According to a study conducted by Aberdeen (2013) sourcing is the greatest challenge organisations face today in their talent acquisition efforts. We see sourcing to be both an art and a science. It’s the balance between the “art” of building meaningful and strong business relationships, with the “science” behind collecting data and utilising it properly to drive business decisions.

Many organisations are committed to building their talent pipelines, but few keep track of the effectiveness of their sourcing efforts. When you start to review past hires and start tracking new sources of hires, you are able to see trends for success and which sources of hire may not be suited for your organisation or industry. Sourcing of hire should be the key driver in any company’s acquisition strategy (Lou Adler, 2013).

Birkwood (2012) of ERE.net, also supports the study of sources of hire: “this data can help you in your planning, so you can focus on putting more resources and effort toward the good quality hire sources. By improving your focus in sourcing, you can directly improve the bottom line and the overall financial health of an organisation”.

Sources of Hire

CareerXRoads (2014) identifies the following as some of the most effective sources of hire:

• Employee Referral Programs

  Year-after-year, employee referrals remain the most effective source of hire in numerous surveys and research. They can help organisations identify the right fit since existing employees have a clear understanding of job roles, organisational environment and cultural fit.

• Social Networking Sites
  

  Given the number of users on sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, social media has become an effective tool for sourcing talent. The most common uses of social media for candidates include searching for jobs, job post browsing, and uploading a LinkedIn profile to apply for a job. In order to effectively source top talent, employers should also use social media as a way to communicate employee referral programs and reflect employer branding initiatives.

• Corporate Career Pages (aka Candidate Career Portals)

  Organisations are improving their own respective career sites to engage with active and passive candidates and become more interactive and social in nature. They are also beginning to use more tools, such as SEO, to drive traffic to these sites.

Other sources of hire include (but not limited to) the following:

• Internal Job Boards
• College Recruiting/Intern Programs
• Rehires
• Temp/Contract to Hire
• Career Fairs

 

This week’s managers’ tips:

• Link Source of Hire with employee performance

  According to Aberdeen (2013) in order to make more accurate and consistent decisions around sources of hire, organisations need insight into how employees perform once on-board. In order to make this correlation, organisations need the necessary resources, data, and alignment.

• Expand Employee Referral Programs

  One challenge with employee referrals is ensuring that these programs do not destroy any diversity efforts, since employees often refer individuals with the same behaviours, background and characteristics. This challenge can be overcome by broadening these programs to include alumni and key stakeholders. (CareerXRoads, 2014)

• Social network where they are
  

  If you want to reach veteran job seekers and managers, you better be savvy to the ways these groups are communicating. Social media is already figuring more prominently in hiring of experienced professionals, and to a somewhat lesser degree, executives and entry level workers (SRHM, 2013).

Over to you, what do you think about source of hire? Do you keep track of where your successful hires came from? Do you think it makes a difference? We’d be really interested to know what you think, share in our comment box below