Top Places for Recruiters to Source Candidates

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According to some research, 63% of recruiters say there is a talent shortage, and it’s their biggest challenge.

Especially during the Great Resignation, where the market is very competitive, recruiters need to find new places to source candidates for their recruitment process.

If you don’t have multiple places to find qualified candidates, keep reading to find inspiration on sourcing candidates.

Social Media Platforms

With how popular social media is, more and more people use it to find jobs. Some people even start looking for a job on social media. According to one survey, 84% of companies are using social media to recruit job candidates.

While LinkedIn is the most popular platform, some people are also looking for jobs on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. When you start advertising or looking on there, you might connect with passive candidates as well. Doing this will increase how many people are in your candidate pool.

When recruiters only focus on people actively searching for a job, they miss out on all kinds of candidates who might be willing to take a new position for the right circumstances.

The other benefit of looking on social media is that it’s free, easy, and fast. While you can pay for advertising, it’s free to connect with people there and start a conversation. You should have a solid social media presence to draw more followers and connections.

Promote a great employer and recruiter brand, and you may even have people messaging you asking if you can help them find the right job.

LinkedIn is one of the top platforms to find candidates. On LinkedIn, you can post open roles and advertise them, so in a way, it acts as a job board.

You can also network with other professional recruiters and connect with their followers. Just make sure that you personalize each message when you’re connecting with people on LinkedIn. Otherwise, your messages might come across as spammy, and no one will answer you.

Employee Networks

If you’re working as an internal recruiter, ask hiring managers or HR professionals in your organization if they have existing employee networks. These networks can be a great place to start reaching out to potential candidates to make your recruiting process more efficient.

If there is no employee network, create one! You can expand your pool by going through each business’s employee’s connections. Your employees can help you improve response rates and show you untapped talent.

When you find a candidate who might be a good fit, you can ask your employee to introduce the two of you. That way, you don’t have to send a cold email and hope that the candidate responds.

Referrals

Referrals are similar to having an employee network, but the employee will send candidates directly to you.

Referrals are generally strong candidates because someone trusts them enough to vouch for them. These candidates can be so strong that some employers will even offer incentives to employees if they recommend people from their network.

These referrals can save recruiters time going through candidates, especially when the referrals are usually solid hires.

You could even save some time without posting and advertising the job position. An internal employee may already find a candidate and deliver them to you.

Job Boards

Job boards usually are one of the most common places for candidates to engage with recruiters. When you post an open role, you’ll probably get a lot of applicants.

However, not all of them are going to be qualified. This might mean that you’ll have to spend a lot of time going through them to make sure that you can find the right one for the job. Make your job description very specific to help improve your chances of getting qualified candidates applying to the position.

You should list all the requirements for that job, including the experience, credentials, skills, and any education the applicant needs. You can also add screening questions into the job application to help weed out people who may not get a good fit.

If they don’t enter an answer that fits what you’re looking for, the system will disqualify the submission, and you can only focus on the qualified candidates.

Applicant Tracking Systems

Another great way to help you filter out all the resume applicants that you get is through applicant tracking systems (ATS). This software will go through all the submitted resumes for an open role and store them in resume databases.

Then, it’ll store all the information in a database that you can manage. For example, if you post an open job role for a software developer, you can run keyword searches through your system to see if any stored resumes would be a good match.

The ATS will then pull all of the best resumes that match and then rank them. You can then reach out to these candidates to see if they’d be interested in the position.

Career Fairs

While COVID-19 might’ve made career fairs and networking events a little bit more complex, this can be a great way to meet people in person. Sometimes, when you have a connection with a candidate in person, you’re more likely to have them remember you when you need to fill an open role.

When you’re at the career fair, set up a booth and advertise what you do to people. Try to collect resumes, names, and contact information.

Some recruiters even attend career fairs that are specific jobs or industries. This way, you can have an opportunity to advertise your business and your brand as a recruiter.

Regardless of what event you go to, view it as a way to interact with people looking for a job. These could be a great addition to your talent pipeline.

Software

Different tools can help you with the candidate sourcing process, like Recruiter.com’s advanced software.

This tool will identify qualified candidates quicker, even for a specialized role. Once the best candidates are found, their information will be delivered directly to your email so that you can assess their qualifications.

This tool can also send out automated emails to reach out to these candidates to try and recruit them.

Talent Pools

Don’t forget about the candidates in your existing talent pool, either. You might have interviewed candidates in the past who would’ve been a good fit but didn’t make it to the last round.

These candidates could be perfect for a new position that you’re hiring for. If you’re struggling to fill an open position now, refer to that list of candidates in your pool.

However, for this to work, you’ll need to ensure that you’re on good terms with candidates who’ve previously applied. If a hiring manager doesn’t choose a candidate for a specific position, make sure you communicate that to them instead of ghosting them.

Try and offer feedback on their screening and interview process to help them improve.

Find More Areas to Source Candidates

If you are still not sure where to source candidates for your business, you should consider hiring recruiters on an as-needed basis. These recruiters could have access to more talent pools that you don’t, opening up the sourcing areas you have access to.

We’re here to help you with that! We have over 150 million candidate profiles and an extensive network of professional recruiters you can connect with. We also offer software that can help you with sourcing passive candidates on your own.

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By Alyssa Harmon