What is Sourcing?

These days, many job seekers are finding work through job boards, other digital platforms, and their networks. Businesses can be more successful in their recruitment efforts by taking a proactive approach to finding prospective employees. Also referred to as sourcing, this practice is an essential aspect of recruiting that involves identifying an ideal target candidate audience and potentially qualified individuals, collecting information like resumes and relevant portfolios, and contacting potential candidates. Sometimes, sourcing can be less about filling an immediate role and more about establishing a long-term relationship with possible future hires.

Proactive sourcing strategies help businesses enhance recruitment by identifying, engaging, and building relationships with qualified candidates who could later become hires.

While sourcing is a part of the recruitment process, the two are separate concepts. Recruitment begins with the HR processes of screening, interviewing, and assessing candidates. Alternatively, sourcing comes before any interview or screen to get people into your 'candidate bucket,’ which is a pool of potential candidates, and talent ecosystem. To begin sourcing, identify your future hiring needs across departments and understand what skills are needed for each open role. Then, employ effective sourcing strategies such as the following:  

• Use social media and your website to build an 'employer brand,' which is the perception of your company as a great place to work and market open roles. This will help attract potential candidates and make your company stand out in a competitive job market. Use social media and other platforms to elicit and collect data such as resumes, work samples, and contact information from potential candidates.
• Contact candidates to build talent pipelines that can help you fill future skill gaps and staffing shortages
• Contact qualified candidates to inform them of job openings relevant to their experience.
• Establish an employee referral program that incentivizes candidate referrals.

Sourcing identifies and gathers potential candidates to fill roles before any interviews or screenings, focusing on future hiring needs across departments.

No matter the job market, companies that source are more successful at finding candidates than those that do not. That's because job seekers are busy, social algorithms promote content, and people you've already engaged with rather than new sources. Some candidates are 'passive job seekers,' meaning they are not actively looking for a new job but could be open to a new role if the right opportunity comes along. Additionally, with the rise of remote roles, your job can now compete with millions of open roles worldwide instead of thousands in your area. Sourcing ultimately reduces time-to-fill since it gives TA teams a chance to pre-screen candidates and helps establish talent pipelines that make it easier to fill roles over time.

Companies that proactively source candidates are more successful in finding talent quickly because they build talent pipelines that engage active and passive job seekers.

Sourcing can be a time-consuming, always-on practice. It may even require an additional hire or two of talent acquisition professionals like sourcing specialists, which come with added overhead costs. Employers also often struggle to effectively find and engage a diverse talent pool. Finally, alongside all other companies looking for candidates, competition for top talent can be fierce, meaning businesses must smartly promote their best offerings to job seekers.

Sourcing candidates can be challenging, such as the additional administrative costs associated with new TA hires and the need to overcome widespread competition for top talent.

Due to fierce competition, small businesses often need help hiring, especially from more prominent companies with the resources to offer better pay or benefits. Therefore, it is imperative to be proactive and tactical with hiring and to implement sourcing strategies into your mix. Consider putting together a sourcing plan that targets the skills your future open roles are looking for and using a mix of social media platforms, both popular (such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter) and 'niche' (such as GitHub for developers or Dribbble for designers), employee referrals, and your past candidate base to reach out to prospects for hire.

To attract qualified hires even in competitive markets, small businesses should implement sourcing strategies such as social media marketing, employee referrals, and re-engaging past candidate connections.