This week I want to talk about the creative side of big-scope sourcing, or how to innovate your process and new ideas for your candidate message. Big-scope sourcing does not have to be complicated or time consuming. You just need to plan, innovate, and then duplicate. By now you should already have a plan. This blog is part two, in a three-part series. If you'd like to read Part One: Planning for Mass Candidate Flow, click here. Next week we will discuss how to think outside the box when it comes to duplicating your sourcing efforts across many channels.

Once you have your plan, you will need to have documents on hand to attract leads and to convince the candidate they want to work with you. It helps to be organized and consistent with your messaging when you work with a high volume of candidates. You probably are doing some form of this already, I just want you to get a little creative with how you collect and present your information. I recommend you make templates. The templates don't have to be the next great design. Keep that part simple. You want to focus your creativity on the message. Create the following templates for your job order file:

• email message
• voicemail message
• job advertisement
• selling points

Remember,  the goal is to come up with a message that makes your position stand out from the crowd.Think about your target. What will they respond to? What would they want to read while browsing the web in their spare time? A sales professional might be motivated by a contest. Challenge them to prove they have the most skills or awards. An engineer might respond to a puzzle to solve; a healthcare professional, a compelling story.

Despite the current job market, any good recruiter knows that there is still a war for talent. You won’t win the war by doing a copy and paste of a generic job description or using the same boring voice mail script that a thousand other recruiters use. You know the one. I’m not even going to quote it.  Make these templates sound so good you could start your own recruiter training program! There are three things talented candidates want to know:

• Why would they want this job?
• Why would they want to work for your client?
• Why should they trust you to represent them?

Be innovative in how you answer those questions! Make them remember you, even if they are not looking for a job.

I found some great tips for finding inspiration on The HostBaby Blog. If you want some more elaborate examples search “creative recruiting” on Pinterest. These should get your creative juices flowing. I was amazed at just how many unique pins there were on the subject. My favorite was from The Work @Home blog on Dorthy.org.  This is the link.  I had to laugh at a few of those!

The good news is, you only really have to be creative once, because you are building templates that you’ll use for every job order. You’ll just update the specifics for the client and the position. Well, that is until you get bored with this message. Then you will need to innovate again!

At some point you will also want to make a very nice rejection email template as well. That is really a topic that could support its own blog post. We’ll talk a little more about that when we discuss how to duplicate next week.

How do you prepare yourself to be creative. What kind of creative recruitment technique would you personally want to respond to?

Amy McDonald  is the President and CEO at REKRUTR. She has been working in the human resources and recruiting industry for over 20 years. Amy has worked with hundreds of recruitment professionals throughout her career, training best practices in sourcing candidates and refining the recruitment process. In her spare time, Amy participates as a thought leader in Recruiting for BIZCATALYST360° .