Employers and talent acquisition specialists know that we’re in a competitive job market. With hundreds of job boards, not to mention social media channels and old-school word-of-mouth, there is an overwhelming number of factors to consider when thinking about a sourcing strategy. Keep reading to learn what sourcing strategies in recruitment are available, and why you’ll want to consider programmatic recruiting as your go-to recruiting solution to finding candidates efficiently and effectively. 

Different Sourcing Strategies In Recruitment

There are different ways to consider sourcing in recruitment—which is also why there are different strategies. For example, sourcing a candidate for a new C-suite role is going to be different than how you might source a candidate for an internship. With the former, you might be using a highly specialized headhunter; with the latter, you might set up tables at college and university job fairs. Sometimes you source passive candidates—meaning those who aren’t actively looking for a job. That’s not a bad thing; the more qualified potential hires you have in your pipeline, the better when it comes to finding the right fit for a new job listing.

Below are a few different sourcing strategies in recruitment, some of which may be better suited to you depending on your needs: 

• Attend job and career fairs
• Build a strong employer brand that attracts job seekers
• Use social media
• Set up a referral program and source candidates through current employees
• Keep track of former qualified candidates 
• Use programmatic recruiting software to source candidates quickly and intelligently

The Future Of Sourcing Strategies

As physical events continue to be replaced by digital ones, sourcing candidates manually has only become more time-consuming and less effective. By the time you manually get your pipeline in order, you may have lost out on a solid candidate—particularly if you’re trying to hire for an open role quickly. That’s why sourcing strategies for recruitment are by and large looking at new technologies—like programmatic recruiting.

What Is Programmatic Recruiting?

Programmatic recruiting fully automates and optimizes decision-making during every stage of the job advertising process. Think of programmatic as software following a program—or a set of rules based on various data. From job classification to targeted distribution to budget allocation, programmatic recruiting makes decisions based on real-time data, taking the impetus off you and taking the guesswork out of the process.

Precise Audience Targeting Means Stronger Sourcing

There’s a reason that those building sourcing strategies in recruitment are turning toward programmatic software. Programmatic recruiting is not only time-efficient, it’s effective for finding more qualified and high-quality candidates to add to your pipeline. 

PandoLogic’s programmatic recruiting software uses real-time and historical data combined with proprietary algorithms to determine the ideal targeting strategy for getting job listings in front of the right candidates. These algorithms mean not only is your candidate sourcing strategy going to be time-efficient, but it will also be cost-efficient. Then you can reinvest in other areas of your recruiting process and strategy that may need it.

When you use programmatic recruiting as part of your sourcing strategy, you may even end up with far more qualified applicants than you can accommodate with your current openings—the best kind of problem to have. With an applicant tracking system, you can manage these former qualified candidates for future openings where they may be a fit. 

It’s true that in some ways, such as the wide variety of job boards, technology has made sourcing and recruitment more difficult—but software like PandoLogic’s programmatic recruiting is here to help make your sourcing simpler and stronger.