By: Tony Barlow | tbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com

We all know in the recruitment world there are those dream candidates who land in your lap. Yes, there may be some searches that seem to move along fairly easily. But, more often than not, finding quality candidates for your opportunities takes work. Sadly, finding quality candidates in a passive way isn’t always a possibility.

This is where the art of sourcing comes into play. Sourcing is the organized and active effort put forth to find candidates for your openings. So, let’s talk about sourcing options and how best to maximize your efforts.

Sourcing physicians can take many different forms. The internet age has opened a ton of new doors and, in many cases, made life easier. However, while sourcing tools have increased in number, the physician shortage has also become an increasing issue. So, while your tools have improved, there are less physicians available. The key is to find a balance of sourcing tools and techniques that leads to consistent success. And, a key piece of this puzzle is being an active participant in all the tools you are using. There is really no such thing as “passive sourcing.” Even something as simple as a job board takes time, effort and attention to make it successful.

Let’s address the job board option first. Too often, we see clients with the common thought of set it and forget it. That’s a passive form of sourcing. If we are working to make our passive techniques more active, we first need a solid starting point. Time and again we’ve seen clients struggling to create good headlines and content in job postings. In a competitive space like recruitment, time and energy committed to creating solid content pays off every time. To truly make the posting active, you then need to think about your process for updating postings. Changing up headlines and content on a rotational basis is always a good idea to keep things fresh and find new leads.

Another opportunity is email messaging. Email can be one of those sourcing tools that gets misused by recruitment teams. Two common issues we see with email are not emailing often enough and not changing up content. When it comes to email frequency, we recommend one email per month. There are some searches where we will go to two emails per month. But one per month seems to be a sweet spot between being a pest and not being visible. Content is the other huge factor. You need fresh content with each message. That doesn’t mean a complete overhaul each time. But fresh content in the intro paragraph and certainly changing up the subject line are important. Sending the same message with the same subject line each month is not an effective sourcing plan. Again, the time and effort put into these tools will pay off.

Honing your skills and working on your sourcing tools and plans is sometimes pushed off onto the back burner. And while there likely are tasks in the recruitment space that should be prioritized over sourcing, it certainly can’t be forgotten. Spend some time during these summer months refining your sourcing work. It will make you a more valuable part of the team and will make your team a bigger player in the recruitment space.

If writing and rewriting job postings and email sourcing are too much for your team to handle at the moment, don’t hesitate to reach out. As a boutique sourcing firm, helping you is our specialty. We can help assess your current processes and make suggestions or we can flat out do the work for you with our experienced team. I would love to talk with you more about the options! You can email me at tbarlow@barlowmccarthy.com.