The Biggest Sourcing Challenges and How to Deal with Them

The emotional side of the recruitment business can be harsh, with trouble sourcing a perfect fit and even more trouble dealing with clients’ unrealistic expectations or candidates dropping out. For better or for worse, there are some things which can make your working life easier.

Recruitment is a candidate-driven market, and recruiters say that sourcing candidates is their biggest problem. That talent shortage reflects the highly competitive recruitment environment, with employers increasingly often making almost impossible demands for staff in particular fields, for example candidates with ten years’ experience in a field that has existed for two years. In such a case, posting an advert on a job board and looking through the applicant pool will definitely not be enough.

Recruiters also find it very difficult to reach out to the candidates with the necessary skillsets, as those candidates will also be bombarded by hundreds of other recruiters. This ‘noise’ is caused by recruiters chasing the same candidates who are actively searching for jobs.

The noise from multiple offers also usually leads to high chances of drop-outs. At the final stages of an interviewing process a candidate can accept another offer, which forces the recruiter to go back to the pipeline and search for another option.

Taking control over the hiring process by pursuing passive candidates is one of the possible solutions. It takes much more time to develop relationships with those candidates but it also gives a high likelihood of placing them. Relationships based on trust lower the risk of drop-outs.

Impressing candidates with market knowledge is another great solution. Even if you haven’t established a relationship yet, maintaining a reputation as an industry expert can lead to gaining vital referrals.

To sum up, not only do recruiters have to work under the pressure of quarterly targets but they also need to deal with various frustrations. From the personal perspective, a recruiter has to be patient, communicative, empathetic, and resistant to stress. One can easily be lured into chasing seemingly easy wins that more often than not prove to be very hard to finalise due to massive competition. Investing time and resources into establishing relationships with excellent but already employed candidates may not, at first, seem to be a good business model, but it can actually lead to many successful and profitable hires.

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Author: Valeriia Muzhchyna
Digital Marketing Executive