Strengthening your sourcing strategies

I’ve worked in sales for more than half my life and, over the years, the parallels of sales and recruitment have become more and more evident.

As a salesperson, I work to convert leads to clients. As a recruiter, you work to convert candidates to hires.

Whether you consider yourself to be skilled at selling, it plays a significant role in your recruitment and sourcing efforts. No matter the avenue of your initial communication with a candidate, your main goal is to get them excited about your opportunity and organization.

In other words, you’ve got to sell it!

There can sometimes be a negative connotation associated with selling the opportunity to candidates, but the idea isn’t to sell the candidate on the job just to fill it. Instead, the premise is to excite your ideal candidates by providing the right information to help them make an informed decision to join your team.

That’s why adding a layer of salesmanship to your job postings, emails and anything else you compose will help captivate and compel your ideal candidates.   

Job postings - Keep the ideal candidate top of mind

Job postings will often be the first impression of your organization to both active and passive candidates. It’s a simple idea, but a job posting goes far beyond just a job description.

Let’s consider a highly qualified candidate viewing your job posting. They’re already employed and meet all your skill requirements and criteria. The candidate may move quickly to the next posting if your job sounds a lot like the one they already have.

A dull job description with little that differentiates you from your competition will not attract top talent. Sharing more about growth opportunities regarding both the position and organization, and highlighting your community and organization’s lively culture can greatly increase not only the quantity, but also the quality of responding candidates.

Email outreach - get creative

When reaching out to candidates via email, copying and pasting is an easy timesaver, but how much time are you really saving if this strategy isn’t attracting candidates?

You want your communication to be as distinctive and personal as possible. If you’re sending an email one-to-one, remember to:

• Use the subject line to connect; open with praise and personal details

(Example- "We appreciate your bedside manner and team mentality. Come grow with us").

• Greet them by name and thank them by name at the end of the email.
• Touch on specifics from their profile or CV that intrigued you.
• Focus on their needs, not the needs of your organization.
• Include a call to action.

If you’re using bulk automated emails for initial outreach, then make sure they are concise, genuine and always include the information that will spark enthusiasm. Taking the time to craft more creative and exciting emails - for both individual or wider audiences - will improve your open and response rates.

Implementing these suggestions into your candidate outreach will fine-tune your approach, encourage greater quality candidate engagement and drastically improve your results for both active and passive candidates you pursue.