What Are The Different Types Of Candidate Sourcing Techniques?

Getting quality people on board is crucial for the future of your business. Creating a talent pipeline will boost your chances of finding and recruiting the best employees for your future growth.

The ideal applicant will result in excellent productivity and lower employee turnover. On the other hand, choosing the incorrect candidate can result in a negative impact on your company culture and a waste of time and money training someone who will only hold the position temporarily.

What is Candidate Sourcing?

Candidate sourcing is the proactive search for candidates to fill open positions now and in the future.

But..How is it any different from recruiting?

Sourcing is searching, identifying, and contacting potential candidates. Recruitment kicks in after sourcing which is a process of screening, interviewing, and evaluating candidates.

But both sourcing and recruiting fall under the same umbrella in the responsibilities of an HR.

Benefits of Candidate Sourcing

83% of organizations have difficulty finding suitable candidates. Meanwhile, employers in nearly every US state are expected to experience substantial labor shortages by 2029.

And candidate sourcing can help with just that!

Here are a few benefits of candidate sourcing for you to check out.

Improved Quality of Hire

You end up spending more time sourcing candidates than you would otherwise have. Doing this gives you a better understanding of the role and what type of candidate fits best for the role. The greater your understanding, the greater your search and greater the quality of candidates.

Not only this.

Now, we are not saying that active candidate searching gives a bad talent pool, but sifting through hundreds of candidates can be a daunting task. Whereas, having a talent pool of sourced, refined and already vetted candidates gives you an upper hand while hiring.

Reduce Time and Cost of Hire

The average hiring process takes between 36 and 52 days, depending on who you ask (as well as on things like the industry and the job). However, since sourcing cultivates relationships with candidates long before the need to fill a position arises, you have a pipeline of pre-qualified, vetted candidates to reach out to when anything opens up, shortening the cycle and filling positions as soon as they are identified.

Since you contacted them based on information from their LinkedIn profiles, open-source projects, or design portfolios, you are no longer passively waiting for the appropriate candidate to apply. Instead, you have already begun the "screening process." Because of this, hiring sourced candidates is more than twice as efficient.

Improved Workplace Diversity

With sourcing, you won't feel pressured to make "fast hiring," which is frequently done through referrals from coworkers, reproducing a homogeneity in your firm. Indeed, relying on referrals can make diversity programs more difficult.

Referrals typically benefit white males more than men of color or women of any race because employees are more inclined to recommend talent that is demographically similar to themselves.

When you’re filling your pipeline ahead of time, however, there’s time to uncover, engage, and convince underrepresented talent to consider your organization.

Different Types Of Candidate Sourcing Techniques

You shouldn't base your candidate sourcing efforts solely on one source. The likelihood that you will miss out on the best candidates from other sources is increased. So how do you go about sourcing candidates? Which sourcing strategies should you use to increase the efficiency of your hiring process?

Here are the best candidate sourcing techniques for you to take a lesson from.

Online Job Postings

One of the most effective candidate-sourcing strategies is posting job openings online on numerous job boards. These employment boards advertise your openings in their newsletters and job alert emails in addition to posting them on their portal. As a result, a larger and more relevant audience comes your way.

Your vacancies can draw a sizable number of motivated job searchers. You gain the benefit of selecting the best candidate from this pool of applicants in this manner. By sponsoring your job postings on various job sites, you may also advertise your openings to a targeted audience. Maximum reach is ensured by sponsoring your positions because they appear higher on the search results page.

This candidate sourcing method's one flaw is that it doesn't specifically target passive candidates. There are a lot of candidates out there who might be a good fit for your position. However, they might not have the time to investigate these opportunities if they are not actively looking for work.

However, using this method of posting jobs is still a terrific approach to draw in top candidates who are actively looking for work.

Currently, social media recruiting is regarded as a successful method of candidate sourcing. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are now widely used as social media platforms for finding qualified job prospects.

Candidates frequently use LinkedIn to advertise their availability to employers around the world.

In addition to using LinkedIn, recruiters are now advertising their job listings on Facebook and Twitter as well. The platforms for social recruiting can be utilized to find specific candidate profiles. The profiles and behavior of possible candidates can be extensively examined and tracked in a much better way by recruiters and hiring managers. They can now determine whether these applicants suit their job requirements adequately.

Strengthen your Employer Brand

Every interaction you have with applicants, from the opening sentence to the exit interview, is part of your brand. According to estimates, a good employer brand can save hiring costs in half and turnover by 28%. Building your brand might therefore enable you to level the playing field.

Take the time to fully understand and develop your brand because it forms the strategic cornerstone of your candidate sourcing. In order for your brand statement to be meaningful to both existing and potential employees, it must reflect the values you uphold.

By showcasing employees in your stories, encouraging them to customize their LinkedIn profiles, launching a company blog, talking to the media, and participating in conferences, employers can raise brand awareness.

Invest in Employee Referral Programs

Though employee referral programs may lead to a homogenous pipeline of candidates, it is still a top-notch strategy for sourcing candidates that are both reliable and a perfect fit for your organization.

Employee referral programs are an attractive candidate sourcing strategy that literally never gets old. A great many companies have employed this method and expanded their talent pool by ten times.

You compensate your employee with a referral bonus in exchange for a candidate that you are looking for. Because your employee knows the company inside out and knows your requirements, they refer to the best candidate possible.

Make Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools

Some databases and tools for sourcing and hiring can automatically find qualified people. These technological solutions locate applicants that have resumes or professional profiles that meet the criteria for the position you are hiring for.

Reviewing applications and profiles for candidates can be expedited thanks to automation. Additionally, it offers better matches for available positions, which can provide you access to more skilled individuals.

Host Killer Events

You can meet potential candidates in person at recruitment events. Take part in job fairs or organize your own open house to invite prospective employees to your workplace so they can meet your teams.

Expand your search

Continue tweaking your search criteria to find more new applicants online. Expand your search terms and semantics to find the undiscovered gems in the background by looking beyond the people that everyone else has already located.

Keep in mind that rudimentary searches will yield basic results. Even more annoyingly, various titles are used by different companies for the same roles. So, before beginning a new search on social media or through a search engine, make sure you have all potential titles at hand.

Think outside the box

Find talent online in communities where your target audience hangs out, such as Behance for creatives or GitHub for developers. To draw the interest of your potential candidates, demonstrate what your business is doing and how you're doing it.

Wrapping up

It's easier said than done to attract talent, and it will undoubtedly take some time before your hiring strategy is on target. It's no longer enough to simply post a job opening on your company's website, so find innovative ways to reach your target talent pool and redesign your hiring procedure accordingly.

Last but not least, keep in mind that sourcing candidate strategies are like diamonds in the recruitment industry: no two are precisely the same because what your organization needs will be very different from what someone else wants.