Recruiters need a variety of skills in today’s market to find candidates. Unemployment is at a 50-year low, so the process of finding the right talent is, literally, like finding a four-leaf clover in a football field of grass. That’s why the necessary skills and techniques professional recruiters use should include the process of sourcing candidates.

But what is the relationship between recruiting and sourcing? Why is sourcing so important today? Can recruiters hunt for candidates today without using sourcing techniques? Here’s how to understand the difference and why you need both.

What is Recruiting?

Recruiting is the process of finding and hiring job candidates. The tasks can vary depending on the company, and whether the recruiter is a third-party or agency employee or part of an in-house hiring team.

Third-party recruiters work for a staffing agency that partners with companies to bring in more talent. In-house recruiters work for a company directly, bringing candidates into departments within the firm.

Recruiters have a variety of tasks from placing job ads to working social media contacts, interviewing and screening candidates, preparing candidates to meet a hiring team, and even negotiating contracts.

Recruiters can approach the process of finding talent in two ways; gathering resumes from applicants that have applied for the job or sourcing talent.

What is Sourcing?

Sourcing is the process of actively seeking out job candidates that haven’t applied to a job yet. This isn’t as difficult as you might imagine when you consider these ZoomInfo stats:

  • 92% of candidates would consider switching jobs if the company soliciting them had a good reputation.
  • 45% would leave their job for a 10% pay increase.

Sourcing is a bit like making a cold call; practicing this technique means the person emailing or calling the candidate may hear a resounding, “No” to their inquiry. While sourcing takes grit, organization and determination, it’s a necessary part of the candidate search process today, because only a small number of those currently employed are actively seeking a new job.

Sourcing vs. Recruiting

Sourcing today is a standard part of the recruitment process no matter the industry or type of business. The best recruiters mix soliciting passive candidates with current applicants, sifting through the talent pool to find the best and brightest. While both recruiting and sourcing require the review of resumes, only the sourcing process seeks to expand the candidate pool by soliciting resumes from professionals that haven’t applied to the job yet. Sourcing requires extensive knowledge of job boards, networking sites and other professional social venues to reach candidates. Sourcing uses social media extensively to reach candidates and leverages techniques like sophisticated Boolean searches to find new targets.

Making Sourcing and Recruiting Easier

Whether you are a hunter or gatherer, today’s hiring teams need sophisticated recruiting software to help them find the right talent. Exelare software provides these teams with the tools they need to source, contact and engage candidates no matter where they are. Talk to us to work smarter.