Hybrid Sourcing: Activating your passive pipeline!

One of the most effective (and easy) ways to pipeline more qualified talent for your hard-to-fill role is to activate your passive sourcing channels. How is this done?

Below is an excerpt from my book entitled 'The Lean Recruiting Toolkit: An Agile Blueprint for Creating & Executing Top Hiring Strategies'.

'...So how do we convert these techniques to Pull? Simple. Through Hybrid Sourcing?. Hybrid Sourcing involves the conversion of Push techniques to Pull results. Here are a couple of examples.

Reaching out to Current Employees via Referral Program

You have your referral program set up, which is a passive source of candidates. When you have a new role go live, send out an email to the appropriate team(s) informing them of the new opening and asking them to refer people. You’ll likely be surprised at the positive response.

You will also wonder why they didn't tell you about these candidates earlier. It’s because you hadn’t asked. Any good marketer can tell you about the power of a Call-to-Action. By overtly telling someone, “Email me today if you know someone who is interested in this role!” you are giving them permission to do something they had previously hesitated to do. It works.

Announcing New Roles on Social Media

You should really do this as a matter of course. Whenever you have a new role posted, you should announce it on your social media platforms, along with a Call-to-Action - something like, “We are looking for a new part-time Administrative Assistant to support our CEO in a 12-month contract. Apply today or share with your network!”

You should also request that your employees share the posting with their networks as well for maximum exposure. Remember, you can only request this as employees are the owners of their social media profiles, but it can’t hurt to ask.

Email Past Attendees of a Hackathon or Career Fair

Remember all that stuff you did on campus? Email past participants when new roles come online - remember to have an opt out clause for privacy in the email. Ask them to share with friends. Again, it is a simple win...'

As you have seen, these are all simple techniques. The important thing is to remember to do them every time and be consistent. You have invested in passive sourcing techniques - make sure you convert them to active techniques whenever possible. It can save you hours of search.