Think about this: You need to hire for your expanding tech team. You’ve got a month to do it. The first step? You fetch the job description from the team and post it on job boards & LinkedIn. After a couple of weeks, you’ve got a hundred applications. You sift through them, shortlist 25 resumes, and begin screening. Ten candidates make it to the interview stage. It’s been more than three weeks already, but after interviewing them, the tech team finds none are skilled enough. The result? Almost a month has passed, and you haven’t hired anyone. Even worse, there are no more candidates in the pipeline. What went wrong? You missed out on candidate sourcing and didn’t have a proper strategy.
To avoid such scenarios, focus on building strong sourcing systems, following them consistently, and optimizing at every iteration. But how do you do that? Let’s dive in.
What is Candidate Sourcing?
Candidate sourcing means researching, identifying, and reaching out to potential candidates for current or future roles at your organization. It involves finding both active (job-seeking) and passive candidates (those not actively looking) and adding them to your talent pipeline.
Here are some stats highlighting its importance:
- On average, recruiters spend around 6-12 hours every week sourcing candidates.
- A whopping 76% of recruiters find attracting quality candidates as their biggest challenge.
Why Do You Need to Source Candidates?
As a recruiter, you’re constantly evaluating hundreds of profiles to select fit-for-job candidates. So why source even more?
Consider these stats:
- Proactively sourced candidates make up 31% of all hires.
- 1 in every 72 sourced candidates gets hired versus 1 in 152 applicants.
Clearly, sourcing can cut down the effort and time needed to fill an open position by half. Here are more reasons why talent sourcing is essential:
Quality of Hiring: There’s fierce competition for top talent out there. Through sourcing, you can target passive candidates too. Stats show that 42% of applicants often aren’t fit for job requirements and 86% of highly qualified candidates are employed and not looking to switch jobs. Hence, sourcing is crucial for recruiters and CXOs.
Talent Pipeline: Whether you’re a startup or an established company, hiring never really stops. Keeping your talent pipeline full helps significantly whenever new positions open up – you know where to find potential hires.
Time & Cost of Hiring: When leads come through job boards, hiring cycles tend to be long due to multiple rounds of shortlisting involved (which increases cost). With a filled talent pipeline due to sourcing efforts, positions get filled quickly, and costs come down too.
How Has Sourcing Evolved Lately?
The end goal – hiring the best available talent swiftly – remains unchanged. However, systems and processes have evolved vastly.
If you’ve been in recruitment for some time now, you’ll agree that sourcing today looks very different from what it used to be years ago! The market now leans heavily towards being candidate-driven compared with earlier times where employers held sway.
Previously, newspaper ads were the primary method, along with prolonged campus placements, but now social media reigns supreme thanks to advancements made by technology. Job portals like Indeed, third-party agencies, and professional platforms such as LinkedIn have become mainstream solutions!
Because competition exists quite heavily, the race against time emerges when thinking strictly about both recruiting and sourcing journeys. Manual management, while daunting, has now been supplemented by automation platforms, providing a streamlined experience from the recruitment process through outreach.
Sourcing vs Recruitment: What’s the Difference?
Many people confuse candidate sourcing with recruitment. Don’t worry, though – we’ve all been there! Companies often blur these terms interchangeably despite the dynamics shifting into distinct stages across the entire cycle continuum.
Sourcing focuses on recognizing right-fit professionals and building pipelines for various roles, while recruitment involves the entire journey of vetting, testing, and ultimately hiring those sourced candidates.
How To Craft An Outstanding Candidate Sourcing Strategy?
To craft an outstanding candidate sourcing strategy, follow these steps:
- Define Your Needs: Clearly outline the skills and experience required for the roles you need to fill.
- Utilize Multiple Channels: Use job boards, social media, professional networks, and direct outreach to find candidates.
- Leverage Technology: Use ATS and other recruitment tools to streamline your process.
- Build Relationships: Engage with passive candidates and build long-term relationships.
- Optimize Continuously: Regularly review and refine your sourcing strategy based on what works and what doesn’t.
Ready to revolutionize your hiring process? Start by building a robust candidate sourcing strategy today. Contact us for a free consultation to optimize your recruitment efforts and fill your talent pipeline with top-tier candidates.
