3 Talent Sourcing Tips Using Inbound Recruiting

All recruiters want a hiring funnel filled to the brim with great talent that can go on to become assets to their organization. Oftentimes they can get this when they actively seek out people to fill specific positions, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes bad candidates, and even bad hires, fall through the cracks—making it necessary to start the process of building a pipeline all over again.

But what if you could build a funnel of qualified candidates who come to you not because they’re responding to a specific job ad, but because they already know your company is a great place to work? Inbound recruiting, which is an employer branding strategy, is a way to build such a funnel because you're engaging a community of talent—made up of both active job hunters and passive candidates—who come to you specifically because of the reputation you’ve cultivated. Inbound recruiting is an efficient and cost-effective way of using messaging that attracts highly-qualified candidates. The following are three ways to use inbound recruiting to your advantage to source talent and get a strong hiring funnel for every position you need to fill.

3 Inbound Recruiting Sourcing Tips

1. Establish Measurable Goals

Just as you have targets for your recruiting, such as DEI goals, you need to have clear, measurable objectives for your inbound recruiting campaigns. These goals can include engagement with social media posts, downloads of podcasts or ebooks, or hits to your blog. Whatever the goals are, you need to spell them out and create a realistic schedule for when you want to reach them.

Of course in order for this to be a useful part of your strategy, you need to also leverage data analytics to ensure your efforts are effective. With your goals in mind, regularly review relevant metrics to ensure that you're meeting your targets, and change course in areas where you're seeing shortfalls.

2. Learn About Your Audience

After you've decided on goals for your inbound recruiting, you have to also identify your audience. What type of candidate are you trying to attract to your campaigns? It's important to know specific details about your audience so you can create content that will interest them and keep them engaged. Some questions you can think about include:

• Experience questions: What is the ideal candidate’s career experience? What level are they on in their careers? What skills do they bring to the table? What is their educational background?

• Aspiration questions: What are your audience’s career goals? What kind of career paths do they likely want to travel to get there? What challenges have they faced in trying to reach their goals?

• Desirable employer questions: What is your ideal candidate looking for in an employer? What does your organization offer that would attract them? What selling points can you highlight to make potential talent want to work for you?

3. Create Quality Content

When it comes to inbound recruiting, content is key. Great content is what's going to attract people to your organization and keep you on their radar so they continue engaging with your platforms. It's also how you're going to plant the seeds that make them want to contact your organization when looking for employment. You can use your social media platforms, blog, and career site to really showcase what your company is doing in your industry, as well as what it's like to be an employee there. From blog posts to podcasts to diversity data on your career site, you want to use your content to get people excited about your organization whether they're actively looking for a job or not.

In addition, you should think about how you're going to tailor content to different segments of your audience. When you're attracting potential applicants who may not be familiar with your organization, you can include information about your company on landing pages dedicated to discussing the diversity there, or career sites and blog posts that outline why your culture is attractive to potential applicants. Those who are somewhat familiar with your organization and expressed interest in possibly working there can be reached through social media engagement, e-mail newsletters that include employee testimonials, and alerts that let them know what jobs are currently open. After you've gotten people to apply for a position, your content can be used to keep applicants engaged and informed about their application status so they don't lose interest along the way.  

If you're already thinking about your employer brand, then you know how important it is to create the best impression that will attract quality talent. Inbound recruiting may be an integral part of this process as it can bring potential employees to you and keep them in your candidate pool whether they have applied for a position yet or not.