What Are the Steps to Properly Implement a Sourcing Strategy?

A good sourcing strategy is essential for any company that wants to recruit qualified candidates or develop a talent pool. However, its implementation requires developing a proactive approach that will enable the recruiter to achieve their objectives. Candidate sourcing is an essential step in the recruitment process for candidates with very specific profiles. This article explains how to implement a sourcing strategy that is both effective and relevant.

Understanding the Concept of Sourcing

To effectively determine what the steps are to properly implement a sourcing strategy, it is first necessary to ask: what is sourcing? Sourcing in recruitment is a recruitment technique that involves actively searching for candidate profiles that meet specific needs. It differs from traditional recruitment in that the recruiter does not simply wait for candidates to send their CVs. Instead, they adopt a proactive approach that allows them to source talent and create a pool of potential candidates. Concretely, sourcing involves searching for, identifying, and then attracting candidates with specific qualifications, skills, and experience. Implementing a sourcing strategy generally relies on using search channels such as job boards, professional trade shows, professional social networks, etc. One of the main objectives of sourcing is to minimize the time a recruiter normally dedicates to recruiting a candidate for a position to fill. This HR technique also helps reduce recruitment costs associated with using a recruitment agency.

Building Your Employer Brand

A company's website helps showcase its products and brand. However, it can also be used to promote its employer brand. A study has shown that nearly 85% of candidates closely look at an employer's reputation before applying for one of their positions. As an employer, it is therefore advisable not to wait for a recruitment drive to highlight your company's qualities and assets. In other words, a recruiter who wants to develop a good sourcing strategy must have a website on which they should let information about their values and company culture shine through. Creating a "Who We Are" page on the website can help a candidate better understand a company and then consider working with them.

Identifying Your Sourcing Needs and Objectives

To implement an effective sourcing strategy, it is important to define your company's sourcing needs and objectives. To do this, you need to ask the right questions:

• What positions need to be filled within the company, or which positions are likely to become vacant soon?
• What skills are being sought?
• What recruitment volume matches the company's needs?
• What are the best sourcing channels to reach the most candidates possible?
• Are the desired profiles scarce or rather common?

Identifying needs and objectives allows the recruiter to implement a more effective and targeted sourcing strategy. Candidate selection criteria are also easier to define.

Establishing Selection Criteria

Identifying the company's needs and objectives gives the employer a precise idea of the ideal candidate profile. This is a very important phase of any good recruitment sourcing strategy. To do this, it is recommended to first know your target audience. This step will allow the recruiter to precisely determine:

• The message to send to candidates;
• The ideal channel to reach this type of profile;
• The elements to highlight in a job offer addressed to this profile;
• The required level of experience;
• The essential degrees or certifications;
• The expected language proficiency;
• The mandatory soft skills and hard skills, etc.

In a quality sourcing strategy, establishing candidate selection criteria is not limited to defining their skills. Their potential expectations (work environment, compensation, management, etc.) must also be taken into account. This will allow the recruiter to write a relevant job offer capable of attracting the attention of qualified candidates for the position. For the defined profile to best meet the company's expectations and needs, the sourcing strategy must involve managers, team leaders, and the human resources manager. In accordance with the law, candidate selection criteria must not include discriminatory criteria such as origin, gender, family situation, physical appearance, etc.

Writing the Right Job Offer

After identifying needs and objectives and establishing selection criteria, the recruiter must still write a job offer that impacts candidates. Concretely, upon reading the job offer, candidates should find certain essential information:

• The company's size and field of activity;
• The job location (on-site, freelance, local, international);
• The essential skills and soft skills for the position;
• The procedure for applying, etc.

After capturing the candidate's attention, it must be maintained. To do this, it is recommended to include in the job offer an overview of the missions and benefits offered by the company. The tone used when writing the job offer is also important. A tone that is both professional and friendly will further encourage the candidate to read it to the end. Naturally, particular emphasis should be placed on readability and coherence. A complete job offer saves recruitment time because it helps filter applications by systematically eliminating those that are not relevant. It also projects a professional image of the company and contributes to strengthening the employer brand. Indeed, the clearer and more concise a job offer is, the more it is considered reliable and trustworthy. To save time, job offer templates as well as candidate response templates can be created. These can be used for both current and future recruitments.

Choosing the Right Sourcing Channels

The sourcing channels adopted in your sourcing strategy (job boards, referrals, professional networks, etc.) allow job offers to reach candidates more quickly. To develop a good sourcing strategy, it is not necessary to exploit all available distribution channels. It would be wiser to target the channels where the desired profiles are most active.

Job Boards

Job boards are online platforms that are very popular with both candidates and recruiters. These traditional job sites enjoy strong visibility, making them very effective sourcing tools. It should be noted that there are generalist job boards and specialized job boards. Generalist platforms such as Pôle Emploi, Indeed, and HelloWork allow recruiters to find any type of candidate profile. Integrated into the sourcing strategy, specialized job boards like APEC, Cadreemploi, and Maddyjob allow recruiting specific profiles such as senior executives, digital specialists, etc.

Employee Referrals

Employee referral is a sourcing strategy that involves asking your employees to recommend qualified candidates for positions to be filled. This sourcing tool is particularly effective. When it comes to recommending candidates to work within their company, employees' suggestions are quite reliable. To encourage employees to make recommendations, it is advisable to implement a referral program. This should offer employees attractive incentives. Employee referrals strengthen employees' sense of belonging to the company, pushing them to spontaneously participate in developing the employer brand.

Professional Social Networks

Using professional social networks in a recruitment sourcing strategy is a good way to find young Generation Z talent. In terms of professional social networks, the most popular is certainly LinkedIn with over 810 million users in 2022. The application also has an advanced search function that allows recruiters to target different candidate profiles based on their experience, skills, and soft skills. Other classic social networks like Twitter and Facebook can also be used as channels for searching for potential candidates. To do this, simply use the right hashtag.

Job Fairs and Professional Trade Shows

Professional trade shows are very powerful sourcing tools. In the digital age, this traditional method still proves its worth. It is the ideal place to meet candidates specialized in a specific field. In developing an effective sourcing strategy, job fairs should not be overlooked either. They allow direct interactions between recruiters and candidates and promote passive recruitment.

Partnerships with Educational Institutions

To develop their employer brand, many companies create partnerships with training centers and schools. Thanks to these partnerships, candidates from these schools are given priority during recruitments by these companies. This sourcing strategy allows recruiting talented profiles directly from the source.

The CV Database

Like applications in response to job offers, recruiters receive a large number of unsolicited applications daily. Logically, not all CVs can be retained. However, as part of developing an effective sourcing strategy, it would not be wise to systematically reject the CVs of all candidates who do not meet any specific recruitment need. Indeed, some candidates may have skills that could be interesting for a future need. The ideal would be to use these CVs to build an internal CV database. These applications should then be regularly followed up to build a pool of qualified candidates in the short term. It should be noted that many job boards are actually online CV databases.

Recruitment Agencies

Recruitment agencies can play an important role in a candidate sourcing strategy. They generally serve as intermediaries between companies with positions to fill and candidates seeking employment. Recruitment agencies use the sourcing tools mentioned above to build a genuine talent pool. They are thus able to meet their clients' requirements in terms of candidate profiles. Moreover, recruitment agencies have the tools and personnel necessary to manage the entire recruitment process:

• Distribution of the job offer;
• Initial candidate evaluation;
• Interviews;
• Final candidate selection.

The most reputable recruitment agencies also have an extensive professional network that they can leverage for both recruiters and candidates. Some of them even use psychometric tests to evaluate soft skills in order to provide their clients with profiles that best meet their requirements.

Adopting Technological Tools to Optimize Sourcing

Adopting technological tools can also help improve your sourcing strategy. These tools are often used by recruiters to optimize the efficiency of the recruitment process.

The Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a sourcing tool that centralizes all data related to digital recruitment. It includes a multi-posting function that automates the distribution of a job posting across different sourcing channels. Since the job offer is only written once, the time savings are considerable. An ATS also helps facilitate application management and simplify candidate-recruiter communication.

Email Automation Tools

As their name suggests, email automation tools automate email communication between the recruiter and candidates. They are designed to facilitate sending interview invitations and tracking the recruitment process.

CV Analysis Tools

These technological tools use artificial intelligence to facilitate candidate pre-screening. In practice, CVs are automatically analyzed and key information is extracted to filter applications as much as possible.

Online Skills Testing Platforms

These platforms provide recruiters with skills tests that allow them to evaluate candidates' abilities. A personality test, for example, will help the recruiter evaluate candidates' personality, rational behaviors, and soft skills. This type of test significantly reduces recruitment errors that can be very costly. A logic test, on the other hand, will allow the recruiter to evaluate a candidate's reasoning ability over a given period. The ability to produce logical reasoning is essential for positions such as architect, engineer, financial analyst, etc.

Implementing Continuous Monitoring and Evaluation of the Sourcing Strategy

To maximize the effectiveness of your sourcing strategy, it is imperative to implement continuous monitoring and evaluation. The recruiter will need to clearly define the objectives of their strategy. They will also need to determine the recruitment KPIs that can help evaluate the success of their sourcing strategy. Using an ATS or other analytical tools will allow the recruiter to identify trends in sourcing channels. They can then adjust their own strategy to more easily reach their target audience in future recruitments. In conclusion, talent sourcing is the ideal process for targeting specific talents. By adopting a proactive sourcing strategy, the recruiter can be confident in finding candidates with profiles that match their expectations.