What is recruitment sourcing?

To find the best profiles on the labour market, all means are good! This is why sourcing has become a strategic step in the recruitment process, especially to address the shortage of certain talents (developers, salespeople, etc.). How to implement a sourcing strategy adapted to the company? How to source CVs? Where to source candidates?

Synopsis

• Sourcing, what definition?
• Why implement an HR sourcing strategy?
• What are the steps of recruitment sourcing?
• What are the benefits of HR sourcing?

The term sourcing comes directly from Anglo-Saxon’s countries. It is a matter of identifying all potential candidates for a position through all possible means of searching. This proactive recruitment approach activates all the sources of information available: the replies to job ads, social networks, CV database, internal documents, etc. It is this multiplicity of sources of information that makes sourcing effective. The development of digital tools diversifies the sources of recruitment, while making it faster.

The implementation of an HR sourcing strategy allows to identify potential candidates, passive or active, on the job market, corresponding to the characteristics of the position to be filled. This gives the company the opportunity to anticipate future needs by creating a pool of qualified talents.

Sourcing has the advantage of targeting the best profiles and effectively managing many applications. However, spending enough time and resources to find quality applications requires developing a suitable sourcing strategy for each recruitment need.

Recruitment sourcing occurs at the beginning of the recruitment process. As soon as a recruitment need is identified, the company initiates a request to the HR team. They activate all the HR tools necessary to find candidates whose professional qualities are in line with the expectations of the position.

1. Definition of the profiles sought with selection criteria to maximise the success of the recruitment by identifying the qualities of the typical candidate for the position in question (diplomas, experience, technical skills, soft skills, etc.).
2. Identify and launch a sourcing strategy, according to the criteria of the job description, identify the most relevant acquisition channels. The importance is to multiply the sources and not “put everything in the same basket”.
3. The sorting and qualification of potential candidates using an ATS software, it is possible to target the talents corresponding to the desired profile via semantic search and matching offers & CV to create a pool of qualified candidates (CV database)

Digital recruitment diversifies the sources of acquisition which increases the number of potential candidates especially by reaching individuals who are not necessarily actively looking for a job.

Sourcing helps to recruit better profiles more in line with the needs of the company and the skills sought, thus enriching a more qualified database. It also saves time in the recruitment process. Recruiters are more effective in managing applications through automation and all the information about successful candidates is tracked.

Finally, the use of sourcing makes it possible to control the costs of acquiring talent, to exploit the company’s own channels and resources before allocating a budget to the recruitment, particularly in buying space or CV database. In addition, a successful sourcing strategy makes it possible to attract the right profiles from the start and to avoid having to deal with turn-over issues at the time of onboarding.