Sourcing talent

Two decades ago, the next steps would have been simple - write up a short job post and publish it on online job boards or professional networking sites, then wait for candidates to apply, screen them, and start interviewing.

With the current talent shortages, however, the passive approach to recruiting is showing cracks. Some positions get a few, if any, applications. Some get hundreds - but most of them are, well, shit. At that point, we recruiters largely have two options. One involves throwing money at the problem (and the job board) by sponsoring, boosting, advertising, or going premium with our ad. Unfortunately, the pay-and-pray strategy can rack up costs quickly, and you might still have to wait for a while before the right candidate applies.

Alternatively, we can take matters into our own hands and look for talent ourselves.

Outbound - proactively finding top talent yourself

Outbound recruitment - proactively sourcing and reaching out to talent - opens up a whole new category of candidates: the passive kind. According to an oft-cited LinkedIn study, only 25% of potential candidates are actively or casually looking for a job, and by limiting your recruiting strategy to job posts, you're limiting your reach to that audience.

At the same time, just 15% of employees are completely satisfied with their role and don't want to move. That leaves us with around 60% of our audience at least willing to hear from a recruiter, especially given the right opportunity. By widening your search strategy to include passive candidates, you can more than double your reach.

Plus, since we’ve done our homework and know what our ideal candidate looks like, all we need to do is to go out there and find them.

Looking for candidates: start at the center and work your way outwards

For those of us who are used to relying solely on incoming applications, outbound recruitment might seem bewildering. Where do I even begin to look for candidates, and how do I find them?

We’d recommend a layered approach - start with the leads closest to your company and move outwards to colder prospects. This way, you’d begin with your network and your team’s network through referrals, and then reach out to candidates in your applicant tracking system (if you have one). Since you’ve already had some contact with these candidates in the past, you’re likely to get a higher response rate and more candid feedback.

However, your immediate talent pool might run dry quickly, in which case you’d have to broaden your search.

LinkedIn is a natural next step. While LinkedIn reserves full access to all of the search options only to its paid plans, you could still potentially save money by taking advantage of them as they might end up being a lot less expensive than advertising your job post. Plus, you could always start for free utilizing LinkedIn’s basic search functionality.

Additionally, you could search for candidates in places where they hang out. For developers, for example, check out Github, StackOverflow, or Reddit. For professionals in energy, join groups on social media platforms to find talent there. Resume databases could have information about candidates less likely to have an online presence.

Finally, you could simply google candidates using specific search strings or queries and rely on Google’s algorithms and wealth of data to unearth hidden gems.

Set aside some time

Sourcing takes time and requires focus, so unless you have dedicated sourcers on your recruiting team, set aside some time specifically just for sourcing. We recommend generating candidate lists in batches - sourcing for a chunk of time until you get to, say, 50 potential leads before switching to your other priorities.

Using Boolean and x-ray search to find candidates

LinkedIn Recruiter and other sourcing platforms typically feature a simple visual interface for setting up search filters. Underneath, however, the search UI is based on Boolean operators such as AND, OR, and NOT that refine results. The same operators also work in Google and most search engines. By mastering them you can unlock even more hidden talent.

For example, if you’re looking for developers on LinkedIn, you could use the query “Java AND (developer OR engineer) NOT manager” in the LinkedIn Recruiter search bar to look for engineers who haven’t moved on to the management level.

Adding search modifiers like quotation marks “” lets you look for exact phrases while an asterisk (*) allows you to include similar job titles when you search. For example, if you are looking for software developers with experience in the programming language Python, you can use the following search string in Google:

"software developer" "Python* skills"

This string will look for profiles that contain the words “software developer” and “Python,” as well as any variations of the word “Python,” such as “Pythonic,” “Pythonista,” or “Python programming.” Congrats - you’ve just conducted a simple x-ray search!

Using the asterisk as a wildcard allows you to cast a wider net in your search and find potential candidates who may use different terminology or phrasing to describe their skills and experience.

While it may all seem a little tricky and mathy at first, playing around with different search parameters could become your next sourcing superpower. What’s more, using this technique to uncover hidden gems through search engines like Google is completely free! If you decide to give writing Boolean strings a go, we’ve prepared a Boolean search cheat sheet that goes into more detail and gets you started quickly.