What Is Talent Sourcing?
Some hiring managers use a talent-sourcing strategy to reach quality candidates while spending less time and budget. Their goal is to identify and attract potential candidates using non-traditional recruitment methods. This approach involves researching, targeting, and connecting with already employed professionals who may not be actively looking for new job openings. These professionals have the expertise and experience that align with the organisation’s culture and requirements.
Unlike standard hiring practices that often advertise and communicate immediate vacancies, talent sourcing takes a more extended approach. It uses its talent pool as a reserve of qualified candidates who can be approached when positions become available or during a company expansion. This talent management system enables companies to anticipate staffing needs and maintain a steady flow of the best candidates available.
Difference Between Talent Sourcing and Recruitment
Although talent sourcing and recruitment strategies have much in common, they differ significantly. Typically, recruitment begins once a job opens and ends when the position is filled. Its focus is evaluating and hiring potential candidates to fill immediate job vacancies.
On the other hand, talent sourcing is an ongoing process, always proactively seeking potential candidates and building connections with them before any specific job opening arises. Talent sourcing teams understand the company’s long-term goals and align their strategies accordingly. This approach is especially important for job roles that are not easy to fill or when industries face sudden talent shortages. Then, your company would like to be the first one who can take advantage of the best candidates available on the market.
Talent Sourcing Process Guide
An effective candidate sourcing process follows a well-structured approach to locating, attracting and engaging the most qualified candidates. The following steps outline a comprehensive talent-sourcing process that can help companies and their hiring managers use best practices for sourcing talent.
Step 1: Define the Talent Needs
In this initial phase, two major things should be considered: defining key future roles within your company and forming the criteria for the required positions.
Identifying Key Roles: Close collaboration between hiring managers and leaders of the departments is a must here. Pinpointing roles together that can potentially make a difference in the future working of the company should be a priority in the talent sourcing strategy. They may include leadership roles, specialised technical positions, or roles in emerging business areas.
Setting Skill and Experience Criteria: Detailly consider all the required skills, qualifications and experiences for the selected roles. Include both technical and soft skills, but also define how you would like them to match your company’s culture and values.
Step 2: Building a Candidate Persona
The sooner you visualise the perfect candidate for the position, the better. For this step, you should build a candidate persona. Go into specific details, like how they start the day, their music and sporting preferences, etc. All these small characteristics can tell us a lot when constructing the big picture. This information could also help to do a reverse search on social media. Starting with the imagined likes and dislikes could lead you to sourcing talent that would otherwise stay hidden under the radar.
Characteristics to consider incorporating into your candidate persona include communication preferences, motivations, and career goals. This is how you can target more suitable candidates and adjust your personalised engagement strategy better.
Step 3: Research and Identify Talent Pools
Talent pools are the fastest and the most scalable tool for turning large databases of passive candidates into active candidates. If you are on the search for building an effective talent pool, continue reading.
Keep your former workers, freelancers, and even retirees and previous unsuccessful candidates in a detailed document containing all their qualities and aspirations. Include all of them in your newsletter list. Diversify the database based on the criteria from the candidate persona. Then, maintain communication by publishing periodic news updates and job openings and sending them only to the needed sub-group of the complete talent pool. Target the audience wisely, and you will have half of the hiring process already done.
Step 4: Leveraging Sourcing Tools
Candidate sourcing can also be accomplished using technical tools like an applicant tracking system (ATS), social media platforms like LinkedIn, professional networks, and other custom-made sourcing software. They can all help you search for candidates more quickly by going through specific characteristics of the desired candidate persona. You can also measure their engagement by knowing when they are reading your communication.
Step 5: Proactive Candidate Engagement
This step is where you would finally connect with the potential candidates by directly approaching them by e-mail or social media. The goal is to reach out proactively, fostering relationships and inducing interest in your company.
The most used way to engage candidates effectively is by personalising communication. Customise your outreach to each candidate based on the previously gathered information, including their background, preferences, interests, and aspirations. Share relevant data about your company’s culture, growth opportunities, and how their skills align with your organisation. This way, you will leave a positive impression and create top-of-mind awareness for your company when they initiate the search for new job opportunities.
Best Practices for Effective Talent Sourcing
Talent can be found everywhere. All you need is the right tools and to follow best practices.
Networking and Referrals
Your professional network is the key to a successful talent-sourcing strategy. The most suited candidates come from direct personal contacts. This is because networking is utilising a close group of people who have already built trust between them – and friends know your needs and requirements the best.
There is also a new trend among companies, using referral programs that reward the current employees when recommending people from their network. They act as mini-recruiters who are incentivised to analyse their non-professional surrounding and propose the most suited candidates. This way, organisations access a larger pool of better-fitted talents.
Building a Strong Employer Brand
How the potential candidates perceive your company is of extreme importance. Your image is built by showcasing your company culture, values, and opportunities for growth. An influential employer brand can attract passive candidates easily and make the outreach efforts more effective by:
- Sharing employee stories and testimonials
- Highlighting your company culture
- Showcasing career opportunities
- Nurturing a proactive presence on social media
Future Trends in Talent Sourcing
The job market evolves with immense speed. The sourcing strategies should also follow this trend.
AI-Driven Talent Acquisition
Artificial Intelligence has a diverse implementation, especially in recruiting and talent sourcing. AI can help you automate candidate screening and matching, predict company and job fit candidates and their possible performance, analyse diverse data sets to identify the most promising candidates, and even perform initial interviews with the help of chatbots.
You can reach out to AI-driven tools to save time, reduce bias, and improve the quality of hire. Whatever your need, you should start testing different apps and software on time to ensure a competitive edge over other recruitment agencies.
Social Media as a Recruitment Tool
The social media landscape is the best place to gather unique insights into candidates’ personalities, interests, and professional networks. To use the most out of social media as a talent-sourcing tool, try applying these steps:
- Develop your company’s strong social media presence
- Create relevant content to engage and discuss with potential candidates
- Observe closely all the hot-industry topics through following professional forums, groups, newsletters, video and audio podcasts and join the debate.
Remote Talent Sourcing
Remote work is definitively here to stay. Companies can adapt to this new situation and source candidates worldwide. This way, they can focus on the skills and cultural fit rather than searching for candidates with physical availability. Remote talent acquisition brings access to a broader pool of top-tier talent and potential cost savings on office space and relocation expenses. The required elements to successfully implement this approach are developing strong virtual onboarding processes and fostering an inclusive work culture.
Talent Sourcing with Olive Recruit
Partnering with Olive Recruit to manage your talent-sourcing strategy brings many benefits:
- Sector-specific expertise, especially in health, social care and education
- Well-proven and structured approach to talent sourcing and engagement
- Access to a large pool of active and passive candidates
- Providing a complete candidate assessment service to ensure their skills, values and beliefs
- Full support throughout the whole hiring process
Ensure your access to the most qualified candidates who will drive your company forward. Contact Olive Recruit today.
