The art of candidate attraction – a blog by Vijay Bagha, Senior Recruitment Consultant

Company News | Written by Gail Callicott | Date Posted 29 May 2018

The art of candidate attraction – a blog by Vijay Bagha, Senior Recruitment Consultant

Talent can make or break a business. For this reason, ensuring that you attract the right people to your company is vital. However, the art of candidate identification extends far beyond posting a job ad and waiting for the applications to roll in. Hiring managers and external recruiters must keep their ears to the ground and be ever more inventive about where they source – and how they engage – candidates if they are to victor in the war for talent.

While technology has been a great enabler when it comes to talent attraction, it has also levelled the playing field: now everyone has equal access to the same pool of candidates in just a couple of clicks. For this reason, great recruiters must become more imaginative when it comes to sourcing in-demand skills.

Strategic talent pooling is vital. However, having a large database of unaware candidates won’t cut it. Recruiters and hiring managers should instead use specific tools to track potential recruits who may be open to a new position. Here at Sopra Steria Recruitment, for example, our internal CRM, TriSys V10m, enables us to keep on top of contractors who may be coming to the end of their current assignment and who have finished and may still be available on the market.

LinkedIn Groups for security cleared roles and security cleared individuals, for example, enable us to join conversations while enhancing our market knowledge. Creating private groups on the platform is also an ideal way to keep up to date on availability, provide market knowledge and build relationships with individuals we have not worked with in the past. Outside of the virtual world, our consultants also attend and build relationships through local ‘meet ups’, where groups of likeminded individuals, such as computer coders, get together to discuss their profession. Doing this allows us to truly tap talent at the source.

While building external relationships is key, internal collaboration is also important. Whether on LinkedIn or Yammer or in person, discussions between current team members can be a great way to gain referrals. This helps us to understand people’s interaction and discuss recommended candidates that others have worked with.

Once talent is identified, it’s crucial that we engage them effectively – and speed is a vital element of a successful placement. Making things happen quickly shows candidates we will do what it takes to deliver, particularly in sectors such as defence where competition is fierce and where it is too easy to loose jobseekers to competitors.

Taking a consultative approach to candidate relationships is also important. It’s imperative to speak with professionals who may not be currently working with to understand their needs, even when they are on assignment elsewhere, to be sure you are front of mind when they decide to look at other options in the market.

Throughout my career in recruitment, many of the previous companies I worked with provided great systems and training on how to provide an excellent service. However, the area in which they lacked is the understanding of your core markets and individuals working in them – but in the digital age, this is the only differentiator.  

  • Vijay Bagha, Senior Recruitment Consultant, Sopra Steria Recruitment

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