Recruiters often search for the right applicant tracking system (ATS) to help them find the right candidates with the right automation to fill their job positions. However, even with the advanced capabilities of ATS and CRM systems, human skills are still required to manage the sourcing process.
Here are some sourcing techniques and ideas that can make your search more efficient and effective.
Junior Recruiters Need Training
Sourcing is not an entry-level responsibility. It requires someone who can understand a job description and break it down into keywords that are searchable within someone’s experience or resume. This is where strong Boolean strings are created. To ensure that junior recruiters can effectively search for candidates, it’s important to provide training on industry knowledge, spotting candidates, and being flexible in adding them to a list.
Creating the Boolean Strings
Targeting a focused string of keywords that are alternatives to the job requirements ensures a limited number of potential qualified candidates. For instance, if you are searching for an eCommerce Digital Marketing Manager specialized in social media and paid search, you can create a search string like this:
(“Digital Marketing Manager” OR “Digital strategy manager” OR “digital manager” OR “ecommerce marketing manager”) AND (eCommerce OR “Competitor 1” OR “Competitor 2” OR “competitor 3”) AND (“social media” OR “paid social”) AND (“paid search” OR PPC)
The search string above lets you find multiple title variations within a certain industry. To make sure you hit that industry, it also surfaces profiles that mention the industry name or a competitor name. You are also requiring that certain digital marketing channels appear on the profile by adding social media and paid search keywords.
Research on the Daily
Seasoned recruiters institute research into their daily routine. While an ATS can help with sourcing, it’s important to search both your internal ATS and external resources such as LinkedIn. For executive-level searches, LinkedIn inmails can be great, but they should be strategic and talk to the candidate you are reaching out to. A long list of job requirements will not entice a passively seeking candidate.
Hiring External Sourcing Teams, Internal Sourcers, and Using AI to Find Candidates
Hiring outsourced teams is a great way to build lists of target candidates when you are looking to hire. Make sure the teams you hire have their own resources, such as premium subscriptions to ZoomInfo, premium job board sites like CareerBuilder, recruiter access within LinkedIn, and so on. Once you have a team sourcing for you, think of list building tactics, outreach, and a content marketing approach, since a volume of candidates can flood into the database quickly.
New ATS systems such as RecruiterPM can help build up your candidate database. They partner with job boards that let you import resumes that match a certain job, so you can build candidate lists for positions you might not normally search for or that are harder to fill. The best applicant tracking systems create partnerships and APIs with providers. That way a recruiter does not have to leave their system, but still has easy access to tools that help them fill roles faster.
When considering ATS platforms, it’s important to look for AI features that can make the sourcing life of recruiters easier.
Some features to consider include:
- Job Description Matching to Candidates: This feature enables candidates to be matched, sorted and ranked based on the criteria you’re searching for, which helps to cut down on the time needed to search for candidates.
- Candidate to Candidate Match: This feature enables recruiters to easily find similar candidates once they’ve found one that they like.
- Programmatic Job Advertising & Posting: This feature allows recruiters to have their job descriptions posted on the best job boards to attract the most qualified candidates for their open roles. An algorithm and marketing ad technology are used to find the best job boards and promote the job opening on those sites.
ChatGPT & Recruiting, its a whole new world in 2023:
Well it is quite easy to create Boolean strings now within ChatGPT.Watch this. Say you need to find PHP Developers but you are not sure what to call them.
Go to https://chat.openai.com/chat
Ask the chat engine: What are alternative titles to PHP Developer and PHP Engineer and build a Boolean string for it.
And here was the chatGPT response:
Here’s a boolean string that includes some of these alternative titles:
(“php developer” OR “php engineer” OR “web developer” OR “full stack developer” OR “software engineer” OR “back-end developer” OR “server-side developer” OR “application developer” OR “database developer” OR “php programmer” OR “php architect” OR “php consultant”) AND (“experience” OR “job” OR “resume” OR “CV” OR “openings” OR “hiring”)
So there you have it, a new way to help you build your Boolean strings when you need one. You can even ask the ChatGPT engine to create a job description for a certain role, or help you write a message for contacting a candidate. I don’t suggest using all the copy, but it can give you an idea of what to write as you start creating job postings and email campaigns.
To conclude, stay creative and keep finding new ways to bring in candidates. The best recruiters and talent acquisition professionals keep bringing innovation and efficiency to the sourcing process. Hopefully the ideas above can help kick-start a new sourcing strategy for you.