uber, I used taxis, and I knew the dispatchers by name depending on the shift (Larry was my favorite). But as I mentioned, I live on a hilltop, and it’s a bit remote with some tricky one-way streets. In spite of a lot a goodwill between me and the dispatchers, wait times averaged 25 minutes, and sometimes as much as 45. It was stifling my initiative. It was killing my mobility to go after new opportunities with any speed. It was losing me a lot of money in lost opportunity – in a world which, perhaps like yours, has changed forever! That is when I switched forever to Uber.

The sourcing function of the recruiter is the same role as the dispatcher – a middleman – connecting ride-seekers with drivers. A good taxi dispatcher can handle 80 calls an hour. A great recruiter can handle 93 hires a year. Meanwhile “human capital” and “hiring managers” will do whatever it takes to “get a good ride” as soon as possible.



Right now recruiters are taking on average 52 days for a hire and 19 of those days are being spent on a human doing sourcing. This sourcing is being repeated 11.8 million times a year (representing the 11.8 million hires) by the approximately 450,000 recruiters who serve enterprises constantly trying to find who they need in a fluid and constantly moving workforce.

This is not good enough. And just like Uber did to the dispatcher, it’s one of the key areas in recruitment ripe for a digital shake-up.

Newly released source apps are enabling hiring managers and recruiters together to identify talent and arrange calls and meeting with prospects directly. The recruiter won’t be in the sourcing game but focused entirely on attracting and engaging the winners.

When you get specific the problem with a recruiter doing sourcing is that artificial intelligence can do it much better. It is true that computers don’t really think, but they do process data. And they can do it faster and for longer than us mere mortals – by a long shot. According to ANS/SHRM research, HR departments are spending as much as $2,400 per hire on external sourcing and another $600 on internal sourcing. That’s $3,000 on sourcing per hire. Even more shocking is that it takes 19 days to do it!

The computing power of companies like 1-Page consolidates, packages and delivers bytes on target – your target – leaving recruiters to do what they do best: engage and recruit. (This will is the subject of an upcoming blog so I won’t go into detail on the stats.)

So get out of sourcing altogether. Uberize your recruiting. Let the data be sorted within 24 hours into your own pipeline. Cut spending on inefficient human solutions. Shorten the time to hire.

If you don’t, you might just find yourself left behind without a ride.


Patrick Riley
Patrick Riley is the co-founder and managing partner of 1-Page. He is fascinated and passionate about connecting enterprise and enterprising people through their ideas and aspiration.