Recruitment Sourcing Strategies to Find the Best Candidates

As the first stage of the recruitment process, talent sourcing is crucial for obtaining the best IT talents available on the market. The battle for good employees is fierce, so let’s check out a few ways to gain an advantage early on. Here are our recruitment sourcing strategies to find the best candidates in the IT industry.

 

What are sourcing strategies in recruiting?

A recruiting sourcing strategy is a way your organization or hired recruiters identify viable candidates. It’s a term for sourcing techniques tailored to building a database of relevant candidates.

The sourcing techniques are chosen based on factors like:

• The type of candidates needed, 
  
  
• the number of job openings,
  
  
• available staff that can apply the strategy,
  
  
• the unique features of your organization.
  
  

A well-thought sourcing strategy in recruitment provides you with access to carefully selected people with the desired skills and experience. What’s more, it significantly impacts the efficiency, speed, and accuracy of hires.

How to create a top recruiting strategy?

There are a variety of ways in which you can improve your recruiting strategy and attract the best developers. 

Use recruitment tools

Using a recruitment database accelerates and simplifies HR processes. However, you can also start using tools that make recruiting easy and effective. There are a number of HR tools available on the market, starting with those designed for supporting specific parts of the hiring process and finishing with those equipped with a complex set of tools helpful at all stages of recruitment. 

For instance, tools like ClearCompany, Manatal, Workable, or Softgarden contain features that can simplify all parts of the recruiting process, from sourcing to onboarding. These apps’ most useful functionalities are analytical tools, data enrichment, candidate management, and job posting. 

Automate repetitive processes

To improve the efficiency of the recruiting strategy and save time, you automate repetitive processes. A well-chosen HR software can automate onboarding by sending emails and notifications to candidates and teams. Some tools can also automate time management, employee and candidate tracking, and payroll. If you wish to deal with paperwork in quickly and easily, go for tools that offer automation of tax forms, contracts, agreements, and standardized forms. 

Diversify your candidate sourcing channels

Diversifying channels that job seekers use when searching for a new employer make your organization more competitive. Different perspectives result in new insights and drive progress. Studies like the one completed by Josh Bersin prove that diverse companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their market.

Employee referrals system

Gathering referrals from your current employees is a simple way of reaching a more diverse workforce. Your trustworthy and qualified employees are surely in touch with similar people you can contact through the referrals system. What’s more, creating an employee referrals system as a part of your sourcing strategy lowers recruiting costs.

Talent faires

Attending a talent fair provides the recruiter with access to candidates from different backgrounds. It also enables contacting promising young talents who are just entering the job market. If you wish to hire more women or minority representatives, check out fairies like Women in Tech or Blacks in Technology that focus on a particular social or ethnic group.

Social media

Most of the world’s workforce is active on social media, making it a great way to reach out to more people and spread the news about your hiring process. You’ve probably already used LinkedIn, but you can also consider Facebook Jobs to deepen your talent pool. You could also try Google job boards and benefit from having the search engine on your side. 

Visit their platforms

To reach IT talents efficiently, you have to sign up at places where they are active online. Stack Overflow or Github are good platforms to check out since they serve as places to share what developers are currently working on and how they solve their problems. Other forums that might be useful are 4programmers, Women Who Code, or freeCodeCamp.

Source candidates for roles you do not have open yet

By analyzing your company’s growth plans, you can predict what specialists will be needed in the future. Such proactivity pays off – you save time on sourcing, accelerate the process, and minimize the risk of unsuccessful hires when looking for employees on short notice.

Consider internal employment

According to the LinkedIn Global Talent Trends report, employees who make an internal move are more likely to stay at their organization longer than those who stay in the same role. This is a form of appreciation for loyal employees and a reassurance that the person hired internally will have the right qualities because they are already matched and trained. 

Create a candidate persona

You probably have some vision of the person needed in your organization or team. If so, write down the desired skills, traits, tech stack, and experience requirements you have in mind to create a persona – a fictional person with the qualities that are a perfect fit. When sourcing, use this as a template and compare candidates with your persona to find the perfect match. However, remember that finding a candidate matching 100% of the criteria might be a one-in-a-million chance, so don’t be too strict during sourcing.

Build a strong employer brand

Marketing approaches and strategies fuel the current job market. If you want to compete with other brands, you should be perceived as a great employer offering various benefits and growth opportunities. A good employer brand may determine candidates to work for you rather than for someone else, and that’s the point of employer branding as a sourcing strategy.

Employer Value Proposition

To create a well-thought employer branding strategy, you need to design an EVP – a sum-up of what your company has to offer in terms of business culture, compensation, benefits, and other features. EVP answers the question of why someone should choose to work for your organization. 

Positive Candidate Experience

A good candidate experience is crucial in light of employer branding. Those who once applied to your company can gain new skills and become interesting candidates in the future, so always remember to make a great impression. Provide your candidates with quick and clear feedback, a good interview experience, and a transparent recruitment process.

Qualified recruiters

Make sure your recruiters are skilled and proficient in the nuances of technology. Confusing Java with JavaScript is not just an urban legend, but a reality for some developers who have come across recruiters without basic IT knowledge.

Conclusion

There are multiple ways to improve your recruitment sourcing that result in better hires and company growth. To sum up, here’s a short list of tips:

• Use recruitment tools and automate repetitive processes, 
  
  
• create a candidate persona,
  
  
• diversify sourcing channels,
  
  
• source for roles that are not open yet,
  
  
• consider internal employment,
  
  
• build a strong employer brand,
  
  
• check your recruiters’ qualifications.
  
  

We hope these tips will let you step up your sourcing strategy.

If you’re currently looking for a reliable partner who will support you in your search for top-class software engineers – feel free to contact us. At inhire, we will provide you with the best candidates from European locations ready to get involved in your process.   Let’s talk.

If you’re interested in recruiting IT specialists from abroad, don’t miss our article on the best ways to hire foreign employees!