Sourcing Candidates: The 8 Most Important Best Practices
An organization needs the right talent to stay afloat and remain profitable.
It is estimated that by the year 2030, there will be a significant global shortage of human talent of roughly 85 million people. Therefore, your hiring manager and recruiter need to learn the art of candidate sourcing to beat your competition in the race for talent.
What Is Candidate Sourcing?
Candidate sourcing is a concept where recruiters use different platforms that help them find the best candidates possible. This is considered a specialized investigative role where recruiters use various platforms to fill positions that are typically challenging to fill up.
Candidate sourcing is an action that recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers practice to find quality candidates. Sourcing resources using different platforms are getting more and more popular. However, hiring authorities must use the best sourcing resources to get ideal results.
Let’s take a look at all the strategies hiring experts can use for sourcing resources:
The Best Strategies for Sourcing Resources
You can pull off candidate sourcing with effective strategies and make the most of competitive hiring. Here are some practices that will ensure you get the early bird and put together a team of professional experts. However, the top candidates only stay available for ten days, so you need to have an efficient process.
1. Come Up With An Effective Strategy
Everything needs to be done with an effective strategy to achieve all the goals. If the sourcer does not have an effective strategy, it can be challenging to find a pool of candidates who can fill up the relevant job openings. More importantly, it will be a complete waste of time, and the company might struggle without the employee they need to hire. To come up with an effective strategy, you can use the following steps:
- Analyze the job requirements
- Visualize the candidate’s persona
- Apply relevant job titles
- Start your search
You may not be able to tell if a strategy is effective enough unless and until you put it to practice. Put your strategy to practice and learn from the results that come out of it.
2. Explain The Vacant Role
A vague job post could be a problem for the candidates and the sourcers. Several candidates may contact you, and if the role is misdescribed, things can get incredibly complicated.
You may have to respond to several questions that you could have avoided if you had clearly described the vacant position. Come up with a detailed and accurate description of the vacant position. This may include details like the job duties, the qualifications you require, and the level of experience a candidate must have when they apply.
To curate the description, you must understand the requirements yourself first. Understand all the aspects of the vacant role to find the right candidate. You can request the help of your hiring team, and they can explain all the details of the job to you and what expectations they have.
3. Use Your ATS Database
An Application Tracking System (ATS) database is the pool of people who have already applied for a job in your company. The ATS database is of great help to sourcers as they can find some of the best and highly qualified candidates. The ATS is used in some of the best companies to improve the recruiting process.
The tracking system can sift and sort through several candidates and help you eliminate unwanted candidates within the initial stages. The ATS helps rank all the applicants based on their resumes and job description to help you look at the top candidates. Instead of starting your search from scratch, it is better to use the ATS database system and connect with some of the best candidates.
Your ATS database can also be an effective way of sourcing passive candidates, especially if you integrate AI technology into it.
In addition, it is always a good idea to store the information of candidates who did not qualify for the position but were still a good choice and can be considered later. Doing so will help you get a pool of candidates you can use every time there is a need for new employees.
4. Don’t Rush Into Anything
You shouldn’t rush the sourcing process. Instead, you should spend your time carefully finding qualified candidates.
Many sourcers make the mistake of being in a hurry to hire a candidate. It is best to slow down and go through each candidate properly to come up with valuable suggestions rather than candidates who are not a match for the position you are trying to fill out.
Sourcers need to pay attention to details when sourcing resources. For instance, if you reach out to passive candidates, you shouldn’t just rely on their social media profiles as they may be outdated. You can ask them for the information yourself or cross-check the details from different platforms.
5. Search Unconventionally
If you follow the traditional sourcing methods, you may not be able to get the results you are looking for. Many sourcers rely on conventional methods such as search strings and expect to get great results. However, it isn’t easy to do so.
You may need to look beyond semantic search keywords and include their job roles.
For instance, if you are hiring a website designer, you can use words that outline what responsibilities you are looking for. This way, you will find candidates that have yet to be discovered by other companies. Besides looking on the same platforms, you can explore different avenues and connect with candidates who can be a great asset to your team.
Employee referrals and job boards are other excellent sources to find good relevant candidates.
6. Maintain a High Standard
As a recruiter, you lay the standards for the candidates you want in your company. You have total control of the quality of candidates you bring in, so you must maintain high quality. Many sourcers make the mistake of settling for the first few options they find. When gathering a pool of talent, you need to determine if they are the best options available.
When starting your search, you first need to determine the quality of candidates you are looking for and ensure you maintain high standards. When coming up with a pool of talent, make sure that you speak to many candidates to find the most suitable option. Having a large pool will help you filter out candidates easily.
7. Use Technology To Your Benefit
Technology can make all the difference when it comes to sourcing resources. If you use the right technology in the right way, you can quickly improve your sourcing. For instance, when finding candidates, you can use different platforms such as LinkedIn and Indeed. If you do not have enough resumes, these platforms can be incredibly helpful as they have other resumes.
You can also take advantage of other technologies to message your candidates. For instance, you can use email tracking to learn when your emails were opened and to follow up on the applicant in an automated fashion. With automation, you may have a less costly sourcing process as there is a 35% higher cost in manual processes.
8. Socialize on Social Media
Social media is a popular strategy when sourcing, as it helps sources connect with different candidates and open easy communication lines. Most of us spend a lot of time on social media, which means that prospective candidates will be in the same boat as the rest of us.
Social media is a great place to post job ads to find candidates quickly. Candidate sourcing from social media is very effective and can help you get more insights than just the basic formal job-related information. It is essential to have more information on a candidate to make a decision that helps you get the best possible applicant.
Start Using These Strategies Today
You must use the right strategies to ensure that your efforts pay off. They can be beneficial to target candidates as long as you use them correctly!
To learn more about how hiring managers and recruiters can build robust resume databases, maintain a vast talent pool, engage candidates better, and strengthen the overall employer brand, contact us at Recruiter.com today!
Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.