// glossary · 20 terms
The sourcing vocabulary, properly defined.
The terms we use in the training, on this site and in the craft — defined in a few sentences, without jargon. PAT-specific concepts are flagged as such. Every term has its own anchor: you can point straight at it.
- Boolean operators technique
- AND, OR, NOT, quotes, parentheses: the syntax that lets you compose precise search queries instead of piling up keywords. It's the foundation of tactical search — necessary, but far from sufficient on Recruiter, whose engine has behaviours of its own.
- Corporate, RPS, Lite (Recruiter licences) LinkedIn
- The three LinkedIn Recruiter licences. Corporate is the most complete, RPS is the staffing-agency flavour, Lite is the entry level with a subset of features. All three are eligible for the PAT training — features missing on Lite are flagged as such.
- Direct approach method
- Contacting an employed profile directly when they never applied — as opposed to the job ad, which waits for the candidate to come. It's the dominant channel on rare, senior and R&D profiles. See direct approach vs job ads for the situation-by-situation verdict.
- In-house / Inter-company PAT format
- Two session formats. In-house: a private session for your team, up to 12 people, flat rate, content set on your actual searches. Inter-company: an open multi-company session, individual registration, online with replay or in person.
- Intake meeting (job brief) method
- The framing meeting with the hiring manager before opening a search: real criteria (not the wish list), market reality, attraction arguments, channels. A sloppy intake costs weeks of searching beside the target. It's the longest chapter of Module 1 (48 minutes).
- Intent matrix PAT concept
- A Module 1 grid that crosses profiles' intent level (actively searching, open to listening, employed and satisfied) with attraction channels, to decide where to invest the effort. It formalises an obvious truth often ignored: you don't address someone who is searching the way you address someone who wasn't looking for anything.
- Legendary Mode PAT concept
- The name of PAT's Module 3, the expert level: search exhaustivity, hidden fields, undocumented operators, profiles outside Open to Work, deliberate automation. Built for intensive sourcers who live inside Recruiter all day.
- LinkedIn Recruiter LinkedIn
- LinkedIn's paid search platform (Corporate, RPS, Lite), a separate engine from standard search: specific fields, advanced filters, InMails, projects and pool management. It's an engine in its own right, with its own logic — the core of Modules 2-3 of the PAT training.
- Market mapping method
- Mapping the market for a role — companies, teams, volume orders of magnitude — before and during the search. It's what makes a pool's exhaustivity measurable: without a market map, there is no telling whether you have seen 10% or 90% of the existing profiles.
- Open to Work (and beyond OTW) LinkedIn
- LinkedIn's "open to opportunities" signal. Useful, but misleading if you stop there: most interesting profiles never turn it on. Knowing how to search beyond Open to Work is one of the major differences between a shallow pool and a deep one — one of Module 3's topics.
- Outreach message method
- The first message sent to an identified profile. Its quality makes the difference between a conversation and spam — and on a small market where everyone knows everyone, spam burns the company's brand. A dedicated Module 1 chapter, with the Patricia extension as a bonus for personalisation.
- Patricia PAT concept
- PAT's proprietary Chrome extension, powered by a local LLM (so profile data never goes to the cloud): it helps personalise LinkedIn outreach messages. Included as a bonus with the Module 1 on VOD.
- Pedestrian-street theory PAT concept
- PAT's founding metaphor, taught in Module 1: your storefront (job ads, career page) only captures the passers-by already circulating in front of it. On rare roles, that flow is near zero — you have to go walk where the profiles actually circulate. It frames the whole choice of attraction channels.
- People Attraction PAT concept
- The training's founding idea: on rare profiles, you don't "recruit" by waiting for applications — you attract, through channel choices, framing quality and message quality. It's this reversal that gives The People Attraction Theory its name.
- Replay PAT format
- The recording of live remote sessions: edited, chapter-indexed, available for 2 months after the session. The material is dense and doesn't sink in on a single pass — the replay lets you come back to the notions while applying them to real searches.
- Sourcing method
- Identifying and engaging potential candidates, rather than waiting for their applications. A full-fledged craft in mature Talent Acquisition teams — with its own competencies: search, qualification, outreach, market mapping.
- Talent pool method
- The set of identified and qualified profiles for a type of role. Its depth is THE quality measure of sourcing: what we observe with trained teams is pools 3 to 10× deeper on existing searches.
- VOD (Module 1) PAT format
- Module 1 · Strategic Design on video-on-demand: 6 chapters, 3h30 of content, 6-month access, 400 CHF, bonuses included. The entry door to judge the method from the inside before committing a team. Details on /en/vod.
- X-Ray (search) technique
- Using an external engine (Google) to search inside a site's pages — typically
site:linkedin.com/in— and get around the native engine's limits. A free X-Ray generator is available on freesourcingtools.com.
These concepts are learned in practice.
Three progressive modules — attraction strategy, tactical search, expert level — on your real searches, in French or English.