Sourcing Tips From the Pros
A big thank you to the Leadership Sponsor of this month’s featured series. Check out TheLadders for help with your recruiting and sourcing.
If you desire to enhance your sourcing practices or are simply seeking new information about the best practices for sourcing candidates, read on to gain insight and sourcing tips from some of the industry’s leading recruitment professionals:
Job Descriptions
On Monster.com, contributor Lou Adler says sourcers should define the job, not the person. He explains:
“Sourcing the best candidates must start with a compelling vision of what the job entails. Don’t rely on a traditional job description to source candidates. Instead, ask hiring managers what the person needs to do in the job to be successful, and get a description of at least three or four major projects. The best candidates will only explore a job if it offers growth opportunities.”
Posting Jobs
Searching the Web
Glen Cathy of booleanblackbelt.com also agrees with Ken’s sourcing suggestion. When writing for Sourcecon in his article, “Top 10 Candidate Sourcing Best Practices,” Cathy advises recruiters to run multiple searches across multiple sources. He writes, “[No] matter how strong your sourcing skills are or how many times you’ve recruited for the same position, you should always run multiple searches. It’s impossible for one Boolean search to find all qualified candidates.
“It is also critical to leverage every resource you have available to you. You may be in love with LinkedIn, but the best candidates for that special position you’re working on may be tucked away in your database/ATS, or on Twitter!”
Engaging Candidates
In her article, “The Future of Sourcing: 10 Tips for the Forward Thinker” Stacy Donovan Zapar, CEO and founder of Tenfold Social Training, says that the future of sourcing is engagement. And one important way to engage potential candidates, Zapar explains, is by building relationships and being social.
“Build those relationships. Grow your network. Connect. Follow first. Share. Have conversations. Say thank you. Engage!” Zapar writes. “Don’t worry about DOING social; just focus on BEING social, and you’ll be fine. People are much more likely to respond to you if you’ve built some sort of relationship with them first. And those relationships are what separate you from that junior Recruiter with a giant database and a spammy trigger-finger.”
Reaching Passive Job Seekers
Building relationships with candidates can be challenging, and even more so when you attempt this with passive candidates. In her article on Recruiter.com, “How to Find The Best Talent When They aren’t Looking for You,” Lori Fenstermaker, founder and chief sourcer of Scavado, offers a few tips for recruiters to tackle this endeavor. One important tip she offers is for recruiters to find where their potential prospects live online.
“To hunt for great talent, you first need to understand where they gather. Knowing what your ideal prospects care about is the best way to find them quickly and efficiently,” she explains. “You should know what the top talent in your industry is reading and even who they’re interacting with on Twitter. Your ideal candidate may not have thousands of followers, but perhaps they never miss an industry-specific Twitter chat.”
Fenstermaker also advises recruiters to dig deep into the niche resources in order to find what top candidates utilize online. “For example,” she writes, “if you’re recruiting for a web developer position, you might want to skip skimming Facebook and jump straight to code collaboration sites like Githhub and Bitbucket. Knowing what your top prospects care about will help you uncover their online hiding places.”
A special thank you goes out to TheLadders, a Leadership Sponsor of this month’s featured series on Sourcing Best Practices. Please visit their site to understand how TheLadders can elevate your sourcing and recruitment efforts.