There are surprising similarities between sourcing and the game of football. You might be thinking, “How can sourcing for a candidate be like playing football?” Football is a game of inches, and a football player must avoid being stopped to reach his goal. Sourcing is the same. In sourcing, finding an excellent candidate is not the end game as you may have to get your candidates through various stakeholders in the recruitment lifecycle process, such as hiring managers, recruiters, HR. These stakeholders are like the big defensive lineman trying to tackle the sourcer at every yard.
Getting a candidate through this process is similar to scoring a touchdown. You may be great at finding purple squirrel candidates, but if you don’t master the art of navigating them through the recruitment lifecycle process, your hiring attempts will efficiently be “sacked.” Below you will find three ways to increase your chances of getting a candidate from submittal to hire without being tackled by other decision-makers.
Get Rid of Share Stages
One of the best ways to get your candidates through the hiring process is to eliminate both the recruiter and hiring manager review stages. As a sourcer, you need to develop relationships with all stakeholders, whether it be a recruiter or a hiring manager. Your stakeholders should trust you to the point where they no longer have to review your submissions and will allow you to schedule candidate interviews directly on their calendars.
By eliminating this one stage, you will save days and even weeks in the hiring process, lower your time to fill, and increase your probability of getting candidates hired.
Decrease Decision Times
As time kills all deals, it is essential for sourcers to facilitate lower decision times on the part of their stakeholders. At every step in the hiring process, whether it be the interview or offer stage, there should be an SLA of a 24-hour turn around in decision-making by the stakeholders. If a candidate interviews well, an offer should be made by the hiring manager on the spot or within the 24-hour timeframe.
All Decision Makers Need to be Present for the First Interview
Since hiring managers dislike being the ones blamed for a poor hire, they avoid making quick decisions about candidates. To ensure a proper hiring decision, many hiring managers want a candidate to be interviewed by many stakeholders. This results in a long hiring process, in which it can take weeks and months for all stakeholders to interview the candidate. As a result, many candidates are no longer on the market at the offer stage. It is essential for all stakeholders to be present for interviews on the same day so that the interview process moves along at a steady pace.
By increasing the speed with which candidates move through the various recruitment stages, sourcers can improve their candidates’ chances of crossing the goal line and entering the end zone.