3 Common Recruiting Sources, and What to Know About Each

When it comes to your talent acquisition, the recruiting sources you use are the lifeline to finding and retaining the best talent available. If you leverage these sources well, your company will have a strong applicant pool with talented individuals that will stay committed to the company once they’re hired. However, using poor recruiting sources will result in a lower quality of talent that will result in poor performance and higher attrition rates.

FurstPerson has identified three tiers of talent sources for recruiting, as well as the important things to consider for each one. Below are the tiers, the different types of forms these sources take, as well as the pros and cons of each one.

Tier 1: Traditional Recruiting Sources

Forms: Newspapers, job fairs, employment agencies

• Pros: Traditional forms of recruitment are very easy to find and common to see. Your talent pool won’t ever second guess checking the classifieds for a job listing or attending a job fair.
  
  
• Cons: These sources of recruitment have two major drawbacks: quality of candidate and lack of competitiveness compared to other forms of communication. FurstPerson has found that the quality of candidate found through these methods is often lower compared to other forms, leading to higher attrition rates and poor performance. Oftentimes the candidate using these forms are unemployed or struggle to maintain employment. Furthermore, as more modern forms of job searching becomes more prominent, the most qualified candidates are looking elsewhere – meaning your company isn’t targeting them through the traditional tier.

Free Article Download: How to Understand and Dramatically Reduce Attrition

Tier 2: Internet Sources for Recruiting

• Pros: The internet provides an unlimited reach to a large pool of candidates. Posting a job on the internet means that candidates will be able to apply immediately, and recent studies have shown that candidates actively seek and apply to postings as close to the job’s publishing time as possible. What’s more, being able to post online means you can continually refresh the posting as needed, so applicants know they’re filling positions that are still open, and not applying to a posting a week old that may already be in progress of getting filled.
  
  
• Cons: With such a large applicant pool there is going to be a much higher volume of applicants than with the other two tiers, meaning more candidates to sieve through with the potential of good candidates falling through the cracks and poor candidates getting interviews. It’s also much harder to gauge interest with an internet application – in other words, who’s applying because they want to work there, versus who’s applying because they want work and don’t care where.

Tier 3: Person-to-Person Recruiting Sources

• Pros: This form of recruitment often provides a much more secure, insightful look at a candidate because there’s some connection – either the candidate actively seeks out the company, or an employee within the company is referring the candidate in question and vouching for their credentials and work ethic. These are the strongest candidates out of all other recruiting sources.
  
  
• Cons: These candidates are often harder to find, and aren’t as frequent. Depending on this tier as your primary source of recruiting will result in much smaller applicant pools. While leveraging this form of recruiting is recommended, it shouldn’t be the only source – using a hybrid of this with tier 2 will be very effective. Furthermore, making the most of this tier may mean adding a referral reward program for your employees, which can take a lot of work and planning if it’s not already in place.

To learn more about the talent acquisition process, read this blog post here. And, to understand how you can better prepare for this process, download this e-book on questions you should ask yourself before implementing a pre-hire assessment process.