Generate More Qualified Applicants From Your Sourcing Mix

Sourcing is power.

If you can walk away with one mantra from today's blog it would be that sourcing is power.

There is something insanely powerful in being able to drive the quantity and quality of applicants flowing into your company's job ads.

How to build your confidence in applicant sourcing?

You're probably feeling frustrated by a handful of things...

• You're not getting enough applicants
• The applicant quality is low
• Applicant's don't show up for interviews
• They turn down your offer

The biggest one you might be feeling is that sourcing is completely out of your control.

This is a huge challenge for HR. The biggest problem is that your company, your boss, and various managers assume that you have this power to control sourcing... when most likely you don't.

What we need is a predictable, controllable, and scalable engine for driving qualified applicants to your jobs.

The problem is, we tend to make some pretty common mistakes...

1. We rely on one single source... like free job boards.
2. We don't have a strategy in place... we simply "post and pray."
3. We don't take action to improve our results.

Remember, sourcing is marketing.

Marketers wouldn't last very long if they didn't have the ability to drive predictable, controllable, and scalable lead flow.

That same concept holds true when it comes to hiring. What we need to do is have a mix of channels for sourcing applicants. We need to actively drive the results of those channels. And we need to ensure that we keep a solid balance between the different sources.

We want all of our applicant channels to really excel, but we have to be cautious if only one of them is driving the majority of our applicants. Because it could change at any time.

5 main sources of Applicants

1. Free job boards.
2. Paid job boards.
3. Social groups on Facebook, colleges, or associations.
4. People coming from your website... walk-ins from your own company and Facebook page.
5. Employee referrals

For each of the 5 sourcing channels to be successful, you need to follow...

The 4 steps to drive your applicant sourcing channels

Step 1. Map out and understand the flow.

Step 2. Create a plan of attack.

How are you going to pull the levers to make the flow better?

Your plan of attack should include reducing friction, increasing engagement, and expanding. Almost everything we do to improve the results of any given sourcing channel is going to have to deal with one of those three things.

Step 3. Identify your metrics.

Watch for some level of results so that you see what's working

Step 4. Create a flywheel.

This is where we adjust, brainstorm, and create a list of what things we could change. We rank them in order of what will make the biggest impact and what will be the easiest to do. Then, we pick something to change, act on it, and improve.

We have a really cool model that you can use to think through and improve your sourcing mix. This is the starting point for understanding, from a very high level, what your sourcing looks like today.

Create Your Sourcing Power Report

The model for metrics that we use for tracking sourcing is what I call the Sourcing Power Report. This data will help you have insight into what's working for your company and what's not.

It's a fairly simple spreadsheet that includes the five main sources of applicants as listed above. For each of these five main channels, we need to gather some company data from the previous year.

1. Applicants -- Find out how many applicants you have received from each of the sourcing channels. Them, compute the percentage of total applicants that channel makes up. This is a good starting point to show how much applicant flow is coming through.
2. Interviews -- Track how many interviews you conducted. And, how many hires did you make from each of those sources? Interviews are more indicative of the quality of applicant flow. This will help you identify how likely an applicant is to get interviewed coming from each of these sources.
3. Power -- Look at how many applicants it takes to get an interview. And, how many applicants does it take to get a hire from each channel? Use that information to recognize the power behind each channel.

The key here isn't to measure yourself against your competitors or your entire industry.

Measure your sourcing efforts against where you started.

Most likely comparing your results to your competitors, even if you could get access to them, isn't effective. Your competitors are probably following best practices that aren't working or relying on free job boards. There's powerful insight when you compare your numbers to your previous self. as comparing the numbers to your previous self.

Compare your improvement month over month, quarter over quarter, and year after year. This is a great way to gain insight into your current sourcing mix of applicants, interviews, and hires.

Remember, sourcing is constantly changing.

Job boards are changing.

The economy is changing.

The job seeker desires are changing.

Technology is changing

Your competitors are changing.

If you're not changing while your outside environment is changing, you're going to get left behind.

Create a plan of attack and keep moving forward. Make changes so that you're prepared to evolve as the environment changes around you.

Your next step...

Download our free Sourcing Mix & Power Dashboard. I'll provide a few examples that you can run through to get a feel for where you might stand. Utilizing this tool will help you identify who to maintain a powerful sourcing mix.