Which of the following is the most effective source for recruitment

• What is Talent Sourcing?
• What are the Various Sources of Recruitment?
• What are the Types of Internal Sources of Recruitment?
• What are the Benefits of Internal Sources of Recruitment?
• What are the Drawbacks of Internal Sources of Recruitment?
• What are the Types of External Sources of Recruitment?
• What are the Benefits of External Sources of Recruitment?
• What are the Drawbacks of External Sources of Recruitment?
• How AI helps in Sourcing Bulk Candidates for Recruitment?
• Conclusion

What is Talent Sourcing?

Skilled talent shortages and low employment has created major pressure on recruiters over the passing years. Deloitte says that 44% of Millennial talent starts searching for a new job in two years, that is 25% more than non-Millennials. Furthermore, Gartner says that only 16% of recruits hold the skills required for the position and future goals achievement. Hence, the rise in the talent movement and lack of skilled talent leads recruiters to look forward to effective sources of recruitment and rigorous talent sourcing methods.

Sourcing refers to the recruitment discipline that involves identifying, assessing, and engaging skilled candidates from various sources of recruitment using proactive search processes.

Usually one can categorize sources of recruitment in two major forms. Check out the two major sources of recruitment in HRM in detail from the following section.

What are the Various Sources of Recruitment?

Sources of recruitment are usually categorized into two broad divisions: internal and external sources of recruitment.

We have categorized the various internal and external sources of recruitment for your better understanding. Check it out to get a bird’ eye view of these two sources of recruitment in HRM.

Internal Sources of Recruitment 

Sourcing and motivating candidates to apply for vacancies from within your organization refers to internal sources of recruitment. 

Recruiters can inform existing employees about these openings using internal communication channels like internal job boards, word-of-mouth, social media sites, and more to pave a path for growth and promotion for employees.

External Sources of Recruitment 

Identifying and pursuing candidates to apply for job openings outside your organization refers to external sources of recruitment.

Recruiters can combine the right external sources of recruitment to catch an ideal candidate. Thereby, you can improve diversity within the organization with external recruitment sources.

Now let’s take a look at the types of internal recruitment sources comprehensively that lead to an effective talent selection and enhanced employee experience.

What are the Types of Internal Sources of Recruitment?

Some of the widely-employed types of internal sources of recruitment include:

Talent Pipeline

Recruiters often save major applications to fill in their talent pipeline for future reference. This involves contacting previous applicants for vacancy filling. Hence, out of all other internal sources of recruitment, this source leads to faster and effective recruitment.

Promotions 

One of the major internal sources of recruitment includes promoting existing employees with great performance and productivity records. That is, the responsibility and authority of the vacant position can be handed over to the existing employee with a hike in salary and employee benefits.

Promotion-based recruitment sources are usually applied for higher position vacancies. Furthermore, promotions also help organizations to foster a healthy competition where employees will feel motivated to work harder.

Retirement Extensions 

Retired employees who have excelled in their positions in terms of performance and productivity can be provided with retirement extensions. This out of other internal recruitment sources can keep the situation in check when you fail to find suitable candidates for your position.

Former Employees

Calling back former employees of your organization with outstanding performance records can act as a great recruitment source. You can persuade them to join back with higher wages, greater compensation, and benefits.

Transfers

Transfers, on the other hand, share similarities to promotions. However, in transfers, responsibilities, working conditions and duties may change. Yet there may not necessarily be a change in the salary. You can easily transfer an existing employee from one department or branch to another during an immediate vacancy fulfillment.

Employee Referrals 

Referrals have become one of the most widely used internal sources of recruitment. Here existing employees provide references to candidates in their contact list, based on which your organization can fill in the vacant positions.

Internal Advertisement 

If your existing employees have been working for a long time, then they might be interested in filling a vacancy with better payscale, responsibilities, authority, and growth. Hence, using job boards, organizational social media platforms you can circulate these advertisements to help existing employees get notification about the same.

Yet hiring through internal sources of recruitment has its share of benefits and drawbacks. Taking a deeper note of them can help you streamline the hiring procedure. So let’s start with the former before delving into the latter.

What are the Benefits of Internal Sources of Recruitment?

Some of the major benefits that you can derive from internal recruitment sources include:

• It leads to easy and reliable hiring
• Promotes growth leading to employee motivation for enhanced productivity
• Reduced job-opening promotions lead to cost-savings
• Absence of recruitment and training leads to further cost-savings
• Leads to employee turnover reduction
• Guaranteed trustworthy and right-fit candidates filling for the job
• Motivates employees for self-development
• Enhances team’s job satisfaction and morale
• Improves employee loyalty
• Promotes development and training

Despite all these advantages, hiring through internal sources of recruitment also has a darker side. In the following section, we have discussed the negative aspects of the same.

What are the Drawbacks of Internal Sources of Recruitment?

The negative side of hiring through internal recruitment sources can be greatly understood through its drawbacks which include:

• Hike in chances of overlooking skills and right-fit candidates
• Limits fresh talent acquisition
• Narrows down choices due to a limited candidate pool
• Existing employees’ performance may degrade with time
• Promoted employees may not hold the best quality for the role
• Portrays nepotism and favoritism encouragement
• Barricades new ideas and solutions for existing challenge resolution
• Can lower down morale and increase chances of conflict for those who did not receive a promotion

With a comprehensive overview of internal sources of recruitment, let’s move on to the external recruitment sources.

What are the Types of External Sources of Recruitment?

Some of the external recruitment sources that are used by major organizations worldwide include:

Advertisements 

Advertisements have worked as one of the leading external sources of recruitment. When it comes to positions demanding specific skill-sets and responsibilities, you may face problems with a shortage of such talent. Hence, you can opt for media-based advertising to reach a wider talent pool. You can opt for the following advertisement channels for enhanced candidate sourcing:

1. Internet Advertisements: The Internet is one of the greatest external sources of recruitment to hunt down high-qualified candidates. Such ads can be shared using various social media platforms, electronic job boards, and others to attract a wide pool of rich talents.

2. Newspaper and Journal Advertisements: Newspaper ads can help in targeting candidates based on a specific geographical location. Without consuming great lead time, newspaper and journal ads can help recruiters seek candidates faster. However, there is a higher chance of passive and under-qualified applicants filling in the job role.

3. Television and Radio Advertisements: Despite being expensive, these ads can help you to target selective and distinctive candidates. But due to the one-way flow of information, candidates may face problems in recollecting important details if they fail to jot them down during the broadcast. 

Campus Recruitment

Campus recruitment has become one of the major external sources of recruitment in today’s era. In this process, you can collaborate with educational institutions to hire merited candidates right from their campus. Since you can conduct recruitment processes at institutions’ premises for filling up vacancies in real-time.

Employment Exchanges 

When it comes to sourcing skilled and unskilled candidates, you can look into Public and Private Employment Exchange agencies. Registering with one of these companies can help you approach a large number of candidates. Employment exchange agencies also work as recruitment sources for candidates as well. Since many candidates register themselves with these agencies in search of job opportunities.

E-recruitment

E-recruitment refers to candidate sourcing and screening from job sites like Monster, Jobs, and more. These sites are rich external sources of recruitment through which you can get your hands on a wide pool of skilled candidates.

Employment Agencies

Hiring candidates from employment agencies also acts as one of the greatest external sources of recruitment. Since these agencies hold qualified candidates who are on the lookout for jobs. Furthermore, employment agencies come in three forms – government employment agencies, private employment agencies, and consulting firms. These agencies act as great recruitment sources. Since these agencies outsource candidates who are both low and highly skilled in return for a commission.

Walk-in Interviews 

Organizations often get resumes posted via e-mails as well as candidates walking in to seek job opportunities. You can utilize this opportunity to conduct a recruitment round to assess these candidates’ potential at your organization. This depends on luck. Yet who knows you may get the best fit candidate amongst strangers!

Workers’ Union 

If you are looking for employees in hospitality, construction, maritime, and other industries then you should start hunting down workers’ unions. Hiring from the workers’ union helps to save costs from the management’s point of view.

Moreover, these unions also provide workers on a contract basis. Hence, if you require an employee temporarily then getting in touch with a workers’ union is the best option.

Career Fairs 

An organizational presence in a career fair helps you get in contact with a wide talent pool. Moreover, industry-specific career fairs also act as great recruitment sources when you demand skill set-specific talents. Furthermore, career fairs at educational institutions also act as advanced recruitment sources for entry-level positions.

And just like internal recruitment sources, external sources of recruitment also have their advantages and disadvantages. Check them out from the following section.

What are the Benefits of External Sources of Recruitment?

External sources of recruitment also come with a wide range of advantages leading to organizational scalability and growth. Some of these benefits include:

• Absolute transparent recruiting process
• Applicable for nearly all types of business processes
• Access to a wide and diverse talent pool
• Provides impartial opportunity grabbing chances to new candidates
• Incorporating new ideas and skills for challenge resolution
• Encourages employer culture and brand promotion
• Develops a concrete talent pipeline for future requirements
• Promotes a healthy workplace by eradicating traces of nepotism and favoritism

Yet just like internal recruitment sources, external sources of recruitment also have their setbacks. In the following section, we have tried providing a complete overview of the disadvantages you can face if you opt for hiring through external recruitment sources.

What are the Drawbacks of External Sources of Recruitment?

External recruitment sources come with their own set of drawbacks. Some of the major disadvantages faced by recruiters worldwide after utilizing external recruitment sources for hiring include:

• It’s a lengthy and costly process
• May make existing employees feel undervalued
• Instills fear of job insecurity in existing employees
• Extensive time and cost investment behind training candidates
• Existing employees may not cooperate with recruits properly
• Selected candidates may not be loyal and can shift jobs frequently
• Recruits may not adjust to the work environment aptly
• May lead to unsuitable and wrong candidate selection

Yet sourcing candidates manually through various sources of recruitment has a lot of risks. Not only does it consume time and money but it also leaves the uncertainty of hiring the wrong candidate for the position.

In the end, this will affect your organization’s productivity and profits negatively. Hence, embracing advanced technology like AI can help to overcome these challenges. Continue reading the following section to get better insights into the usefulness of AI in sourcing candidates in bulk.

How AI helps in Sourcing Bulk Candidates for Recruitment?

Right from the pre-pandemic times, AI has started gaining the limelight in the recruitment sphere. Here is a report by Statista which clearly states the major recruitment areas where AI has been a major help in 2017.

As can be seen 58% of responses highlight that AI can extend a helping hand when it comes to candidate sourcing.

According to a Forbes article, AI can help you to reduce the tedious processes of talent hunting with its powerful algorithms. AI-based recruitment software scans internal and external sources of recruitment including databases, various social media platforms, sites automatically. Furthermore, AI recruitment software matches organizational criteria with candidates’ experience and skillset to distinguish active and passive candidates.

Hence, in the end, AI provides you with the best candidates with the apt experience, knowledge, and skill-set who can fit in the job gap accurately. Therefore, AI has become one of the most time-saving sources of recruitment.

Conclusion

So we can conclude that even the best of recruitment sources whether internal or external cannot act as the ultimate solution to your problem. Hence, you must rely on requirement analysis, strategic recruitment planning, and knowing your candidate before deploying recruitment sources. In this stage, data can act as a major benefactor in decision-making processes. Leveraging AI and Advanced Talent Analytics can indeed help you to make better strategies and deployment decisions, enabling a path to the right candidate.

Take a test of how AI can help you in candidate sourcing with Birbal. Birbal’s powerful technology helps you to streamline the entire recruitment process and provide you with the best of results in terms of human capital investment, and time! Try out Birbal today and experience a futuristic hiring experience.

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What is the most effective source for recruitment?

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