Best Candidate Sourcing Practices in 2022


Finding the most qualified as well as the best-suited candidates for a job opening is becoming increasingly competitive in today's job market. In a typical recruitment process, acquiring relevant quality applicants for a job vacancy is a primary crucial requirement which recruiters and employers cannot compromise. Moreover, any delay or hurdle in this initial stages of the hiring process affects the overall success and the quality of the outcome.  

According to a study by Zendesk, it is evident that out of 90% of candidates who are willing to take up new job opportunities, only 36% of them are active job seekers. This is why top recruiters engage in candidate sourcing by proactively hunting for suitable candidates. 

All of this gives a compelling reason for recruiters to adapt a robust candidate sourcing pipeline.  In a competitive talent market in order to stay ahead in hiring quality talent, you need to periodically relook into your candidate sourcing strategies and make sure to have the best CV sourcing practices in place. 

What is Candidate Sourcing? 

Candidate sourcing is a step in the recruitment process where talent seekers find suitable candidates. The process includes locating the potential candidates, assessing their willingness, and reviewing candidate CVs to pick a bunch of the most suitable candidates and persuading them to apply. This helps build a candidate pool consisting of both active and passive applicants. Here candidates who have been sourced are not direct applicants. 

Benefits of Investing in Candidate sourcing 


Recommended Practices while Sourcing Candidate CVs 

1. Utilize technology to source candidates 

Utilizing technology for candidate CV sourcing is becoming increasingly popular with the advent of Artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, and so on. Technology on the other hand, does it quickly and seamlessly by parsing candidate databases, CVs, documents, and websites for relevant keywords.  

Top ways to leverage technology for candidate sourcing 


According to a LinkedIn poll, 67% of recruiting managers and recruiters said that AI saves them time. 

2. AI-driven consistent job posting 

Every recruitment team aims to comprehend which job boards, social networks, and agency partners will supply the most significant prospects for a particular post. This is where AI-driven data analysis makes it simple to discover potential candidates. AI helps in sourcing high-quality prospects. The analysis will tell you where to post advertising and how much to bid. First, identify the candidate persona, demography, and the skill set you are looking for, and then discuss the best channels to use to contact them with your team. 

3. Use keywords in Job Descriptions and job postings 

Keywords play an essential role in sourcing quality applicants. They allow candidates to find relevant job posting online and hiring managers to screen CVs with respect to job description quickly. If you're primarily seeking someone with inside or outside sales expertise, be sure to include relevant keywords in your job posting. It will help job seekers to find the post easily. 

In short, keywords serve as the cornerstone for your CV sourcing. They assist recruiters in finding the best applicants for the job based on their skills, experience, achievements, qualifications, and interests. As a result, they shorten the recruiting process and improve hiring quality. 

52% of talent acquisition leaders say that sourcing is the hardest part of any recruiting process. 

4. Create a Talent Pool and Source Candidates from it 

CV sourcing may quickly turn into every recruiter's worst nightmare. And, with a skills shortage, it highly makes sense to build a talent pool for efficient and effective recruiting. To create a talent pool, start with a proactive search for talented candidates. Leverage a referral scheme, social media, and AI tools to get candidates diving into your talent pool. Also, make sure to create a searchable permanent talent database and integrate it with an Applicant Tracking System. 

58% of Recruiting Managers say that AI is most helpful in sourcing Candidates. 

5. Streamline candidate sourcing by integrating it with recruitment automation 

Recruiters are constantly under pressure to fill available positions as fast as possible as open requisitions keep piling up. This necessitates coming up with fresh approaches to speed up recruitment, reduce time, and boost productivity. 

The solution lies in recruiting automation as AI-powered tools and automated solutions increase operational efficiency in several areas, including sourcing, screening, scheduling, onboarding, and more. 

Having a single location such as an Applicant Tracking System or a job posting dashboard to manage all of your job posts helps you make the most of your time and resources. You can automatically post job openings on hundreds of websites that their search algorithm guarantees that the most qualified individuals view them.  

6. Utilize people and network to source candidates 

There are two ways recruiters can source the CVs: manually or with technology. Manually sourcing CVs requires a meticulous study of information to narrow down just the top candidates. This is where a well networked recruiter or an industry professional carry an added advantage.  

Top ways to leverage manpower for candidate sourcing 


7. Outsourcing CV Sourcing 

Establish and leverage professional networking to make potential candidates aware of job openings. Posting job opportunities on a website or job portal does not guarantee it will fill them. Outsourcing CV sourcing is when companies outsource CV sourcing to an external recruiting firm. This relieves the recruiting team from the workload and expedites the process. 

Creating a clear and credible long-term recruitment plan will help you carry out a successful sourcing task. To create a strong and successful sourcing strategy, leverage recruitment marketplaces, talent communities and network with fellow recruiters and industry experts who can help cut-down your hiring cost while ensuring quality and timely outcomes. 

8. Data-driven candidate sourcing   

Make sure to keep track of key hiring metrics such as source of hire, time to fill, applicants per opening, and so on. The source of hire helps you understand the channel that successfully attracts suitable candidates so that you can invest more in the same.

Time to fill when compared with time to hire helps measure the efficiency of candidate sourcing process. An extended time to fill period in comparison with time to hire indicates that the sourcing step needs to be geared up.

Applicants per opening serves as a track record for the number of applicants received for every job opening. This serves as an indicator of the employer branding further a sector, department, role-wise data of this helps identify hard-to-fill roles that might require the support of specialized hiring experts.   

Final Takeaways 

Recruitment is an evolving process for every organization across industry and sectors. Every ambitious recruiter and HR team is working on innovative and long-standing ways to source candidates. The dire need to source and screen candidates faster and better, demands the help of technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and automation.   

Leading recruitment teams optimize CV sourcing by leveraging both manual and tech-enabled solutions. As a result, it speeds up talent attraction as well as the entire recruitment process by handling the most time-consuming and redundant steps in talent acquisition, thereby enabling recruiters concentrate more on other crucial activities such as developing good candidate relationship, analyzing key hiring metrics, and streamlining the hiring process. 

Fill this form by populating the Template Name field with “Candidate sourcing hacks” to get access to a go-to recruitment repository.  

Signing off:


Vidhya V,

6 September 2022

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