Three Talent Sourcing Tricks to Find Candidates Beyond LinkedIn
Did you know that there are approximately 200 million U.S. based LinkedIn users? That stat might not be new or surprising to talent acquisition leaders, but what if we told you that out of the 267 million U.S. workforce, that would suggest that over 25% of the U.S. workforce does not have a LinkedIn profile. Even more concerning, less than half of LinkedIn users are inactive, meaning, they log in less than once per month. Why does this matter to talent acquisition teams? With a significant gap missing from the talent pool, and with so many candidates being unavailable to be engaged, it’s critical that talent acquisition teams know these 3 talent sourcing tricks to find candidates beyond LinkedIn.
Talent sourcers should always start where the fish are. There’s nothing wrong with leveraging LinkedIn Search as the first step in your talent sourcing strategy. When LinkedIn isn’t getting it done, try using social sourcing on other social platforms as a gateway into new talent pools. Social sourcing includes using social media platforms to discover and engage new candidate profiles. To effectively tap into a social platform’s candidate base it’s key to understand the search structure and capabilities both internally, and externally, using x-ray search. An x-ray search involves using the ‘site:’ operator in search engines to index specific pages on social platforms.
LinkedIn Search vs X-Ray Search:
- Filter limitations: LinkedIn Search has built-in native filters, whereas x-ray search allows you to build your own filters, providing a broader search scope. While LinkedIn Search offers filters like location, industry, company, and job title, it does not index specific areas like testimonials, affiliations, languages, headlines, and others.
- Targeting capabilities: LinkedIn Search only targets LinkedIn users, while x-ray search can target other social platforms, websites, and file types (like resumes).
- User data: Many LinkedIn profiles contain insufficient data, such as missing job details, skills, and keywords, which limits the native search capabilities.
Three Talent Sourcing Tricks to Find Candidates Beyond LinkedIn
Including techniques for healthcare sourcing and technical sourcing
Using Facebook to source candidates beyond LinkedIn:
Facebook is the largest social network in the world with over 3 billion (highly active) monthly users, offering limitless opportunities for social sourcing and candidate engagement. Facebook provides a massive talent pool for sourcers to tap into, and it has increasingly become more popular for professional networking. Facebook allows users to list information about their interests, skills, and work experience. Surprisingly, Facebook is often underused in even the most mature talent acquisition organizations, despite offering valuable information for sourcing public profiles and Facebook Groups.
Facebook Groups can host great communities for diverse and highly skilled talent. You can use social listening to learn about relevant discussion topics and even engage with targeted audiences.
Native Search:
- With Facebook Search, you can find users based on location, work experience, education, employment, and more. Given that Facebook has a database of highly active users, you can have success directly messaging users or redirecting them to your Careers page or LinkedIn.
X Ray Search:
- Try this to find different groups:
- site:facebook.com inurl:groups intitle:<function> intitle:<location> -jobs
- Try this to find different profiles:
- site:facebook.com inurl:people “to present” <keyword> 👩 -posts -jobs
Using GitHub to source technical candidates beyond LinkedIn: PLUS a trick to finding their direct email
GitHub is the largest open-source coding repository with over 100 million developers globally. It’s a platform where developers and engineers are highly active (3+ billion user contributions per year) and can collaboratively store and share their code. GitHub serves as a social network to discover niche candidates who are often not available or active on other social platforms like LinkedIn.
GitHub profiles may include information such as; username, website links, employment history, location, contributions, followers, and repositories. It’s important to note that you are unable to contact users directly on GitHub, which means that sourcing with GitHub may take time to identify other candidate social footprints or contact information.
Native Search:
- GitHub Search syntax supports the use of boolean operators and while it’s a little more complicated than Facebook, this guide can help you better understand its capabilities. We recommend starting out within GitHub’s advanced search to locate specific users, locations, and languages.
To be able to successfully source within GitHub you’ll need to better understand the terminology within user profiles:
- Usernames: It’s recommended to cross-reference usernames in Google to find other social footprints.
- Contribution: Contributions are specific activities on GitHub. They can be an excellent source for keywords to locate target skills.
- Followers: The number of followers is a good indicator of skill level. Generally, developers with more than 10 followers are strong, and more than 25 followers is excellent.
- Repositories: Repositories are public-facing projects that can showcase what a developer is working on.
Use this sourcing trick to find most GitHub users direct contact information:
- While you are unable to message GitHub users directly within the platform, you can use this easy to use sourcing hack to discover direct emails and contact information.
Using public sources and medical networks to source Healthcare professionals beyond LinkedIn:
Kevin Kirpatrick, CEO of Avery Professional Group, a healthcare recruitment firm, has said “The largest key to success is crafting relevant and engaging messages to potential healthcare candidates so they respond to you.” Kevin also shared, “My team has had to focus on using multiple tools and tactics to source healthcare candidates using multi messaging tools like SourceWhale, contact generation tools like Lusha, and cross referencing on social media channels”
It’s been reported that only 30% of Healthcare providers have a LinkedIn account. With over 90% of recruiters tapping into LinkedIn, that may drive an already limited talent pool to be exhausted with competitive recruiter outreach. Facebook, on the other hand, is used by only 55% of recruiters. Those statistics should motivate talent sourcers to consider how important it is to find ways other than LinkedIn to source and engage candidates. As Kevin suggested, identifying the right candidate is only half the battle. The challenge with Healthcare sourcing will always be finding unique ways to make direct contact. We recommend using email providers like SignalHire & Lusha, and message delivery on social platforms like Facebook.
Social sourcing in a general sense relies on the user interaction and updated social profiles. Even more challenging for healthcare recruitment, we’ve noticed that many healthcare professionals have social profiles that can be outdated and incomplete, limiting visibility into active licenses and educational details. Fortunately, there are vast public sources for healthcare professionals that give updated candidate profiles for talent research. Varying from U.S. State License registries, Board certifications (like RNs), healthcare databases, resident lists for many medical programs, and hospitals employee lists. It requires a few extra steps and putting on your ‘researcher’ cap, but the rewards may be bountiful.
Doximity.com
- Is a professional medical network for physicians with over 80% of U.S. doctors and 50% of all NPs and physician assistants as verified members. Physicians’ profiles usually have education, degrees, licenses, specialization, address, and phone number. Some profiles have more info, including email or gender. It’s recommended to use x-ray search as their native search is limited.
- Example X-Ray Search:
- site:doximity.com/pub gynecology intitle:chicago
- Example X-Ray Search:
- Provides identification numbers for covered Healthcare providers like doctors, dentists, nurses, and other medical staff. Their native search filter is very straightforward and easy to use.
Conclusion
The world of talent sourcing is evolving, and it’s evident that relying solely on LinkedIn might leave significant gaps in your sourcing strategy. The statistic that around 25% of the U.S. workforce is without a LinkedIn profile underscores the importance of exploring new sourcing tricks beyond LinkedIn. Leveraging public repositories and social sourcing in Facebook, Github, and Doximity can be a gateway to new candidates.
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