Finding and hiring the right talent is crucial for any business’ growth, but it can also be a significant challenge. As your company expands, it’s important to have a solid plan in place for sourcing and hiring new employees. In this article, we’ll provide you with a six-step guide on creating a sourcing plan that will help you attract and retain the best talent for your team.

Step 1: Identify Your Hiring Needs

Before you start looking for candidates, you need to assess your company’s current and future hiring needs. Determine the roles and positions you need to fill, the impact you expect them to have, and the number of hires you need to make. This will help you prioritize your hiring efforts and allocate resources more effectively, enabling you to make those critical hires quickly.

Step 2: Save Room for Storytelling

Your employer brand is your company’s reputation as an employer. It’s essential to be able to tell your company’s story in a way that distinguishes you from your competition and engages the right talent. Define your values, mission, and proposition, and then ensure you have the plan to showcase them in your job postings, website, and social media channels as part of your sourcing plan.

Step 3: Select the Right Sourcing Channels

Utilizing as many sourcing channels as possible won’t necessarily attract the talent you need. Look closely at the role profiles you’re searching for, the story you need to tell them, and where they can be found. Identify the channels that work best for finding that talent and allocate your resources accordingly. It’s better to double down on one great sourcing channel rather than to try your luck at several that don’t contribute any suitable candidates.

Step 4: Leverage Technology

Technology should form a crucial part of your sourcing plan. Use it to streamline your hiring process and make it more efficient, ultimately saving you valuable time and money as you hire. An all-in-one applicant tracking system (ATS) like Teamtailor can help you manage your candidate pipeline, track key metrics, and distribute employer branding content.

Step 5: Build Your Talent Pipeline

Don’t wait until a critical position has become even more critical to start looking for candidates. Continuously source and build your pipeline of talent, giving candidates a place to talent pool themselves and remain engaged with your journey. Look out for an ATS with a talent pooling feature that allows you to create a pool of pre-qualified candidates when a critical hire is coming down the pipe.

Step 6: Measure and Manage

An ATS will allow you to measure the effectiveness of your sourcing plan infinitely faster and in more detail than any manual effort. By measuring performance against key metrics such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, retention, and ROI per sourcing channel, you’ll be able to spot gaps in your sourcing plan and constantly improve your hiring processes over time.

The Takeaway: Building a Strong Foundation for Your Hiring Efforts

In summary, building a sourcing plan requires up-front time and effort, but it’s an essential step for ensuring you’re able to create, execute, and measure hiring activity effectively. The growth of any great start-up or scale-up is underpinned by the strength of the team brought in along the way. The early hires, in what we call the “formative years,” are so important to set a foundation upon which great teams are built and great products are shipped. By following these six steps, you can build a sourcing plan that helps you become an efficient hiring machine.

At Fulcrum, we provide a flexible, efficient, and sustainable approach to recruitment for ambitious Australian companies. Work with us to elevate your sourcing plan and improve your talent function for the long term. Ready to start? Write to us today!