What is sourcing?
Sourcing comes under the talent acquisition that involves proactively identifying, contacting, and engaging qualified candidates for an organization rather than waiting for candidates to apply on their own. General recruiters may handle sourcing as one of their responsibilities, but some organizations use dedicated sourcers who focus only on this task.
Types of Sourcing
Sourcing in talent acquisition involves various strategies and methods to identify and engage potential candidates. Here are the primary types of sourcing strategies, aligned with the writing style provided:
1. Passive Candidate Sourcing
Passive candidates are those who are not actively looking for a job but might be open to new opportunities. Sourcing passive candidates involves identifying and engaging them through platforms like LinkedIn, professional forums, and networking events.
2. Active Candidate Sourcing
Active candidates are those who are actively seeking new job opportunities. This type of sourcing focuses on engaging with candidates who have applied for jobs or are searching on job boards.
3. Internal Sourcing
Internal sourcing involves looking within your organization to fill open positions. This could be through promotions, transfers, or internal referrals.
4. External Agency Sourcing
External agencies, such as staffing firms or recruitment agencies, can help source candidates. These agencies have extensive networks and expertise in finding candidates.
5. Campus Recruiting
Campus recruiting focuses on sourcing recent graduates and interns from colleges and universities. This strategy is ideal for entry-level positions and internships.
6. Networking and Events
Networking and events involve attending industry-specific events, conferences, and meetups to connect with potential candidates.
Sourcing vs recruiting
Sourcing is the talent acquisition discipline which focuses on identifying, assessing, and engaging potential candidates for roles turning them into applicants. People who specialise in sourcing are typically referred to as “sourcers.”Recruiting is the act of guiding applicants through the evaluation process, negotiating offers, and to some degree onboarding. While some organizations have recruiters tend to both sourcing and recruiting, sourcing has steadily but surely emerged as a specialized field. Optimizing the two functions can lower recruiting costs and time-to-hire.
Strategies for sourcing
Creating candidate persona
An ideal candidate persona helps you identify the right channel, message, and strategy to source more qualified candidates. Creating a candidate persona is a multi-step collaborative process, so you would need to talk to your team, hiring managers, and do some research before you fix on a persona. We have talked in detail about candidate persona in our other blog post. You can read it here.
Source candidates who are similar to your candidate persona
Once you have successfully created the candidate persona, you need to source candidates actively who match your persona. These candidates can be present on a number of platforms, however, depending on your persona, you can choose a platform
Connecting with leads
Finding a set of perfect candidates for a job is just the step in creating your talent sourcing strategy. Connecting with these leads and turning them into applicants is the major objective of any sourcing exercise.
Personalized Email Sequences
One message doesn’t fit all. This is especially true for recruitment! You need to personalize your message to candidates to get more replies and enhance engagement. Talk about common hobbies, common skills, why they are suitable for the role, etc! You should talk about your culture, team, vision, and what drives your company in the 1st email. If you don’t hear back immediately, you should always follow-up with your candidates within a few days.
AB testing and experimenting
Creating a talent sourcing strategy is an iterative process. You should always run multiple experiments to see what works and what doesn’t work for your company. Define your KPIs before you start your experiments and always benchmark your results and iterate for getting a more efficient talent sourcing strategy.
You can use tools like peopleHum to help you build a better recruitment engine for your business.
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