In today’s candidate-driven job market, it is more important than ever to put effort into sourcing top talent. So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that over 83% of companies source candidates proactively, regardless of their current vacancies.
While larger companies have dedicated sourcers as a part of their internal recruitment team, smaller-sized companies have to rely on recruiters to source qualified candidates for them.
So whether you play a role in enterprise-level sourcing strategy or it is just one part of your role as a recruiter, why not streamline your work and make yourself much more efficient with these powerful sourcing tools?
Some are free, some are paid, and others have a free trial option.
Read on and choose your favorites!
- Contactout
- Hiretual
- Pipl
- Recruitin (Recruit’em)
- Slack
- AngelList
- OctoHR
- Shapr
- Advanced Facebook Search
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1. Contactout
Contactout is a sourcing tool used by recruiters at 30% of Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Nestle, Bank of America, and PWC.
Contactout claims to be able to find twice as many email addresses as LinkedIn, stating they can unearth email addresses for 75% of the western world. Compare this success rate to other provides where it ranges between 10 and 28%, and we could have a winning email finding sourcing tool here.
How Contactout works
Contactout is a Chrome extension that works on top of LinkedIn and Github, allowing you to find the email addresses and telephone numbers of the perfect people your business needs to hire.
With Contactout’s search portal, you have unlimited searches and can even find prospective candidates who aren’t on LinkedIn.
This sourcing tool also has a feature whereby you can send emails directly to candidates while browsing LinkedIn without having to leave the page, and you can contact multiple potential candidates at once, as well as follow up automatically.
Cost
You can start using Contactout with a free trial, however, it is a paid service.
2. Hiretual
Named as the 2018 Product of the Year for Recruiting and HR, this free candidate sourcing tool is built by recruiters, for recruiters.
Hiretual promotes itself as a recruiter’s best friend, and they are probably the closest thing you will get to a personal assistant.
Hiretual recognizes that there is a lot of legwork involved in finding great people to join your team, not just with sourcing them, but reaching out to them and bringing them onboard.
As such, the developers reached out to fellow recruiters to nail down the most time consuming and frustrating aspects of their jobs and set about building a series of sourcing tools that could alleviate some of the bottlenecks.
Hiretual consolidates all of your talent pools, including your ATS, resume databases, job boards, and open web sourcing, into one, single pipeline.
How Hiretual works
Hiretual’s AI will identify and rank candidates giving you a rundown of the strongest candidates from across the internet. With this list, you can then reach out to candidates directly by integrating your Gmail or Outlook account to Hiretual.
Use this sourcing tool to track your talent pipeline, integrate it with your current ATS or CRM, or you can even use Hiretual AI to create you an ideal candidate personal.
Cost
Hiretual has three payment options:
- Lite. This is a free service for individuals, however, it limits you to 10 contacts per week.
- Premium. This costs $89 per month, but for that, you get 200 contacts per month.
- Pro. This one is price on application, but it comes with all the bells and whistles that you could ever hope for from a sourcing tool.
3. Pipl
Pipl is an information services company and has over 3 million people in its database. If you can’t find who you’re looking for using this sourcing tool, well, you might be looking for the wrong person.
Pipl works by finding you an actual person behind the online identity, giving you their email address, social media handles or phone number, allowing you to reach out to them directly.
How Pipl works
You simply type your search parameters into the Pipl database, for example, a name, email address or social media handle, and from that, you are presented with as much information as is available about these people, including personal and professional information, demographic and contact information.
Cost
There are two packages for this sourcing tool:
- Free. This license is for personal use only and you don’t get unlimited searches.
- Paid. There are three tiers for the paid option:
- $99 per month you get 200 searches
- $199 per month you get 500 searches
- $299 per month you get unlimited searches
How AI & recruitment technology is changing recruiting experience
Find out how tech has helped other companies grow by enhancing both the recruiters’ and candidates’ experience!
4. Recruit’em (formerly RecruitIn)
Now known as Recruit’em after LinkedIn lawyers had a sense of humor failure about the original name, this sourcing tool is a free recruitment tool developed by a digital native recruiter herself.
Realizing Google had access to tens of millions of LinkedIn profiles, Clever Biscuit set about building boolean queries to find unlimited candidates, as well as creating a nice, clean interface for simple usability.
How Recruit’em works
Recruit’em is a free candidate sourcing tool that writes the Boolean search strings for you. Use it to search through LinkedIn, Dribble, Google Plus, GitHub and Xing to unearth your potential candidates.
Cost
Recruit’em is completely free.
5. Slack
Slack, as well as being a brilliant internal communication service, keeping teams connected, is also a fantastic sourcing tool for recruitment purposes.
Slack enables you to streamline your hiring plans, monitor your progress and simplify hiring decisions by ensuring your recruitment team stays on task and in the loop at all times.
On top of that, you can join relevant local and international Slack channels to get in touch with potential candidates.
How Slack for recruitment works
Use Slack to create a new #hiring (job title) channel, then use the channel to make a plan for how you’ll fill the role. Not only can you use Slack for communication purposes, but you can use it to project manage your recruitment drive too.
Because Slack seamlessly integrates with so many third-party apps, why not use Teamtailor to pull job applications into your Slack channel right when they’re submitted? Slack keeps them all in one place, meaning easy viewing as well as allowing the whole channel to provide their input.
You can also use Slack to track candidate progress and coordinate the new hires.
Other apps that integrate with Slack which are great for recruiters:
- Hello Talent – organize candidates into talent pools.
- Recruitee – track candidates as they travel through your hiring pipeline.
- GitHub – a great resource for candidate sourcing allowing you to easily find a developer.
Cost
There are three tiers within Slack:
- Free – ideal for small teams
- Standard – $8 per user per month
- Plus – $15 per user per month
6. AngelList
One of the world’s largest networks for startup talent, AngelList is a sourcing tool that enables recruiters to post jobs, find candidates and manage their particular talent pipeline, all in one place.
There is a reason 28,000+ of the world’s most recognizable startups built their teams on AngelList, including Slack, Calm and Asana.
Because AngelList is not a job board, it’s a networking tool, you can find out just as much about potential candidates as they can find out about you. It’s a two-way street, so be as open and honest as you can be, and you’ll soon reap the rewards.
How AngelList works
- Create your business profile, fill it out, then add connections to build your network.
- Share your company news and make your business a compelling place for candidates to work.
- Check out over 2,100,000 potential candidates’ profile.
- Use AngelList search features to filter top candidates before they apply for your roles.
Cost
AngelList has a range of price options:
- Free – build your profile, post jobs, accept applications and manage your candidate pipeline.
- Source – from $200 per month, allows for advanced filtering and searching tools, including unearthing passive candidates.
- A-list – from 20% per hire, this gives you access to the top 5% of candidates before anyone else.
7. OctoHR
This is GitHub for recruiters; a sourcing tool that is a Chrome extension which helps recruiters get more information about developers, as well as simplifying the search for new candidates on GitHub.
How OctoHR works
Use OctoHR to find hidden email addresses for developers, get the developers’ skills summary, as well as search for new candidates using various search criteria including language and location to guide you.
Cost
A free Chrome extension.
8. Shapr
Shapr takes networking to a whole new level. This app connects you to inspiring professionals based on matching interests and career goals. As a recruiter, you can continuously expand your network and start conversations with potential candidates, as well as get new ideas and inspiration for your work.
How Shapr works
Start by downloading the Shapr app on Google Play Store or App Store, or use it in your web browser. Then you create a profile with your basic information and interests. Shapr’s machine-learning algorithm will present you with 15 relevant people to meet each day. Just like on Tinder, you swipe right or left to accept or reject a potential connection. Once there’s a match, you can start messaging each other.
This helps you make sure that you’re not spamming anyone but on the other hand, reaching out to people who are interested in talking to you.
You can also join or create communities on Shapr to meet people from the same organization, association or with shared interests.
Cost
Shapr is free to download and to use.
9. Advanced Facebook Search
Note: Facebook has significantly reduced the graph search functionality and tools enabling it might have limited use.
AFS is a browser extension that will allow you to carry out certain searches to find stories, connections, photos, and interests of every person on Facebook.
They say social media is the new recruiting ground, and this sourcing tool just made unearthing that needle in a haystack so much easier.
How AFS works
Recruiters can perform specific graph searches by scouring profiles, as well as targeting prospective candidates based on predetermined parameters, as stipulated by you.
Cost
This browser extension is free, however, there are in-app products that can be purchased.
Conclusion
With the very low unemployment rate at the moment, it truly is a candidate-driven job market, so you need all the help you can get with sourcing the best candidates for your business.
Using sourcing tools are a great way to help you find passive candidates and unearth hidden talent that you might not ordinarily have access to.
In the current climate, if you want to be better than your competitors, you have to source the best talent available, and doing it the old fashioned way isn’t going to get you anywhere.
But using the right combination of sourcing tools will supercharge your sourcing efforts and bring your recruitment game to the next level.
How AI & recruitment technology is changing recruiting experience
Find out how tech has helped other companies grow by enhancing both the recruiters’ and candidates’ experience!
