Having an effective talent sourcing plan will help you increase the number of applicants and also help you find the right fit faster. So, what’s talent sourcing?
Talent sourcing is the procedure of identifying, researching, producing, and networking with prospective job candidates to transform people into job applicants. The role of talent sourcing is to produce consistent flow or skilled applicants.
Talent Sourcing Strategy Defined
The primary goal of a well-designed talent sourcing plan is to get skilled candidates and create candidate engagement. Implementing this plan helps businesses to hire proactively and maintain a healthy pool of candidates. From finding quality candidates to improving candidate engagement and creating a high-quality outreach plan, here are the tips for creating a winning strategy for your talent sourcing.
1. Create a Candidate Persona to Recruit Better
It’s essential to create a perfect candidate persona before you even begin sourcing candidates for a given position. The persona will help you identify the right channel, message, and plan to get more qualified applicants. Since creating a persona involves a multi-step procedure, you must talk to your hiring managers and team and do extensive research before fixing on a persona.
2. Get Candidates Who are the Same as Your Candidate Persona
The moment you’ve successfully created the persona, you need to look for applicants who match your persona. These candidates are available on numerous platforms. Nevertheless, based on the type of persona you created, you can pick the platforms you want.
3. Find Ways to Connect with your Leads
Getting a set of ideal candidates for a position is one of the steps in creating a talent sourcing strategy. Connecting with the potential leads and transforming them into candidates is a crucial goal of any sourcing work. First, you need to decide the kind of channel to use when reaching out to the users. You can use LinkedIn messages to connect with salespeople or emails when interacting with a developer.
4. Create Custom-Made Email Sequences
Bear in mind that one text does not fit all. This is true when it comes to recruitment. So, you must customize your messages to potential candidates to get many replies and improve engagement. Mention the expected skills, shared hobbies, and even why they are fit for the role. Keep the message short and clear, and don’t attempt to oversell the post. Bear in mind that the candidates aren’t actively planning to change roles, and any overselling attempt will hurt your brand.
Talk about your team, culture, vision, and the things that drive your firm in your first email. If you don’t get any response, try to do a follow-up with them after a few days.
5. Value the Candidates’ Time
Most companies succeed at sourcing new candidates and contacting them. Nevertheless, when doing the call to action, they lose many qualified candidates. The call to action needs to value the candidates’ time. So, don’t ask them any of these:
To apply for the job position since you are the one contacting them
Giving out a test before you explain on a call about the position and recruitment procedure
Send their cover letter or resume in the 1st email since you should have this info before contacting them
6. Try to Nurture Your Passive Leads
Sourcing and hiring passive candidates can be a challenge. That is why nurturing your available candidate base is essential for maintaining a healthy talent pool. Whether you are hiring actively for a job position or not, you need to nurture your current candidate database. Keep these candidates updated on the current affairs about the organization, wish them anniversaries or birthdays, and call them casually every six months. Your candidate database guarantees that when your candidates are ready to make a shift, they will quickly reach out to you.
7. Experimenting is Vital
Developing a talent sourcing plan is an iterative procedure. You will need to run several experiments for the mentioned points, and the saw will work best for you and your organization. Determine your KPIs before you begin experimenting, and make sure you benchmark your outcome and iterate for finding an effective talent sourcing strategy.
Process of Talent Sourcing
Every company should create a sourcing procedure that fits its unique requirements. There are four steps involved in the sourcing process. The process combines components specific to the sourcing with those which overlay with recruitment.
- Planning: sourcing starts with creating a precise plan tailored to direct your search towards places where you can find many desirable candidates.
- Sourcing: The next thing to do is identify and reach out and nurture the relationship with prospective candidates when you create a sourcing strategy.
- Assessing: once you have made a pool of skilled candidates, you can start assessing the pool. The process entails identifying the people best fit to serve in the positions available and those aligned with your company’s values and culture.
- Hiring: after an extensive interview procedure, you will give the positions to the top candidates, negotiate some parts of the employment contract and then hire them.
- Onboarding: This is the last phase of a sourcing process that involves the onboarding and orientation of new workers.
Tips for Sourcing
Talent sourcing procedure requires careful attention to detail for it to be a success. Here are the tips to help you optimize your practice.
- Identify the talent depending on the growing needs of your business
- Create candidate profiles
- Source the right talent pools
- Connect with the leads
- Respect the candidates time
- Try new strategies
Final Word
Talent sourcing is an essential first step in fetching skilled talent for your company. A good sourcing team will nurture a solid and steady team of skilled potential candidates who will stay engaged and interested in working for you. By creating a straightforward sourcing procedure, using the best practices, and searching for new methods to modify your plan, you will maximize the utility and take advantage of your sourcing operation.
