Here are a few ideas for you to consider to make sure you’re a highly effective sourcer.
- Be curious / when I started I had no idea what I was doing and had no formal training. So, I researched and experimented and researched and experimented and researched and experimented. Now there is a lot of training available online. Take advantage of it and never allow yourself to get too comfortable with your knowledge. The moment you think you know it all is the moment you fall behind because it is always changing.
- Use data / which companies do your hiring managers tend to recruit from? If you know that they typically hire people from company A, B or C, save yourself some time and headache and give them candidates based on historical hiring data.
- Leverage imagination / always be willing to experiment and leverage tools that may not be designed for recruiting. For example, Hootsuite used the free app Periscope to give virtual office tours to passive candidates.
- Be an expert / jobseekers are more sophisticated than recruiters think. Just as you can check them out, they can do the same research on you. Take the time to brand yourself as an expert recruiter by sharing your recruiting / sourcing stats, getting new hires to recommend you on LinkedIn or contributing to industry white papers that can be cited on your LinkedIn profile.
- Be an enthusiast / if you are recruiting scientists who are experts in nanotechnology, then you should be sharing content on nanotechnology on your social media profiles and joining in online conversations and/or blogging about nanotechnology as best you can. This will set you apart from other recruiters who do not have the time to do so and thereby, you will attract more passive candidates your way.
- Be authentic / its one thing to say my company is a great place to work and its quite another to say that and prove it be sharing pictures of yourself working alongside your co-workers or joining in a charitable initiative sponsored by your employer. Give jobseekers something to find that validates your claim of how great it is to work there.
- Know your competition / learn all you can about the companies you are competing with so you can make more persuasive arguments when engaging candidates currently working for your competition. For example, if you learn that people hate the blue carpeting at one rival company, be sure to mention how much you and your co-workers admire the blue carpeting at your office.
Make sense?