---
id: B-014
type: barrier
title: "Outbound Sourcing & Talent Pool Contact"
lang: en
registry: 2026.08.2
canonical: https://hoba.work/barriers/B-014
json: https://hoba.work/api/v1/barriers/B-014.json
---

# Outbound Sourcing & Talent Pool Contact

Recruiter-initiated outreach to passive candidates and talent-pool building, independent of any inbound application.

> **On the canonical path** — [Published with its terms on the page](https://hoba.work/process#WF-003-published)
>
> The posting states the compensation band, the location rules, the stages the process has and roughly how long each takes. It comes down when the search ends.
>
> This entry is one of the ways that commitment stops being kept.

> **What made this ordinary** — [Zero rates and a same-year deduction](https://hoba.work/eras#E-001) (2008–2019), [The record funding years](https://hoba.work/eras#E-002) (2020–2021)

## At a glance

- Stage: Sourcing
- Step in the funnel: #2
- Evidence: established

## Passing condition

The candidate responds to outreach and is attached to an active, authorized requisition rather than a speculative pool.

## What it looks like

Composite excerpts, written to be typical rather than copied. No particular message, company or person is quoted here.

**Outreach, and what it was attached to** — *reconstruction*

```
  day 0 Recruiter  Your platform work looks like a strong match for a role we are opening. Open to a conversation?
  day 0 Candidate  Yes. Is there an approved requisition behind it?
> day 1 Recruiter  Not yet approved — we expect sign-off next quarter and want to be ready.
```

*What to notice* This gate passes only when outreach is attached to a real, funded requisition. Attached to a forecast, it is a pipeline entry with no gate behind it.

## From each side

The same entry from inside each position that meets it: what reaches them, what it means from there, and what happens next given what they control.

### Recruiter

- **What reaches them:** A profile that matches a role, and the role's current state: approved, or expected to be approved. Whether the second becomes the first is not in the recruiter's fields.
- **What it means from there:** Contact made before approval is time not spent after it; the time-to-fill clock starts at the opening, not at the first message.
- **What happens next:** Sends the outreach and attaches the reply to whichever record exists — an open requisition, or a pool with no gate behind it.

### Candidate

- **What reaches them:** An approach that names their work and a role described as opening. The state of the requisition behind it is knowable only by asking.
- **What it means from there:** Outreach reads as demand: the search found them, which places them ahead of the queue an application would have joined.
- **What happens next:** Answers, and asks whether an approved requisition sits behind it — the question that separates a live process from an entry in a pool.

### Employer policy

- **What reaches them:** Headcount requests in the approval queue and forecasts for the next cycle. Outreach already sent against an unapproved forecast is a line in neither.
- **What it means from there:** A warm pipeline before approval shortens the fill after it, at no cost on any budget line the approval cycle tracks.
- **What happens next:** Sets the approval cycle that decides when a forecast becomes a requisition, and does not gate the contact that happens before it.

## Related entries

- precedes — [B-001](https://hoba.work/barriers/B-001) — Application Ingestion
- precedes — [B-004](https://hoba.work/barriers/B-004) — Recruiter Screening Call

---

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