How to source candidates for an effective recruitment process?

Staffing and recruitment process decides the success of an organization since the quality of human resources decides how far a business goes. Therefore, it is a crucial process and requires proper planning to achieve the best outcome. It all begins with sourcing the candidates.

All successful organizations have a good recruitment sourcing strategy in place. A recruitment sourcing strategy can be defined as a technique that is used to identify viable candidates for hiring needs. This strategy comprises multiple tactics to find out candidates who can be pursued for the further hiring process. There are a number of factors that help shape an organization’s sourcing strategy, which include:

·         Type of candidates needed.

·         Who is recruiting (the organization itself or an assigned third-party recruiter)?

·         Resources availability.

·         Any specific preferences of the organization.

·         Previous statistics of success of the strategy being implemented.

·         Time-frame and urgency of process.

Here are a few best sourcing techniques being used by recruiters in the industry.

1.    Recruiting Database

Whether the recruiting authority is in-house or a third party, they have their own record of candidates along with their contact information, which is known as recruiting database. When a new job order comes, the recruiting database is the first place the candidates are sourced from. A better and updated recruiting database is, therefore, important to get quality candidates right at the first step.

2.    Online Job Postings

Online job postings or what are known as job portals are good methods of sourcing when you are looking for active job seekers. The opinion of companies varies when it comes to job boards. Some find them extremely effective while others believe that they overlook the passive job seekers. It is believed that passive job seekers are mostly the top performers at the current jobs and while they might be looking for a change, they don’t pursue it actively. Therefore, leading organizations go beyond job portals to source candidates.

3.    Social Media

Social media is now playing a crucial role in the staffing and recruitment processes. From job listings to final placement, each step along the process is made easier by various social media platforms. LinkedIn is a social media platform that is specifically designed to help job seekers and organizations look for each other. It has emerged as one of the effective platforms for recruitment of good-quality candidates. Since, candidates can have their own detailed profile on LinkedIn, sourcing candidates from it is easier.

4.    Referrals

Referrals never get old. It is still one of the most effective sourcing strategies. Although the number of candidates that come via referrals is not high, the quality is better as compared to the other methods of sourcing. Some organizations recognize this and pay their employees per referral if the candidate is hired. The success of this method lies in the fact that when someone refers to a person for a job, there are good chances that they have already seen them perform well at a similar job.

5.    Recruiter Network

A recruiter network can be defined as a network of organizations or recruiters where the details of candidates and job orders are shared. This helps the organizations to benefit from each other. The shared network allows the recruiters to see what type of candidates are there in the market and how they can benefit from them. The market today is dominated by candidates and recruiter networks allows the recruiters to benefit from the same.

6.    From Within the Organization

Lastly, the organizations look within their employees to find people who can be the right fit for another job within the same company. In this case, they don’t need to source candidates from other places and will only need to convince their employees to consider the job position in question.

Sourcing is just the first step in staffing and recruitment process. Organizations that do it right are more likely to find high-quality candidates than those who go without planning. The internet presents vast sources for finding appropriate candidates. Therefore, you might want to go an extra step to find people who will build the foundation for the success of your business. If you need help with sourcing, contact our experts at MarkSpace Media.