Talent Acquisition

How to Source Candidates Like a Pro

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Far from being a little black book exercise of “who knows who”, or a growth hackery task where you need to write 50 word booleans and be fluent in git - Sourcing is a sales endeavour.  

Understanding your audience and crafting compelling messages sent at the right time are the key determiners of success. Access to talent is really no longer the issue, getting them to give a sh*t about your startup is. Here are some baseline things you’ll need to consider if embarking on a sourcing campaign for your startup.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CANDIDATE AUDIENCE

Figuring out exactly who you want to hire is super important if you want to successfully recruit new people for your company. One way to do this is by creating an "ideal candidate persona". This means defining the kind of person who would fit in well with your company culture based on their skills, attitudes and values. You can gather input for this persona by looking at your company's employee value proposition and the specific requirements for the available job positions.

Once you've created this persona, you'll want to identify the key traits of this person so you can figure out how to attract them. For example, is your ideal candidate a software engineer who's interested in working with cutting-edge technology? Or maybe they're a high-performing enterprise account executive who loves working with challenger brands? Knowing what draws your ideal candidate to a job will help you tailor your recruitment strategy to fit their interests and needs.


CANDIDATE PERSONA EXAMPLE 

Software Engineer candidate persona template

MESSAGING


Now you have your candidate persona, you need to craft personalised messages tailored specifically for them.  By focusing on the needs of your candidates and showing that you are knowledgeable, considerate and intentional in your approach, passive job seekers will engage. 

When looking to recruit, think beyond the job requirements. What can your opportunity offer that'll boost their career. Using the candidate persona like this will help you craft your employee value proposition, a core element of your broader employer brand strategy, more on employer branding here. It's essential to have considered what you're offering and why they stand out versus other candidates. 

"Think of sourcing as your strategy to fill live jobs and talent pipelining as your long-term outreach strategy to fill roles you’ll need in the future."

SOURCING & PIPELINING

Today's competitive Tech  job market requires businesses to be proactive about recruiting the best talent. Traditional strategies, like hoping for suitable candidates to apply organically, no longer cut it - especially when you're an early stage SaaS company that may not yet have widespread brand recognition. 

What is a sourcing & Talent Pipeline?
Think of sourcing as your strategy to fill live jobs and talent pipelining as your long-term outreach strategy to fill roles you’ll need in the future. Looking at the recruiting process from an approach similar to sales, use pipelines of engaged individuals already interested in potential roles should they arise. Linked in is  a great tool for segmenting your talent pipelines. You can segment by industry, skills and profile keywords. 

And for those roles you need to fill now, employ personalised messaging to do outreach across a number of platforms.  Here are a selection of Free sourcing tools you can use right now. Once you have candidates responding to you and keen to engage in your process, you'll need to be good at evaluating them, of course, luckily, we have a blog on our top online coding tools for you to choose from.



WRAPPING UP

Sourcing is a key way you can make hiring a little more predictable as you are in control of who you reach out to and can really drill down on what you need. It's also great way to increase the diversity of your talent pool as you can be intentional with your efforts and not rely solely on applications, which usually index towards majority demographics.

Remember, we all have the same little black book with the same contacts nowadays, but we don't all hold the same level of appeal and approach, that's where the differential lies. 🚀

HOW MOVE CAN HELP 

Move's TAaaS ('Talent Acquisition-as-a-Service') model ensures you get it right when you most need to. We’re experts at securing top talent that thrives in early-stage tech businesses. And, we’ll set you up for hiring success so you can do it without us in the future 🚀 Work with your own dedicated, expert talent team on a subscription basis during periods of growth. No long contracts. Guaranteed hires.

We’ll make the hires, you keep the playbooks 🛠🤝

Don't take our word for it, check out our testimonials page 👀🚀🚀

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