Knowing where your candidates are and how to search for them is crucial for any HR/Recruiter.
Where and how you would search will depend on the types of professionals you’re looking for, but let’s take a look at some of the most popular places and methods to find candidates.
Ask for Referrals
Would be to ask for referrals from professionals that you know are good. Good professionals hang around with good professionals, so it’s logical that you will get a referral that will be of the same quality or better.
How do you ask? First, bring value. If you placed a candidate ask them if they can help you with filling other positions. Mention that they will be helping their friends this way. You may also want to offer them a bonus for the referral which will incentivize them even more so. Don’t offer a bonus as the primary incentive though, because they are not recruiters and will not be doing a full-time search for you for money. Another way is to ask them to do a social media post about it or email their connection list.
However, sometimes you may not get that referral for whatever reason, either because the candidate is too lazy to refer someone, or you’re not asking the right way, or you just started out and the position is fresh, so there’s no one to ask. In this case….
Use an Internal Database
You should consider going to your internal database of candidates and touching base with them. It’s highly connected to the first step, yet in this case, there may be people that may have forgotten about you if you didn’t keep in touch with them properly.
In order to remind them about yourself properly, consider emailing them from the recent email thread where you had the correspondence, instead of beginning a new one. Make the email personal and don’t go instantly asking for referrals.
Touch base at first, ask how the person is doing, and provide some value. For example, recent trends on the market regarding the companies that are hiring, the professions that are most in-demand, or the salaries that are being offered for a particular position.
If the person replies with interest – you will have something to offer to them and you can also ask them for a referral for another position that you may have or for the current one, in case there is more than 1 opening.
But what do you do if you don’t have a database of candidates and you just started out fresh? In this case, I recommend…..
Go to LinkedIn
LinkedIn. Yes, LinkedIn is one of the most popular places to find candidates. It’s literally the largest database in the world in case you need to find someone.
How do you find candidates on LinkedIn?
First, you need to start off with building your profile which should be presentable once you connect with a potential candidate. After that make sure to create A Compelling Linkedin Message so that potential candidates will be interested in what you have to say. Then once they agree to talk you need to know how To Interview Candidates efficiently.
When you search on LinkedIn consider the following:
- Document your search strings. This will allow you to understand what you’ve already done and what keywords you already used for your search.
- Get a paid LinkedIn plan to expand the network for your search and target the right candidates. If you don’t have the budget – try an X-Ray search, there is plenty of free material out there to teach you how to use it correctly. But it’s a lengthier approach.
- Use third-party tools to assist you with the search. Such as email finder, parser, matcher, etc.
Above all focus on giving more to your candidates and you will reap tremendous results.