How to source candidates, from the brief to the first reply
How to source candidates: write a brief that separates must-haves from preferences, pick the 2 or 3 channels where those people already are, search and qualify before you contact anyone, then send short personal outreach with 2 follow-ups. Track replies by channel, keep everyone you found, and re-run the search while the role is open.
How to source candidates, in short
- Write the brief before you search. Name the work, not the job title.
- Pick 2 or 3 channels for this role, not 8. Depth beats spread.
- Qualify from the profile before you contact anyone or spend a reveal.
- One short first message, 2 follow-ups, and stop the moment they reply.
- Keep everyone you found in a pool and re-run the search each week.
The 7-step process recruiters use to source candidates
The same loop works on day 1 of a sourcing career and for a founder hiring alone. It answers how to source candidates as a recruiter without a team behind you.
- Run an intake and write the brief Ask the hiring manager what this person will ship in their first 6 months, and what makes the job hard. Write the work down in 1 or 2 sentences, not the title. "Senior backend engineer, Go, has shipped payments at scale, Remote EU."
- Split must-haves from preferences Most briefs carry 9 requirements and 3 real disqualifiers. Name the 3 or 4 things you would genuinely reject on. Everything else is a ranking signal. Must have: Go, payments. Preferred: Kubernetes, fintech, Berlin time zone.
- Pick 2 or 3 candidate sourcing channels Choose where these people already are, not where sourcing is easiest. A staff-level specialist and a support hire rarely share a channel.
- Search, then widen one variable at a time Run the narrow search first. When the pool is thin, loosen exactly 1 thing: adjacent titles, then adjacent employers, then location. Changing 3 at once tells you nothing. Backend engineer, then platform engineer, then infrastructure engineer.
- Qualify before you make contact Read the profile to the bottom before messaging, a habit LinkedIn's 2022 Talent Blog collected from working sourcers. Write 1 line on why this person, and keep it for the message.
- Reach out short and specific One message about them, the work and a small ask. Two follow-ups that each add something new. Stop the sequence the moment somebody replies or opts out.
- Log replies by channel and re-run weekly Record which channel produced each reply and each screen. Keep every person you found, and run the search again while the role is open. New people enter the market every week.
A one-line brief, turned into a search
An example: a plain-English brief parsed into filters about the person and about their current employer.
On The Cognitive, a one-line brief is read into structured filters in 2 groups: about the person, and about their current employer. When the pool comes back small, the search relaxes its softest filters itself and tells you what it broadened.
8 candidate sourcing channels, and the sourcing strategy each suits
Most recruitment sourcing strategies fail on channel choice, not on effort. A candidate sourcing strategy starts here. Read the failure column first: it names what each channel cannot reach.
| Candidate sourcing channel | Who it reaches | Best for | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own ATS and past applicants | People who already said yes to you once, including past finalists. | Repeat role families, fast restarts, silver medalists. | Only as good as your past pipeline. Data ages fast and contact details go stale. |
| Employee referrals | The networks of the people you already employ. | Trust-heavy roles and teams that hire in clusters. | Narrows the pool to who your team knows. The EEOC warns word-of-mouth-only recruiting can discriminate. |
| LinkedIn and manual profile search | Professionals who maintain a public profile, active or not. | Most white-collar roles, and any search you want to hand-craft. | Slow per profile, and the top of every result page is the most contacted. |
| AI sourcing across profile databases | A wide index of public professional profiles, ranked against your brief. | Scarce skills, volume pipelines, small teams without a sourcer. | Cannot see private networks, your own past applicants or anything off the public record. |
| Niche communities | People who publish work: GitHub, specialist forums, Slack and Discord groups. | Engineering, design, security, research and other craft roles. | Membership is not permission. Pitch badly once and the community closes. |
| Events, meetups, alumni and boomerangs | People with a shared employer, school or subject. | Senior hires, regional hires, rebuilding a team you once had. | Slow, calendar-bound, and hard to scale to more than a few roles. |
| Job boards and resume databases | Active job seekers, and resume owners who left a profile behind. | Wide-pool roles where screening speed matters more than search. | Volume without fit. You carry the screening load, and passive people are absent. |
| Agencies and RPO partners | The agency's own network and sourcing team. | Roles you cannot staff internally, or a hiring spike with no headcount. | A placement fee agreed per contract, and the market knowledge leaves when they do. |
No channel is best in general. Senior and scarce roles lean on outbound search. Wide-pool roles lean on inbound plus fast screening.
What is a passive candidate?
Passive candidate Someone who fits a role, has not applied for it and is not job hunting. They are usually employed and reasonably content with where they are, but open to moving for better work, scope or pay.
The passive candidate meaning is a spectrum, not a switch. LinkedIn's 2013 writing on it ran from people quietly asking their network to people not considering a move at all. Someone 2 years into a role hears you differently from someone 2 months in.
Active vs passive candidates: what changes when you recruit each
Passive candidate sourcing is not active recruiting done harder. Recruiting passive candidates changes the message, the pace and the thing you are selling.
| Active candidates | Passive candidates | |
|---|---|---|
| How you find them | They come to you: applications, job boards, your careers page. | You find them: profile search, communities, referrals, past finalists. |
| What they know about you | They have read the job ad and probably looked you up. | Usually nothing. Your first message is the entire impression. |
| What they need from message 1 | Clarity on process, timeline and next steps. | A reason you wrote to them specifically, and a reason to be curious. |
| Pace | Fast. They are talking to other employers this month. | Slower. Weeks of thinking, often a conversation before any process. |
| What loses them | Silence, a long form, and a process with no visible end. | A pasted job description, mass mail, and pressure to apply before talking. |
| Signals to look for | Recent applications, an updated profile, a stated notice period. | Open to Work, which the member controls and many never set, plus long time in seat. |
Open to Work visibility is a member setting, and LinkedIn says it cannot guarantee the badge stays hidden from a current employer.
8 candidate sourcing techniques, including the creative ones
The creative sourcing strategies recruitment teams admire are mostly ordinary searches run where nobody else looks. These passive candidate sourcing techniques each take under 10 minutes to try.
Search LinkedIn with operators instead of a keyword blob.
LinkedIn requires AND, OR and NOT in uppercase, quotes for exact phrases and parentheses to group. Try: ("backend engineer" OR "software engineer") AND Go AND payments NOT recruiter
LinkedIn does not support wildcards such as an asterisk, and says plus and minus are not officially supported.
Reach public profiles through Google rather than the platform's own search.
Google supports site:, quoted exact match and a leading minus to exclude a word. Try: site:linkedin.com/in "backend engineer" "Go" "Berlin" -recruiter
You only ever see what is public, and the index lags. Treat it as a second net, not the main one.
Search people by what they build, not by what they wrote on a profile.
GitHub user search supports qualifiers such as type:user, location:, language:, followers: and repos:. Try: type:user location:berlin language:go followers:>50
A public profile is not consent to be emailed. Use a channel the person has published for work contact.
Start at the bottom of the results list and work upwards.
A tactic in LinkedIn's 2022 Talent Blog round-up: skip a few pages and see who shows up later. Everyone opens page 1, so those names are the most contacted.
Ranking is not fit. Read the profile before you decide the platform was wrong.
Search the misspellings, abbreviations and alternate job titles.
Strong people describe themselves in words your template never used. Search the title variants, the misspelled tool names and the regional job titles for the same work.
Keep a per-role list of variants. It is the fastest reusable asset a sourcer owns.
Clone the pattern of your best hire in this role family.
Write down the 4 things that made 1 strong hire strong, then search for that pattern. In LinkedIn Recruiter this is Similar Profiles. In The Cognitive, write that pattern into the brief.
Cloning a single profile narrows the pool. Clone the pattern, not the biography.
Re-contact the finalists you did not hire last time.
Mining candidates you did not hire is one of the tactics on LinkedIn's 2022 sourcing list. Open with what changed: the scope, the team, the pay band or the manager.
Say plainly why it ended last time. They remember, and pretending otherwise reads badly.
Map the companies that have the same problem you do.
List employers with your stack, your customer or your scale, then search by current employer and by ex-employer. Ex-employees of a company you admire are often easier to reach.
Check any non-solicit terms your company has agreed to before you target 1 employer heavily.
Set the bar without writing a Boolean string
An example: every person judged against the must-haves, each card saying why they matched.
Step 2 of the process. Every person is judged against the must-haves in your brief. Missing one drops a person below everyone who meets them, and nobody is removed, so a strong person missing a nice-to-have still reaches you.
How to engage passive candidates
A passive candidate owes you nothing, so the first message has exactly 1 job: earning a reply. Lead with why you wrote to them, then the work, then a small ask. Attracting passive candidates starts before the message too. When they look you up, a team page, published work and a clear stance on pay and location do the arguing for you.
There is one piece of first-party data worth planning around. LinkedIn's 2022 analysis of InMails found messages under 400 characters got a response rate 22 percent above its average, and individually sent messages ran roughly 15 percent above bulk sends. That is InMail, not email. Use it as a shape for passive candidate engagement, then measure your own replies per channel.
A passive candidate email template, with 2 follow-ups
Emailing passive candidates works when every bracket holds something only true of this person. If you cannot fill one honestly, do not send the message.
Subject: Your {{specific work}} and a {{role}} question
Hi {{firstName}},
I read {{specific thing: a talk, repo, project or post}} and the way you handled {{detail}} is the reason I am writing to you and not to a list.
I am hiring a {{role}} at {{company}}. The work is {{1 sentence on the problem they would own}}. It maps to what you did at your current team because {{1 honest link}}.
I know you are not looking. Would a 15 minute conversation be worth it, if only to compare notes on {{topic}}? If the timing is wrong, tell me and I will not follow up.
{{yourName}}
{{company}}, {{postal address}}
Reply "no thanks" and I will take you off my list.
FOLLOW-UP 1 (3 days later): Hi {{firstName}}, one detail I left out: {{new fact, such as team size, stack or pay range}}. Still happy to keep it to 15 minutes.
FOLLOW-UP 2 (4 days after that): Hi {{firstName}}, last note from me on the {{role}} role. If now is not the time, I would still value knowing what would make a move interesting for you later.
Contacting passive candidates: do and don't
Do
- Name the specific piece of work that made you write to this person
- Say the role, the company and the problem in 2 sentences
- Ask for a small next step, such as 15 minutes rather than an application
- Stop the sequence the moment they reply or opt out
Do not
- Pasting the job description into the first message
- Opening with your funding round, your awards or your growth rate
- Sending the same passive candidate outreach text to 200 people
- Following up with guilt: "just bumping this to the top of your inbox"
A follow-up sequence that stops when they reply
An example: a 3-step email sequence on Day 0, +3 and +4 that stops when the candidate replies.
On Sourcing Pro, Max, Team and Business, The Cognitive sends email and SMS sequences from platform mailboxes, with personalisation variables filled per person. A reply or opt-out on either channel stops both, and replies are sorted by intent. Contact details stay hidden until you choose to reveal them.
A diversity sourcing strategy that widens the pool and stays lawful
Diversity sourcing strategies work on where you look and how you describe the job. They never work on who you filter out.
- Audit which channels your last 10 hires actually came from
- Add 2 channels your team has never used, then measure them separately
- Try professional associations, community colleges, returner and veteran networks
- Stop relying on referrals alone to fill a role family
- Cut requirements that are habit: a degree, a year count, pedigree employers
- Check the job ad for wording that discourages people, such as "recent college graduates"
- Apply the same must-haves to everyone you screen
- Never search, filter or shortlist by a protected characteristic
What the EEOC says
The EEOC says it is illegal to recruit new employees "in a way that discriminates", and that "Title VII does not provide any 'diversity interest' exception". Widen your channels, keep criteria job-related, and take local legal advice. Rules differ outside the US.
Sourcing metrics worth tracking, by channel
Track all of these per channel and per role family. A number with no channel attached cannot change a decision.
| Metric | How to calculate it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Reply rate | Replies divided by people contacted. | Whether your message and your targeting are landing at all. |
| Interested rate | Positive replies divided by people contacted. | Whether the people replying are actually open to the role. |
| Sourced to screen | Screens booked divided by people contacted. | Whether your qualifying before contact was honest. |
| Source of hire | Hires grouped by the channel that first found them. | Where to spend next quarter, and what to stop doing. |
| Time to first qualified candidate | Days from intake to the first screen booked. | How fast the front of the funnel really moves. |
| Pool reuse | People contacted from earlier searches divided by total contacted. | Whether past sourcing work is compounding or being thrown away. |
Published reply-rate benchmarks rarely cite a source. Measure your own, per channel and per role family.
Turn the tactics into a talent sourcing strategy
A talent sourcing strategy is a decision made before the requisition opens, not a list of tactics you reach for once it is late. For each role family, write down which 2 or 3 channels you will use, who owns each one, and what you are choosing not to do. A recruitment sourcing strategy written down beats a sourcing strategy in recruitment that lives in someone's head.
Recruiting sourcing strategies age fast, so review one recruiting sourcing strategy per role family each quarter against the metrics above. Two habits keep talent sourcing strategies honest: give the hiring manager a decision rather than a dump of profiles, and when a search stalls, change 1 variable at a time. Software carries the profile search and the outreach. Referrals, communities and past applicants stay manual.
Before you hit send: the outreach hygiene checklist
Not legal advice. These items come from the FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide and GDPR Article 14. Ask your own counsel what applies to you.
- Sender name, reply-to address and subject line are all honest
- The message says who you are and why you are writing
- A valid postal address sits in the signature
- There is a plain way to opt out, honoured within 10 business days
- For EU or UK contacts, say where you got their data, within 1 month at the latest
- Let people object to your holding their data, and act on it
- Check local rules before texting a cold contact, and honour opt-outs
- Suppress everyone who said no, across every later sequence
Keep going
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Frequently asked questions
What is sourcing in recruitment?
Sourcing in recruitment is the proactive half of hiring: finding people who fit a role and contacting them yourself, instead of waiting for applications. Recruiting then carries whoever replies through screening, interviews and an offer. Senior and scarce-skill roles depend on sourcing, because the people who can do them are usually employed and not reading job ads.
How many candidates do you need to source to make a hire?
Work it backwards from your own funnel, not from a published benchmark. Take your reply rate, your screen-to-interview rate, your interview-to-offer rate and your offer acceptance, then multiply back from 1 hire. The answer differs by role and market, so measure each stage per channel and source again as soon as a stage stops producing.
How do you source passive candidates?
Find them by profile and by published work rather than by application: past finalists in your ATS, referrals, profile search, and the communities where they post. Look for timing signals such as a long stretch in the same seat. Then contact them on a channel they actually read, leading with the specific reason you chose them. Nothing about this is fast, which is why you source passive candidates for a few roles at a time.
What is a passive candidate?
A passive candidate is someone who fits a role, has not applied and is not job hunting, usually because they are employed and reasonably content. The passive candidate meaning is really a spectrum. Some people are quietly asking friends what else is out there, while others have not thought about moving at all, and the two need very different first messages.
How do you engage passive candidates?
Send one short message that says why you wrote to this person, what the work is, and what small next step you want. Follow up twice, each time with new information rather than a reminder, and stop the moment they reply. LinkedIn's 2022 analysis of InMails found messages under 400 characters drew a response rate 22 percent above its average, so brevity is worth the edit.
How to attract passive candidates before you ever message them?
Make the work visible in public. A team page that explains what people actually build, an engineering or practice blog, conference talks, and a clear stated policy on pay range and location all answer the questions a passive person asks after your message arrives. Referrals do the same job faster, because the referrer carries the context for you.
How to recruit a passive candidate once they reply?
Have a conversation before you start a process. Answer their questions, let them meet the hiring manager early, and do not make them fill in an application form to keep talking. How to recruit passive candidates comes down to moving at their pace and closing on the work, the scope and the people, because they already have a job that is fine.
How to source candidates on LinkedIn?
Use Boolean properly: LinkedIn requires AND, OR and NOT in uppercase, quotes for exact phrases and parentheses for grouping, and it does not support wildcards. Start deep in the results rather than on page 1, and read each profile to the bottom before you write. Treat the Open to Work badge as a partial signal, since members choose whether it shows at all.
How do you source candidates as a new recruiter?
Start with a proper intake on 1 role. Pick 2 channels, build a small first list, and write every message by hand until you know what earns replies. Review those replies with the hiring manager weekly and adjust the brief together. Depth on 1 role teaches you more in a fortnight than shallow searching across 5.
What is the difference between a sourcing strategy and sourcing techniques?
A strategy is the channel mix and the ownership per role family, decided before a requisition opens. Sourcing strategies for recruiters answer where you will look and what you will not do. Sourcing techniques for recruiters are how you run a search inside a channel: Boolean strings, X-ray queries, lookalike searches, silver medalists. Most teams write down the techniques and never the strategy.
What does passive candidate sourcing software do?
Sourcing first: it searches profile data from your brief, ranks and explains the matches, reveals verified contact details, and runs email and SMS sequences that stop on reply. The Cognitive does this across ~900M profiles, judges every person against the must-haves in your brief, and opens each card with a "Why this match" line traced to the profile. It does not replace referrals, communities or your own past applicants.
What are the best candidate sourcing strategies in recruitment process outsourcing?
The same process, with 2 differences. The brief has to be agreed with the client's hiring manager rather than assumed, so intake notes and the must-have list should be written down and confirmed. And the pool and channel metrics should be reported per client and per role family, so you can show which channels earned the placements rather than arguing about effort.
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