This is one of the biggest questions I get, how do you recruit effectively online? It’s not a new secret, and one you should know by now. That most of the hires made at companies are done through networking. In fact, more than 75% of hires are made through networking.

But what happens when networking fails? You have to resort to online recruiting. Here are a few things to consider.

Find Communities

If you can, find communities where your ideal candidate exists. For example, salespeople will be found at sales meetups. There are a few in Chicago and San Francisco that are easy to come by. And anyone can stop in. This is a great place to network and find candidates.

Engineers, for example, reside at the GitHub or Stack Overflow communities. Get engaged with candidates by using the built-in search tools, primarily looking at coding languages and coding challenges, then find their contact information through their profile.

Use Online Job Listings

Online job listings and job boards aren’t dead. But you’ll get a hefty amount of applicants coming through too quickly. To avoid this, try to customize your job description. Use job description templates that have skills part of them so that you can easily scan through your applicants to be sure they’ve customized their cover letter or resume to what you put in the job description.

This can be a helpful way to sift through the noise, quite quickly. With a 30 second scan, you’ll be able to tell if the applicant read your job description thoroughly and from there, give you a sense of whether or not they’re a high-profile candidate.

Expand Your Network

It sounds simple, but since networking works so well, try to expand your existing network. All you have to do is ask your network who else you should meet with. Then once you’ve done that, do it again.

This will rapidly grow your network and from there, develop strong business relationships that you can utilize.

These are the three best areas to dig into when trying to recruit candidates.