5 Best Ways to Source A-Player Candidates

Receiving a low amount of quality applicants can really put a damper on effective?candidate sourcing. Often, companies will receive an influx of candidates with insufficient technical skills or a lack of necessary work experience if they are not offering competitive salaries. But what if you offer attractive compensation and still continue to get low-quality applicants?

Merely investing time and effort into attracting candidates and gathering a bunch of resumes would?not be enough to turn it around. Finding quality candidates requires consistent effort across a mixture of platforms. Want to?build a reliable and fruitful recruiting pipeline? In this article, we will look at how to do this using the most effective candidate sourcing channels, with a creative twist. Depending on your hiring strategy, budget, and the nature of each sourcing method, you can pick a mixture of tactics that works for you.

Career Site:?A?career site?is a page on your website which is dedicated to telling candidates about your company and?your current open positions. Companies often forget a?career site can be a great platform for employer branding and an easy way to?share your cultural stories: the people, experiences, career paths, perks and benefits, and everything else that makes your company an inviting place to work

Pro Tip:

Unlike job advertisements or job boards, your career site?does not limit your options?in terms of budget or space.?Career sites are cost-effective and the best spaces to showcase your brand. Make the most of this free ad space effectively!?

Referrals:?Referrals?from existing employees are cost-effective and attract high-quality leads, especially when your brand or company is not widely known yet. Referred candidates can typically be hired faster, and they are more likely to align with the culture and stay with the company for the long term.

Pro Tip:

Organize creative referral drives and motivate your employees to refer people they know. You could hand out “We Are Hiring” shirts and stickers, or make it easy for?employees to think of names by giving out forms?that list the skills you are looking for. Set aside a few hours at work to encourage participation. Equip?employees with useful search terms if they are willing to look through their networks.?Incentivize?referrals!

Ask leading questions like, “Who is the best illustrator?you have worked with?” or “Who is the best copywriter you know?”?Above all, if you simply treat your employees right and give them an amazing place to work, they will want to bring in their friends?and other talented people they know.

Job Boards:?As you are?looking for candidates, they are looking for you, too.?Job boards?help matchmaking happen. There are tons of free and paid job boards out there to help you source candidates, but how do you ensure?you attract the right people through those boards?

Pro Tip:

Use niche job boards like?HROneRecruiter.com to target your job ads to a particular audience. Some job boards have the tendency to bring in junk applicants, so craft your job descriptions carefully and highlight your deal-breakers. Use the right keywords, be engaging with candidates, and keep your information up to date.

A Robust Talent Pipeline:?Talent pipelines are one of the most worthwhile means of sourcing. Each time you come across an extraordinary candidate who isn’t a proper fit for a currently open role, you can add them to your?talent pool, a life-changing feature for recruiters that is available in ATSs like?HROneRecruiter.com . Then, when the appropriate role opens up, you can invite the candidate to pick the conversation up again. If?you keep adding great candidates to your talent pool, it will eventually become a reliable source of candidates for open roles. A consistently maintained?talent pool saves you a lot of time and effort and helps you stay proactive and efficient in hiring.

Pro Tip:

Talent pools help you engage conveniently and creatively with passive candidates. You can send them content from time to time, invite them to events, open educational resources to them, and do so much more. The candidates in the pool eventually become easy to convert because you have already established a connection with them.?

Campus Recruitment:?When you are looking to bring fresh blood into your organization, recruiting students right from college is your best bet. Campus recruitment initiatives help you attract low-cost talent and experiment with?tons of?long-term possibilities. There are so many ways you can recruit students from campus: telephone interviews, video interviews, on-site interviews, career fairs, career counselling sessions, internships,?and more.

Pro Tip:

You can?connect with colleges and engage with students through contests, talks, or case-study competitions to create awareness of and affinity for your company. Some institutions also have internal job-search networks you can use to post jobs exclusively for their students or alumni.

To conclude, it is not the sourcing?methods?you use but how you use them that brings in A-player candidates. Why not rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on the five sourcing strategies above for A-Players and see where you need to make improvements. Happy sourcing!

Please respond with your feedback and comments. I will be happy to share more tips or help you achieve A-Players' hiring status!