Proactive talent sourcing and nurturing

In order to stay ahead of competitors, companies need an even greater awareness of the candidate experience, complemented by an arsenal of sourcing, employer branding, and recruitment marketing tools. Comprehensive technology solutions that prioritize these areas are critical to the success of winning talent acquisition teams.

An effective CRM tool should challenge the old way of “tracking” candidates through a workflow. To that end, proactive sourcing— identifying, pipelining, and engaging with passive talent before a job is available—has become the go-to solution for recruiters in many industries.

Traditional methods aren’t cutting it

As the recruiting market evolves, modern talent acquisition is breaking away from outdated strategies that fail to provide organizations with adequate ROI. Basic practices like one-off email exchanges between recruiters and candidates are not sufficient to capture the attention of candidates, many of whom receive multiple messages and offers from different companies. Rather than responding, some candidates simply “ghost” companies and vanish.

This type of candidate behavior may be a response to times when companies wielded more power in the work economy. Back then, rejected candidate resumes were filed away and largely forgotten about until other opportunities arose down the line. For as much as companies pay lip service to the idea of holding onto their silver medalists, the reality is that most organizations focused efforts on filling open positions as needed rather than investing in candidate nurture programs to stay ahead of demand.

Technical fields are one of the most challenging industries to make placements, with Information Technology and Engineering frequently ranked the hardest to fill due to their highly specialized roles that require deep, system-specific skills. Recruiters must source creatively to win over talent in a highly candidate-centric market.