The Only Sourcing Games You’ll Ever Need

I started creating these sourcing games for my team because it’s a great way to test their knowledge, refresh the sourcing methods they already know or help them discover new methods. If are they stuck on a level, this also allows me to see what they must learn and also teach them something new that I know. And when they share with me how they solve a specific level, I also learn something new, because they often choose a way that is different from the one I had in mind when I created the level. These sourcing games became a great way how we all as a team could improve our sourcing methods. People also learn more if they discover the solution by themselves before somebody else told them how to do it. Doing learning through games is always bigger fun, games are architectures for engagement, and they are better than just some boring sourcing training.

Website sourcing.games was created because I thought it would be cool to share some games with other sources and recruiters, not only because sharing is caring, but because I would like to learn more about which ways people are going to take. Each level is designed so there is not only one way to solve it.

To be honest, I didn’t expect that also other non-recruiters would enjoy playing these games and that during the first 5 days, over 1000+ people played first two sourcing games. That was a big surprise for me – thanks for playing!

I was also surprised with the approaches people took to solve each level. They tried to contact owners of the domain I am using (most are mine) :), the tech support of some services I used, contact me for hints (87 e-mails, during 5 days and counting), use brute-force to solve some levels (please don’t try to break my site, thanks):), etc.

I would like to thank you to all of you those who contacted me through LinkedIn, Twitter, E-mails with the positive feedback; I appreciated that, and I didn’t expect that too many people would be looking for some fun way how to avoid working during their working hours. 😉 

Many people asked me to add some tracking so they could compare their score or time against other recruiters. I am not planning to add this tracking or some scoreboard on that site. As humans, it is in our nature to compare ourselves to others. However, nothing good ever comes from it, and I simply believe that our biggest competitor in life is ourselves. If you must compare, compare with yourself. Every comparison is the thief of joy, and these games should be fun.

You shouldn’t be concerned about others and if they are faster or if they reached a higher level than you. In the end, somebody will cheat and finish the game faster than you and you will see only the score, but you don’t know how they reached the end so quickly. Also, not only recruiters are playing, and I don’t want to limit the games only for recruiters/sourcers. If somebody wants to play, that’s great, and I hope they enjoy the games.

People also reached me stating they would like to play more games when they finished the games that are currently on the website. The answer is: yes, there will be more games in the future! However, I want to create every game differently, and this will take some time. I just don’t want to add the similar levels to the new game, because you will already know how to solve it easily.

And if anybody would like to help me to create a new game, feel free to reach me. I will gladly cooperate with you on a new game or add your game to the sourcing.games site so others can also enjoy it.

If you are not a recruiter or sourcer, I hope you are still going to enjoy these games. And they might show you what kind of things sourcers are doing when looking for information.

Last Updated on January 16, 2024