Maximize Your Talent Search: A 5-Step Guide to Sourcing Candidates

Candidate sourcing is a powerful recruiting strategy that can help recruiters find top talent and fill open positions quickly and efficiently.

By proactively searching for candidates, companies can identify and attract individuals who may not be actively looking for new opportunities but have the qualifications and experience required for the role (passive candidates). This approach can be particularly useful when hiring for managerial and specialized roles or when there is a skill shortage (for example, if you’re hiring software engineers).

Essentially, this sourcing strategy provides an alternative or complementary way of finding qualified talent when the traditional methods aren’t producing results. You can source candidates through different channels, including using social media, attending networking events, and even email marketing.

The main advantage is that instead of having applicants come to you, you go directly to the candidates that have the experience and qualifications you are looking for, saving time and resources in the recruitment process.

Candidate sourcing and recruitment are terms often used interchangeably. They are distinct approaches to recruiting, albeit complementary.

Recruiting is the process of attracting potential candidates to apply for public open positions. This can include posting jobs on job boards, attending job fairs, sending out emails announcing openings, and conducting interviews with candidates who have applied through the company's website. This describes the typical recruitment method, which involves waiting for job seekers to apply. In this approach, only submitted applicant profiles will be reviewed.

With fierce competition for top talent, companies are turning to sourcing techniques to find the applicant profiles that better fit their organization and beat their competition in the process. Generally speaking, candidate sourcing is a proactive talent-hunting strategy that involves actively searching for and identifying potential candidates for current or future open positions.

Poaching is an example of candidate sourcing where a recruiter looks for qualified candidates in the competition and attempts to entice the talent to work for their company (the ethics of which are debatable). Another example of candidate sourcing is screening layoff-impacted employee lists, knowing that the likelihood of them being on the job hunt is high.

Sourcing is particularly useful in industries where the pool of qualified candidates is small or when there is a high demand for a specific set of skills. It is a way to discover candidates that may not be actively seeking new opportunities but could be a good fit for the role and the company culture.

By having more control over who is considered for each hiring pipeline, you’ll also have a higher chance of finding and securing your very own purple squirrel (that rare-to-find employee that perfectly matches your requirements and company culture).

Overall, sourcing and recruiting are complementary strategies that companies can use to find and attract top talent. By utilizing both techniques, you can increase your chances of finding the perfect fit for your open positions.

Although most hiring managers recognize the importance of seeking out candidates, few will truly invest in it as the main strategy to grow their team. The active sourcing approach will arguably require a bigger time investment during the first stages (compared with posting a job ad and waiting for applications) but will bring a higher ROI in later stages. For example, if you're looking to attract and hire the best developers and grow a high-performance team.

The benefits of candidate sourcing are many. Here are four reasons you might consider including it in your hiring process:

1. Find candidates who match your exact requirements. The most obvious benefit is that you are in complete control of the skills and experience you’re targeting. Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach, you can find candidates who match your exact requirements and who are most likely to make a positive impact on your company.
2. Bypass time-consuming screening of unsuitable applicants. Weed out candidates who don't meet your criteria and focus only on those who do. This saves time and allows you to move on with the process more quickly than if you were screening hundreds of candidates that are not the right fit.
3. Increase diversity. Candidate sourcing allows you to cast a wider net in your search for talent. By reaching out beyond your immediate network and targeting underrepresented groups, you can make your team more representative of society at large and foster a more diverse and inclusive workplace.
4. Get a competitive advantage. By proactively sourcing top candidates, you can stay ahead of the competition by recruiting industry leaders and adding them to your organization—before your competition does.

Candidate sourcing is not new, but it is underutilized. Don’t miss out on this strategy to build a stellar team that pushes your business forward. By proactively searching for the right candidates, you can ensure that your company is well-positioned to grow and succeed in the long term.

Pre-Internet, job seekers would go door to door with resumes in hand, hoping to be sponsored for the following forty-something years.

Times have dramatically changed and the process of finding a company-candidate fit has become simultaneously simpler and harder. With the birth of the internet, job seekers and talent hunters now have more options available to them. But with increased options come added challenges.

In today’s highly competitive labor market, finding the right people can be difficult.

For starters, hiring is expensive. The Society for Human Resource Management estimates an average cost-per-hiring of $4,129 to fill a position. This includes advertising, interviewing, and training new hires, but it does not include their income until they're autonomous at work.

Not only is it costly, but hiring also takes a long time. On average, takes around 42 days to fill a new position, precious time during which teams are at full capacity and unable to do their best work.

Lastly, employee turnover is the highest it's ever been, 20% higher than pre-pandemic rates. Companies not only have to invest in their hiring pipelines but also in employee retention.

Overall, we can agree that hiring is a time and resources sink. The ability to create an efficient hiring process can make or break a growing business. Arguably, candidate sourcing offers the flexibility to find candidates with the right skillsets and attitude on a friendly budget and timeline.