High-quality candidates are the golden goose of talent acquisition. Sourcing a high-quality candidate takes a lot of time and effort. Gone are the days when a staff augmentation company receives the job description from a client, places an ad on a job search engine, presses go, and sits back to watch the perfect candidates roll in. This given scenario hasn’t applied to sourcing for decades. With the onslaught of job search engines such as Indeed.com, Glassdoor.com,Careerbuilder.com, and Jobs.com, the talent acquisition and job sourcing process is now automated, tech-centric, and provides greater visibility to all applicants.
For candidates this equates to ease of access. However, it also means that candidates can apply for job openings across multiple platforms, losing track of which jobs they have applied to and often applying more than once to the same job. For hiring managers, the response can be overwhelming with too many applicants of varying degrees of quality. By claiming stewardship of the candidate journey, your internal or external talent team reinforces the company brand, develops a relationship with candidates, and creates greater control over the full candidate journey: attraction, engagement, and hire. Candidate journey is not a new term, nor is direct sourcing, but both terms take on new meaning as technology improves to make the process better for all.
Direct sourcing is a straightforward talent acquisition model that allows companies to take control of their recruitment process, candidate journey, and outcomes. Candidates become engaged with the company brand and what it stand fors. The technology leverages the brand to build communities that incorporate a company’s existing contractors, retirees, former employees, and any new interested individuals. Combine private communities with open communities for instant access to a vast, thriving marketplace of talent that brings a company’s job opportunities and brand straight to the candidates while returning great fits. By automating text and email campaigns to discover the most interested candidates, companies no longer waste their recruiters or hiring managers’ time by bombarding them with ill-fitting candidates. Candidates adopt more positive perspectives of a company and brand due to the targeted job postings and automated content sent to their inbox.
By adopting a data-driven approach through analysis of historical hiring trends along with considering any expectations of future demand, direct sourcing technology enables a company to determine where help is most needed. Once the direct sourcing technology identifies the right path to take, it assists further by streamlining the hiring process and breaking down the obstacles that have historically stood in the way of finding great talent.
Direct sourcing, with all of the tools mentioned, actually saves time, which, as we know, is one of the most significant expenses. Positive employer brand speaks volumes on how employees feel about their treatment at their jobs. A common industry statistic points out that more than 80% of talent leaders see a significant impact of employer branding on their ability to attract quality talent. Creating an omnichannel approach that utilizes talent communities and reinforces a brand and its value proposition cuts through the barriers hampering a positive candidate experience. Using a direct sourcing solution with an evolving neural network means that the skill DNA of each candidate and each job requirement are understood comprehensively creating a holistic view of each person. This type of technology goes light-years beyond simple keyword or skill-to-skill matching as it analyzes a job descriptions with the same precision as resumes. Finally, there is a common connector between the two parties.
Most companies don’t have the resources to handle direct sourcing internally, and when looking at the landscape of direct sourcing tools and solutions, the number of available solutions can be overwhelming. Also, most solutions do not come with an included curation option, which can lead to relying on multiple partners and increased costs. ICON, powered by Opptly, offers direct sourcing and talent curation with no implementation worries and can easily fit within your VMS, MSP, or current procurement process.
Connecting good people directly with good opportunities should be the rule, not the exception. Coupling control of the candidate journey with sound AI, established candidate communities, and a relevant data-dense neural network can be cost-effective and provide a much reduced time-to-fill.
The effectiveness of a company’s candidate journey and direct sourcing methodology are measurable. When implementing a sourcing strategy, initially there are mountains of data without any basis from which to extract meaning. The last thing anyone wants to do is waste energy or sacrifice a next move. To offset this dilemma, companies create KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure the effectiveness of their direct sourcing programs. We will explore this further in part two of this blog coming soon. To learn more about direct sourcing and the candidate journey,click here.