Best Ways to Source Candidates

by Staffer Team

Attracting top talent is essential to the future of your organization. If you want to come out ahead of your competition, you need to hire the best talent in the market to help you get there.

Rather than waiting for candidates to come to you, direct your efforts toward strategically sourcing the best talent.

What is candidate sourcing?

Candidate sourcing involves proactively searching for and engaging qualified talent to fill your company’s current or future positions, and it’s more important than ever. Only 36% of the workforce is actively looking for a new opportunity at any given time, but an estimated 90% is willing to talk and learn more.

Sourcing opens you up to a huge talent pool of both passive candidates, and active candidates who otherwise wouldn't apply because they don’t know about your company or open opportunities. Sourcing allows you to take control of your pipeline and initiate conversations with the talent you really want. 

Candidate Sourcing Strategies

  1. Stay in step with the hiring manager
  • Hold a kickoff meeting as soon as you receive a requisition to learn about the role and align on must-have qualifications.
  • Ask your hiring manager to help you build a list of role-specific keywords to search for
  • Run a few searches together to discuss why specific candidates may or may not be a good fit

2. Source from your ATS first

  • Re-engaging old candidates is often a missed opportunity
  • Leverage your team's past efforts by beginning every search with your existing candidates
  • To facilitate this, always track why candidates aren't hired

3. Diversity your online souring channels

  • Consider adding different channels to your mix! Candidates may be more receptive to outreach messages on less conventional websites
  • The key is to understand your target candidates so you can better predict where to find them online.
  • GitHub is a great place to find developers, while Dribbble is idea for design candidates

Ultimately, the best candidates are in such high demand that it's necessary to be more strategic if you want to win them for your team. When the competition for top-tier talent is high, you have to go out and find the caliber of candidates you need for your organization to succeed in the most efficient way. Consider these tips when sourcing candidates.

Check out Staffer.cc for help with sourcing candidates.

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