When we talk about building a Talent Network, we speak a lot about providing a number of options and ways for candidates to opt-in to this network, whether that’s in job distribution campaigns, on the Career Site or a number of different locations.  But the second half of that equation and just as important is your recruiters / sourcers proactively sourcing candidates into your CRM.

Depending on the makeup of your recruiting team, proactive sourcing will take on varying degrees of importance within your recruitment marketing strategy.  From a dedicated sourcing team to recruiters that do a little sourcing in addition to their other responsibilities, it really differs by the organization.

The fact is, however, that your organization probably already has access to a great number of candidates that could be good fits for your organization.  If you are just getting started with sourcing candidates, here are a few places to begin sourcing that can be free resources to find qualified candidates:

Spreadsheets / Folders: Sadly, there are some organizations that still have their recruiters working off of there own folders and spreadsheets instead of a centralized database.  These older candidate pools can be a great place to start by first flowing the candidates into a centralized system and then reaching back out to them through campaigning and/or personal recruiting calls.

Your ATS: Unless you source from it frequently, there are definitely some great candidates that didn’t quite get an offer for a position that could be great future candidates.  A number of ATS solutions offer ways to notify candidates about positions that are similar to the ones they previously applied for through job notifications.  This enables the recruiter to set specific criteria and send a standard message to candidates about an opportunity.

The second and more robust way of sourcing from your ATS is to find and source candidates from the ATS into a Recruitment CRM.  Once in the system it will enable you not only to easily search these candidates but to do much more in-depth campaigning to them allowing you to create better relationships with top candidates.  It will also enable you to capture better recruitment metrics and understand that this sourcing initiative was the main source of candidates for a particular position.  This often gets lost within ATS job notification solutions.

The Web / External Sites: The third resource that may be available to you free of charge are resume databases and the open web.  First, I would ask about what resume databases you already have contracts for.  If you have posting inventory for CareerBuilder, Monster and/or Dice, you may have also gotten some resume database licenses within the signed contract.  If so, it would be a shame not to use them.

Secondly, through Boolean search you can use search engines to better use web sites (such as LinkedIn) to find candidates that fit certain criteria and skill-sets.  If interested, I recommend you read up on Glen Cathey’s blog and/or reach out to solution providers that can help you conduct these searches.  Within some solutions you are also able to run scheduled searches within these external sites, freeing up your recruiters time to do other tasks while the search is running.

When sourcing candidates it’s important to first have a centralized location to place candidates that is searchable and enables you to easily create Talent Pipelines.  Second, it’s important to understand and flesh out the right process for following up and campaigning with the candidates you source.  Sourcing qualified candidates in concert with marketing campaigns to job boards, niche sites and social media can help form a successful mix for your recruiting strategy.  It’s important to make sure to track all these actions to understand what actions drive performance so that you can best optimize this overall sourcing / recruiting mix.