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Candidate sourcing

Candidate Sourcing: Your Essential Guide

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Candidate sourcing is the search for candidates to fill current or future positions in the company. It requires searching, identifying, and reaching out to potential candidates for recruitment in the company. It involves sourcing resumes, scheduling interviews, and building relationships with the employees. It includes sourcing and finding both active and passive candidates who have not directly applied to the role. The information that one is looking for in sourced candidates is their names, evidence of qualification, contact information.

Candidate sourcing stratergies

5 Effective Strategies for Sourcing Top Candidates

The first step is to thoroughly understand the job role, requirements, salary package, and the necessary skills. The next step is to implement some effective strategies for sourcing candidates. Incorporating these strategies can make sourcing easier. It includes utilizing social media, posting job descriptions on job boards, searching the talent pipelines, looking for a referral, etc.

Social Media Utilization

Social media, also called social sourcing, is the first and most crucial step and strategy in candidate sourcing. LinkedIn, Naukri, and Facebook are the best platforms to look for the right talents. People commonly use these platforms to share their work samples and achievements. These are great places to browse the profiles to find the right talent and briefly overview their experience and skills.

Job Boards

Apart from looking for candidates on social platforms, post the job advertisement on the job boards. Post the job descriptions on the open media platforms to invite job seekers to apply for the position. These platforms often offer better and more qualified candidates for the open position. It will improve the company’s radar of qualified candidates and increase productivity.

Referrals

Referrals are channels to hiring top-quality talent. It is an excellent way to source candidates, and companies often offer employees monetary or nonmonetary incentives for referrals. Passive candidates can also help in telling about candidates who may be interested in the position. Employees may suggest their friends, family, and others in the network who possess the necessary skills for the job role.

Employee Branding

Another way to persuade candidates to join the company is through employee branding. Candidates must know that the company they are applying to is a standout company. To build a strong employee brand, make sure there are perks other than the salary and wages are given to employees. Update the career page and the job posting with an active presence on social media. When candidates see that organizations have a lot to offer, they are more inclined towards joining the company.

Candidate Sourcing Software

The best way to improve candidate sourcing is by investing in candidate sourcing software as it automates the recruiting process. This software streamlines the entire process from hiring managers to recruiters. They help in creating a candidate pool for current and future job openings. These tools also help assess and narrow down the candidate’s resumes by finding the relevant skills required for the job role. Sourcing tools like BambooHR, PyjamaHR, Freshworks, etc., offer many features that make the sourcing and recruitment process easy.

How is Sourcing Different than Recruiting

Sourcing candidates is a prior process to recruiting. The first step is finding and searching for the candidate, also called candidate sourcing. After the company completes sourcing candidates, the next step is recruitment. For any job role, candidates are hired through screening and interviews. Sourcing helps to lock down the candidates. They are then handed to the recruiters, who continue filling the candidates for the job role. Creating a delineation between sourcing and recruiting eases out the entire sourcing and recruiting process.

Advantages of Using an ATS to Source Candidates

Sourcing perfect candidates is an integral part of a company’s success, but the process can be tiring and time-consuming. However, using the right Applicant tracking system can centralize all the information related to sourcing and tracking candidates. From offering one-click job postings to interview scheduling, keeping candidates informed through emails, onboarding candidates, and document management, ATS streamlines all these processes. ATS like Workable, PyjamaHR, etc., reduce the time taken in manual handling of the candidate data.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

An applicant tracking system is a software application that enables the electronic handling of recruitment and hiring needs. After the job advertisement is posted, the resumes start pouring in. They are less or more in number depending upon the type of job. Keeping track of these resumes manually is often tiring and time-consuming. Applicant tracking systems such as PyjamaHR and Jobvite help filter through all the resumes. One can also specify the requirements and these ATS will filter the resumes easily. Eliminating the irrelevant resumes will help focus on the candidates that might fit the job role perfectly.

Sourcing tools are crucial to see if a candidate fits into the position or not. To choose whom to hire, assess the candidates on two essential things:
Skills: Resumes give a clear idea of the experience but do not show if the candidate possesses the necessary skills for a particular job role. 
Personality: It is important to know if the candidate is the right fit for the company’s culture or not.
In such a situation, software like BambooHR and GreenTeam help in creating skill and personality-based tests to help the hiring manager make the right decision about their hiring.

When choosing an ATS for any organization, one should consider certain things; An ATS should be user-friendly and well-integrated. It should be free of any hiring bias and cost-effective. A proper ATS helps better analyze, track, and strategize the talent acquisition process. PyjamaHR shines with collaborative features, interview scheduling, data handling, and providing the best assessments. Its intuitive interface simplifies how an organization sources, manages and hires candidates.

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