Candidate sourcing pre-screens individuals before going through the whole recruitment process. It ensures that only active job seekers are considered in the hiring funnel and helps in hiring the right candidates that possess the qualities you’re looking for.
Recruitment
All you need to know about candidate sourcing
Want to hire the best candidates quickly? Discover the different methods of sourcing top talents and how the use of AI technology will benefit you.
Shashibala Morya
June 28, 2023 at 06:03 AM
In general, sourcing means to find something. Similarly, in the context of hiring, finding a suitable candidate to fill a job vacancy is known as candidate sourcing.
As sourcing takes time to find qualified talents, many companies prefer to hire HR professionals or consultants for this process. Let’s explore candidate sourcing in detail, including the methods and effective techniques to source candidates for your business!
What is candidate sourcing?
Candidate sourcing refers to the process of finding potential candidates for current and future job vacancies. It focuses on bringing qualified candidates from various platforms and collecting the relevant data for recruiting or hiring process.
Sourcing is a part of the recruitment process, which is performed by recruiting teams such as HR professionals, talent acquisition specialists, and consultancies. From the pool of candidates, it identifies who are actively looking for job opportunities (active job seekers) and who are not searching for jobs (passive job seekers).
Both active and passive job seekers' details — including their name, qualifications, contact information, etc. — can be found through various job platforms.
Candidate sourcing vs. Recruiting candidates
The primary difference between candidate sourcing and recruiting is that sourcing focuses on identifying the ideal talent, and recruiting focuses on screening, selecting, and hiring the right candidates. Here are some more differences between these two processes.
| Criteria | Candidate Sourcing | Recruiting Candidates |
| Engagement | Sourcing involves interaction with both passive and active job seekers. | Recruitment involves interaction with only active job seekers. |
| Candidate interaction | Sourcers contact candidates directly, encourage them to apply for vacant jobs, and share job descriptions through direct messages on social media sites or initial phone calls. | Recruiters manage relationships with the candidates identified by sourcers. They invite qualified candidates for interviews, screening processes, making employment offers, navigating negotiations, and onboarding new employees. |
| Responsibilities | Sourcing is the stage where recruiters spend more time researching qualified candidates through databases, job boards, social media, and other platforms to see who might be a good fit for the open position. | Recruiters follow fundamental administrative duties regarding the hiring process — such as scheduling interviews, onboarding candidates, and more. |
| Client interactions | Sourcers perform targeted research and cut short the list of potential candidates that meet the job requirements. It includes which qualities the client actively seeks in a candidate and the ones that are negotiable. | Recruiters connect with the client and review qualified candidates to find which of them they wish to evaluate, interview, and potentially hire. |
How to source candidates?
The hiring process includes both sourcing and recruiting. For a job opening, candidate sourcing can be done in the following steps:
- Collect essential information about the candidate, such as resumes and work samples.
- Pre-screen candidates with the job roles of an open position you are hiring for.
- Connect with the candidates and inform them about the job vacancy.
- Hire potential candidates for your open job role.
Different methods of sourcing candidates
Here are some common techniques for sourcing talent:
Utilize social media
Using social media is one of the best ways to source candidates, also known as the social sourcing method. Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are commonly used by people to share their work achievements or samples. You can freely browse profiles or use relevant hashtags to find the best candidates.
For instance, people share their work samples or thoughts on social media with relevant hashtags that help others discover their talent or know their viewpoint. So, you can try different ways to search on social media through job roles, relevant hashtags, groups, etc.
Post job descriptions to job boards
While browsing on different job boards such as LinkedIn and Indeed to find active job seekers, you can post job descriptions for the roles you are hiring. In addition, job seekers use these platforms to find available job opportunities.
Hackathons
Organizing an event, like a hackathon, will be an effective solution for sourcing candidates in a short time frame. It will help you gather the candidate data and hire quality talents by offering job opportunities to the best-performed candidates.
Referrals
Many businesses organize referral programs with some incentives for their employees. A report by Career Builder has found that 88% of recruiters prefer to use employee referrals as the top channel for quality hires. You can also ask for referrals within your network or ask passive candidates if they know anyone else who may be interested.
Check talent pipeline
While sourcing, if a candidate isn’t interested currently doesn’t mean they won’t be available in the future; they might look for a job after a few months. You can make the most of sourcing by keeping the candidates organized, and easy to reach out again when someone from your talent pool matches your new job requirement.
Consider niche platforms
Another method to source candidates is to check some niche platforms, such as Github for developers, Behance for designers, Medium for writers, and many others helps to find the perfect fit for a job opening.
Use the right platform
Once you have used all of the above methods, you can opt for a sourcing platform. These tools are helpful in finding qualified talents for current and future job openings. According to Entelo's report, 75% of recruiters admit that technology plays the biggest role in the hiring process. If you are looking for a sourcing platform – check out JobTatkal!
JobTatkal is a job site that uses AI technology to assist recruiters in sourcing qualified applicants and offers parsed resumes consisting of essential information like contact details, qualifications, work experience, skills, project details, etc.
How do you source entry-level candidates?
If you want to dive deeper into sourcing methods, especially for entry-level candidates, here are the different ways to find them:
Skill-focused job ads
Entry-level candidates are freshers who may lack professional experience in your industry. Create job ads with the skills you need in the role instead of adding criteria for minimum years of work experience.
Career events
An event like a job fair will let you connect with candidates from different backgrounds. By hosting open-house events, potential candidates will have the opportunity to get connected with you.
Internship programs
Implement internships that help you to collaborate with entry-level candidates and evaluate their skills. After that, you can hire the most qualified ones for full-time positions.
How do you source executive-level candidates?
If you are sourcing executive-level candidates, it means you are looking for a senior or expert with strong leadership skills and demonstrated work experience. Let’s discover some techniques to find them quickly.
Referrals
You can ask for referrals from your teammates and others within your network. It is a great way of finding executive-level candidates because sourcing for higher positions takes more time and cost per hire than entry-level roles.
Social sourcing
You can join online professional groups to build a network with potential candidates who are seniors or experts in their field.
Internal promotions
Another method of sourcing executive candidates can be the internal mobility of talents. You can review existing employees of your company and promote them to senior positions if they exhibit potential.
Sundar Pichai is one of the prominent examples of internal promotion. He started as a product manager and eventually got promoted to the role of CEO at Google.
Importance of AI candidate sourcing
According to a report by Aptitude Research, around 55% of companies are investing in recruitment automation. They believe automation will improve efficiency and foster data-driven decisions. For example, resume parsing technology helps recruiters by extracting crucial information from candidate resumes in large numbers.
Let’s discover the importance of AI automated sourcing for recruiters.
Improved recruitment
Recruiting is becoming highly competitive as demands or expectations are higher than the supply of quality talent. Recruiters are searching for smarter ways of sourcing candidates because traditional methods (such as hiring through employment agencies, newspaper ads, etc.) are less efficient for sourcing talents.
Therefore, using Artificial Intelligence-based recruitment helps companies and recruiting professionals to get the right candidates for vacant job roles. It makes the recruitment process faster and improves the quality and objectivity of recruitment.
Reduced irrelevant candidates
With the rise of social media, applying to open positions has become easy for candidates. It increases the chances of receiving unqualified applications. Hence, job boards need to become increasingly filtered while sourcing candidates, and the use of AI technology helps to source the right candidates and connect with qualified applicants for the role.
Effective resume screening
The talent market has turned into a global market with a remote trend as it gives the flexibility to work from any location virtually. As the geographical restrictions fade, you need to narrow down this ever-growing pool of candidates while shortlisting, but this time-consuming process can be done more effectively with AI technology. Pre-screening of the candidates can be done with AI, freeing up your time, so you can apply your bandwidth to select the best ones.
India’s #1 Free AI-Powered Job Site
JobTatkal is an AI-powered match-making job site for job seekers and recruiters.
What are the benefits of AI candidate sourcing?
Artificial intelligence is an ever-growing trend. As the global talent pool keeps growing and becoming more competitive, you need to know some benefits of AI sourcing in the recruitment industry.
Efficient recruitment workflow
Using AI-based sourcing helps to create an efficient workflow of recruitment by automating and streamlining time-consuming tasks like candidate sourcing. It improves your productivity and lets you focus more on other tasks, such as engaging and onboarding the talents. You will be able to fill the open position faster, especially with high-quality candidates.
Tailor-made recommendations
AI technology in sourcing offers better results based on your requirements. For instance, if you need a Java developer for a specific location or remote Java developers, then AI will search the database and offer you a list of relevant candidate profiles.
Wider candidate pool
AI technology analyzes candidates by looking at their previous experiences and skills that are directly or indirectly related to the role. It can be used for data scraping from different job boards and relevant niche websites, as it can quickly scan the open web and automatically pull appropriate candidates for the vacant job.
Besides an external pool, you can also use AI to check your internal talent pool. It can review your existing employee's skills and experience to see if they can be a good fit for the vacant job role.
Closing thoughts
We have explored different methods of candidate sourcing and how AI technology will help you to find the best candidates for a vacant job. If you are searching for the best AI-powered platform that can help you with candidate sourcing — try JobTatkal and see the magic of AI sourcing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is candidate sourcing important?
What is AI sourcing?
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to find, analyze, and recommend ideal candidates for the vacant job is known as AI sourcing.
How does AI reduce bias in the hiring process?
In human hiring, there may be unconscious bias on the basis of age, race, gender, religion, or physical appearance, but hiring with AI recommendations avoids such biases and focuses more on the candidate's skills, experience, and merit of the candidate.
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Social media engagement
You can use social networking sites to engage with the candidates as it is likely to have their work portfolio. You can target specific platforms for specific roles, such as: