5 Amazing Ways to Source Potential Candidates

The best way to find the right candidate for a job is to get to know them.  However, this can be difficult when there are so many candidates out there and not much time. To find the perfect employee, you need to invest in building relationships with potential candidates by making use of your professional network, as well as social media channels.

Sourcing candidates is the first and most integral step in the hiring cycle. Proactively sourcing talent is a  building block of the HR department today. With its growing influence, it is now more than important to understand the different methods to search for candidates and how each of them fits within your company’s recruitment strategy.

Here are five amazing ways to source potential candidates in an effective manner –

1. Social media networks:

Social media channels are an excellent tool because they offer much more than simply putting out ads or organic shares on your company culture.

Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook can be used as universal sourcing tools. LinkedIn’s Search can filter candidate’s profiles according to specific criteria such as previous experience, platform activity, etc. Designed for professional networking, LinkedIn is one of the easiest platforms to source candidates from.

Facebook is a generic social media site – however, it provides you with Facebook Graph, where you can filter and visualize profiles across the platform based on your input keywords. You can also use Webbtree Source to source from these platforms quicker!

Furthermore, there are social platforms like GitHub that contain a concentrated set of developers and programmers. Similarly, Stack Overflow is focused on maintaining a developer-oriented community. These platforms are the best choice if you are looking to source candidates experienced in programming and software development. This article shows you how you can use Webbtree to source candidates from GitHub!

Here is a small example table that showcases the communities around different social media platforms:

Now, you might ask if this approach is ethical. Yes, social media sourcing is often looked upon as unethical, especially with a few recruiters gaining access to protected information of candidates by using fake profiles and unverifiable, independently-sourced information posing a risk as well. However, by sourcing and screening based on available public data that the candidate has consented to showcase, we at Webbtree have ensured that you can source from social media without ethical violations.

2. Job Boards:

Job boards are viewed as an opportunity for candidates to look up jobs available within their domain and geographic location. With platforms such as Glassdoor, Indeed, and Google for Jobs making job lookups easier than before, millions of visitors flock to these sites every month. This is a good opportunity for you to source candidates, as the number of options to choose from is often overwhelmingly high.

By creating unique job descriptions that stand out from your competitors and increasing your brand’s awareness amongst the workforce domain, sourcing candidates from job boards becomes a cakewalk. Screening, on the other hand, can be challenging due to the sheer number of applications. You can always contact Webbtree and take a tour of their enterprise ATS solution to automate and structure the process of applicant tracking.

3. Applicant Tracking Systems:

Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATSs, are database management solutions that help you manage and automate candidate sourcing and talent management much, much easier than conventional, manual data entry.

While an ATS is primarily used as a database management solution for candidate profiles, it can be used to source candidates as well! For every job opening, tens to hundreds of candidates apply. Since only one candidate is best suited for the position, the rest of the profiles can be stored in the ATS database rather than being discarded. These profiles can be used as another source of candidates for yet another opening that becomes available in your company. By redirecting all applications from other sources through an ATS, an ever-expanding candidate pool can be created and managed in this manner.

4. Career fairs:

One of the oldest candidate sourcing methods that have survived the test of time and technological advancements is career fairs and job fests. These exhibitions are the exact opposite of interviews – prospective employees get to explore various companies in their field of interest and get to know more about their inner workings and environment.

The National Career Fairs site, for instance, is a common platform that lists upcoming job fairs in the USA. Similar examples include Workforce Singapore’s SkillsFutureSG site and India’s National Career Service.

Despite the physical inconvenience and limitations especially post the global lockdown, job fairs took to the internet and transformed into a virtual experience. This has turned out to be much more advantageous for candidates, as the geographical limitations are lifted and opportunities for remote employment increased drastically. This can be effectively utilized by you as a source of candidates, by offering interested attendees an interview at your company.

While this is a goldmine, the work that has to be done behind the scenes is extraordinary – from brand awareness campaigns to extensive content marketing, your company has to create a strong presence across candidates before expecting a flood of candidates from a career fair.

5. Employee Referrals:

Let’s get one thing out of the way – there is no better source of candidates than your employees. Employee referrals are one of the most trustworthy candidate sources for any company, with 82% of companies having reported high returns on investment using this method.

Your employees are the best at judging suitable candidates for the available job, as they have a very firm understanding of the work ethic and environment of your company already.

You, as a recruiter, can often expect a tightly-knit set of candidates that are extremely well-suited for the job, as a result. This, however, does come with its own set of problems, including mandated hiring pressures and favoritism.

With Webbtree ATS, referral links are generated for each job opening in your company. These referral links are shareable with employees – when they refer new candidates, the profiles of those candidates are added to your talent pipeline within the Webbtree ATS database. This helps you keep track of their applications without much input, making the process efficient.

While this list is by no means exhaustive, these are some of the most reliable methods of sourcing candidates used by various recruiters globally. The methods of sourcing candidates depend on various factors such as cost-effectiveness and available time, however, there is a common factor that is universally agreed upon as a necessary implementation to candidate sourcing – automation. 

Tools like Webbtree can help to find and vet potential hires has been proven time and again to be an extremely effective way of making recruitment easier in any industry. In fact, many companies recommend it over other methods because it helps recruiters like you to focus on interview coordination and employment negotiations, instead of combing through pages of resumes all day long! This is why automation of candidate sourcing is a very highly recommended process – you can read about four ways how sourcing tools make recruiting easier here. You can try Webbtree for free as well!
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