Recruiters today have a wide variety of tools at their disposal to find top talent. These tools include online (social media and other niche online tools), offline (networking, career fairs, cold calling and employee referrals), and anything in between. There is no secret what the best source of hire is, from a “quality of hire” perspective. It’s employee referrals, and a somewhat distant second is direct sourcing (i.e. finding talent online).

While many organizations are continuing to use the “post and pray” method of recruiting as their primary, and often, only recruiting strategy, an increasing number of organizations are leveraging a diverse mix. This approach has significantly improved their ability to truly find the best possible talent, instead of the “best possible talent who happen to see your job posting AND apply”. Given this trend the next question becomes, how effective are they at leveraging these techniques?

Anyone can learn how to do direct sourcing, but not everyone can be really good at it. Better yet, what if the ability of the Recruiter only plays a partial role in how effective they are at attracting talent? What if the strength of the organization’s employer brand plays a more impactful role in how interested a prospect is?

Let’s use the example of AirBnB and American Airlines, both highly successful large organizations. What if you set up an experiment where you task a Recruiter to obtain as many prospects interested in both an AirBnB and American Airlines Marketing Manager job vacancy? The Recruiter has to contact 100 people for each role, and they are free to use whatever sourcing strategy they want. What do you think might happen? Better yet, what is the likelihood that the Recruiter can get the same number of people interested in both roles? I would argue this possibility is unlikely. Another way of assessing the situation is by looking at the number of interested prospects by sourcing channel.

What Does This Mean?

Going back to an earlier statement about the top two sourcing channels being employee referrals and direct sourcing, this should give you a clue. The reason why employee referrals are so effective is because the employee making the referral already has a relationship with the prospect. By virtue of making the referral the employee has said, “the candidate I’m referring is a good fit for our organization”. The other critical element is the volume of employee referrals made. How many employee referrals were made to the Recruiter by AirBnB employees versus American Airlines employees (note: the assumption is both organizations have the same number of employees)? Many factors influence how likely an employee is to refer someone within their network, notably how engaged they are and the level of positive association they have to their organization’s’ employer brand.

From a direct sourcing perspective, the success of a Recruiter to generate positive interest in their organization is dependent on a couple of factors; the skillset of the Recruiter, ability of the Recruiter to leverage mutual warm lead connections, and most importantly, the strength of the organization’s employer brand. The overall response of those that are contacted through direct sourcing would depend largely on how well they know the organization, and how they feel about them as a place to work. Ask yourself which organization you associate more positively with, American Airlines or AirBnB? Your immediate reaction and perception is the driving force behind how effective a Recruiter would be in generating your interest.

What Can We Learn From This?

Using the AirBnB versus American Airlines experiment, we can evaluate what percentage of interested prospects came from which sourcing channel. The argument here is whichever company generated a higher percentage of interested prospects through employee referrals and direct sourcing has a stronger employer brand. This argument also means the organization who generated more employee referrals will hire higher quality talent than the other.

Have a look at your own sourcing mix, notably the success of each to drive your hires. It will tell you a lot about what’s going on with your employer brand.