Uh oh…it’s time to fill that open position. Time to start the whole hiring process again! We understand that sourcing qualified candidates can be a problem for companies of all sizes. But we also have a few tricks up our sleeves.

Check out our list of six tactics you can use in your recruiting process to source the best candidates for the job.

1. Expand your talent pool with passive applicants

Sometimes the best person for the job doesn’t even know it yet. Though it might seem like a waste of time to focus on candidates who aren’t actively looking for employment, this can actually be one of the most effective ways to make quality hires. Because passive applicants aren’t interviewing elsewhere, you have a great shot at grabbing their attention with personalized outreach.

2. Use data to drive your recruiting process

When talent acquisition teams use data to drive hiring decisions, their work efficiency and accuracy of candidate assessment goes through the roof. Sourcing applicants with the help of data and technology will only increase your chances of finding the best-fitting candidate.

If you want to understand the success (or failure) of your ongoing recruiting efforts, keep track of the following five metrics:

• Online location of job postings.
• Cost of posting to each job site.
• Number of new applicants, interviews, and hires.
• Time between job posting and hire.
• All information entered by applicants.

Keeping track of this data will help you identify critical patterns behind your recruiting process, and enable you to improve that process and make better hiring decisions going forward.

3. Get creative with applicant outreach

These days, more and more applicants seem to be looking for ways to engage with their future employers in creative ways. If you’re not ready to think outside of the box in your applicant outreach, you could easily miss out on the best of the best.

There’s an endless array of creative tactics you could employ here. Here are three of our favorites:

• Referral bonuses: Entice your current employees to recruit people they know and trust.
• Experiment with language: Not every job posting has to be cookie-cutter. Create multiple unique drafts, each one using different tones and language choices, and post them to different job boards.
• Use social media: You don’t have to use an official career site to find the best candidates. Sometimes they’re right under your nose on Facebook or LinkedIn. Advertise your open position to your followers!

4. Be candidate-centric

Remember – it’s all about the candidate. Your goal should be to make the application and hiring processes as streamlined and pain-free as possible. In this day and age even the slightest hiccup can repel a candidate for good.

Find ways to show genuine interest in all your candidates. Promote your company culture and highlight how well the applicant would fit in. Make sure your company has an attractive brand image, is easy to research, and that the hiring process is as easy as possible. Polish your entire applicant experience, and you may find that great hires are knocking down your door.

5. Transform your applicant experience into a well-honed journey

A visual representation of the ideal applicant journey

Your success in sourcing the best applicants boils down to your ability to map out your overall hiring strategy. It’s often not enough to sit and think about the experience your applicants will go through; you have to visualize it on paper.

Use the graphic above to help you empathize with your applicants. Be aware that their journey can be broken down into five stages – awareness, consideration, interest, selection, and hire. Your job is to craft your hiring experience around this journey, and to be prepared for everything the applicant might need within each stage.

6. Automate and streamline

It’s no secret – sourcing high-quality applicants is a huge task to take on for any hiring manager or recruiter. You quickly find that you need all the help you can get. Applicant tracking system (ATS) software can help you find candidates, automate the busy work, and streamline your whole hiring process.

ATS solutions are software designed to provide an efficient, cost-effective recruiting infrastructure that supports your efforts to attract, review and select the best candidates for your team. The essential purpose of an ATS is to streamline the hiring process. The best ATS solutions leverage recruiting industry data and functional design to give their users the most user-friendly experience possible.

Want to learn how an ATS can help you? Schedule a live demo with us today to learn exactly how The Applicant Manager can help your business find the best candidate for the job.

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