Job applicants can be placed into two categories: those that apply for a role and those that apply to work for a company. By this I mean the first candidate sees that you are looking for staff through say an advertisement and applies because they are interested in the role, and the other candidate targets companies that they would like to work for.

Statistically, the candidates that have the lowest staff turnover are those that have targeted an employer. Consider a jobseeker looking for their next job – they may have a crisis that they need to solve which is pushing them to move. This may be a personal issue, a dislike of their current employer or even being laid off. A jobseeker in this position takes the best job that they can find on the market at the time. This is rarely their ideal role and commonly leads to the jobseeker looking around for that ideal role within the following 12 months.

Following are some of the most common sourcing methods and their pros and cons.

Internal Applicants

First step is to look inside your organization and promote internally. To do this you would be looking for a staff member that is exhibiting the right work ethics and potential to succeed in the new role. The optimum time to move a person from one post to the next is when they have exhibited a stellar range or production for at least 6 weeks. At this stage they are looking for the next challenge as they have mastered the one they already have. If you don’t soon change the game for them – the game will become “get the boss”.

Creating your own database

As you can imagine when candidates apply not all are able to be employed then and there. Later down the track however you may want to employ them. So, a storage facility for the better past applicants and a way of contacting them quickly and cheaply once a vacancy appears is helpful. This is essentially what a recruitment agency does – they build their database through attracting candidates via past jobs and networking.

There are many tools on the market place that allow you to store past applicant’s data. One in particular that I have been involved in tailoring is 3hats (more data at www.threehats.com.au ). Amongst its many features is an inexpensive online tool that takes in candidate’s applications from job portals such as SEEK and stores them automatically on your database.

From there you once a role arises that your past applicants may be suitable for the software emails and/or sms’s them the job advertisement with a click of a button. MACRO receives 40% of their applications via this method. An added bonus via this method is that if your past applicant already has a role, they are in contact with people with the same skills so will refer you if you handled their application professionally.

Word of mouth

The cheapest way to advertise, and many times the best, is via word of mouth. This means telling all your staff that you are on the look out. Some larger companies offer a referral fee reward to staff for referring a new employee to them, as do many recruitment agencies.

How candidates are handled during their application process also affects other candidates that apply – as candidates with the same skill set tend to gravitate to each other.

Advertising

The first step is to determine which medium is best for you to advertise in. Print is expensive, and only appears on the day that you pay for.

Online job boards are much cheaper – but only accessible to a public that have access to computers and know how to use them. The good online job boards also list tens of thousands of open vacancies. While being great for the job seeker – this is not so great for you as you are in competition with every other advertisement to be seen as many times candidates will struggle to locate your role on these sites. Also you are now open to the world wide web and having to handle offshore candidates that may not have the right skills or visas or even the English skills to read your advertisement – but they will apply because its cheap and fast. Expect 80 percent of the candidates that apply to not be suitable for your role. The average job board delivers 8-10 candidates per role with salaries over $80k.

University job boards, user groups and even coffee shops or trade shops that your potential public visits are not to be disregarded – many are free. Your own web site should also contain relevant up-to-date data on current and anticipated internal roles.