Candidate sourcing strategies for multi-location hiring

Hiring for multiple locations is more than just a numbers game—it can be a real challenge to get right!

Effective multi-location hiring requires a deep understanding of regional job markets, a broad reach to prospective candidates, and a consistent employer brand across all locations. Coordinating recruitment efforts across different time zones and managing communication with various hiring managers add an extra layer of complexity to the process.

The good news is that it is possible to excel at multi-location hiring. The key is having a strong candidate sourcing plan. Not sure if yours is up to the task? Here are some strategies that will give you a solid foundation.?

Multi-location hiring strategies

Sourcing candidates from social

Social recruiting is all about helping candidates find you—whether they’re actively looking for a job or not. Getting on their radar is always a good thing!

By consistently sharing engaging content, job opportunities, and company culture highlights, you can keep your brand top-of-mind for potential candidates. Use location-specific hashtags, like #BostonCashierJobs, to attract the right talent when hiring. This strategy not only helps your job postings reach a broader audience, but also ensures that they’ll be seen by people specifically interested in local opportunities.?

While you’re at it, don’t forget to leverage your employees’ social channels in the areas where you’re hiring! Treating those employees as brand ambassadors is a great way to reach job seekers in specific markets. To streamline the process, CareerArc allows you to post employer brand and job content directly to your ambassadors’ accounts, so you really have no excuses.?

Put your jobs on the map, literally

For candidates actively looking for open roles, job maps can significantly enhance the job search experience. How? They provide a visual representation of where openings are available, making it easier for job seekers to identify the opportunities that best fit them.

As a bonus, they also give you opportunities to connect with prospective candidates in unique ways. Take Ulta, for example: they use job maps strategically by printing QR codes on their receipts in certain locations where they’re hiring. These codes direct users to a job map where they can search for openings nearby—a perfect example of hyper-local recruiting in action.

When posting social recruiting content, you can also use the job map as an eye-catching visual to grab attention and drive engagement. Images and videos boost content in most (if not all) social algorithms, and job maps can help diversify your imagery to make the most of your content.?

Local recruiting

Next, local recruiting focuses on building relationships and engaging with the community to source candidates—crucial for multi-location or franchise hiring, where knowledge of local job markets is key.?

To bring your local recruiting strategy to life, consider partnering with regional recruiters, attending local job fairs and networking events, or even engaging with local social media groups and online communities (expanding your social recruiting reach!). These connections can make a big difference in finding candidates who align with your company’s needs.

Cross-location referral programs

Finally, remember to leverage your current employees! Similar to the ambassador approach used in social recruiting, cross-location referral programs tap into the networks of your existing employees to source candidates from different regions.

Encourage employees across all locations to refer candidates, using their personal and professional networks to spread the word. Your existing team members are among your best resources for finding new talent—they were a great fit for the company, so they may know others who would be, too!

Make the referral process easy and incentivize employees to participate by offering rewards for successful referrals. You can also empower them to share job openings within CareerArc, making it even easier for them to participate.?

Build your multi-location hiring strategy

Multi-location hiring is a common challenge, especially for businesses with seasonal or high-volume hiring needs across various markets. The good news? These candidate sourcing strategies can be scaled to suit both small and large hiring efforts.

CareerArc can support your multi-location hiring needs by enabling social recruiting, powering job maps, and expanding your reach through employee advocacy.

Ready to take the next step? Click here for a demo.