How to Source Candidates

To source candidates you write a precise brief, search where the people you want already are - talent profiles, your own past applicants, referrals, communities - reveal a working contact detail, then write to each person about their situation rather than about your job ad. The Cognitive automates the search half of that loop: its Sourcing Scout reads a plain-English brief, judges each profile against the whole brief instead of a keyword, and returns matches at 1 credit per candidate.

How to source candidates, step by step

Write the brief first: the 3 or 4 things that actually disqualify someone, the level, and the market. A vague brief returns a vague list, whoever runs the search.
Search with the brief, not with keywords: 'senior backend engineer, Go or Rust, fintech, US timezones' is a brief; 'Go' is a keyword that returns everyone who ever typed it.
Read the match reason before the resume - on The Cognitive that is the 'Why them?' deep read, which says which part of the profile answered which part of the brief.
Reveal contact details only for people you will genuinely write to: 5 credits for a verified email, 10 for a direct phone number, charged only on a successful reveal.
Write about them, not about you. One specific reason you approached this person outperforms any template, and it is the only part of sourcing that cannot be borrowed.
Sequence the follow-ups and stop on reply. The follow-up is the step that silently gets dropped when a human owns it, and it is where the replies the first message did not produce arrive.
Keep everyone you found. The Cognitive holds a durable pool per role - 'Everyone found for this role' - so the next search starts from what the last one surfaced rather than from an empty box.

Sourcing channels compared

Channel	Best at	What it costs you	Where it fails
Talent-profile search (AI or Boolean)	Reach - finding people who never applied, at any seniority	Credits or a seat, plus the time to write to each person	Produces nothing until you have a contact detail that resolves
Your own ATS and past applicants	Speed - silver medallists already know you and your process	Little beyond the query itself	A small pool that ages: last year's runners-up have moved on
Referrals	Conversion - the highest reply and close rate per contact	A bonus, plus your team's attention	Does not scale, and narrows the pool to who your team already knows
Communities and events (GitHub, Slack, meetups)	Credibility with specialists who ignore recruiter mail	Sustained presence - months, not a campaign	Too slow for a role you need filled this quarter
Job ads and inbound	Volume, cheaply, for roles with a wide pool	Ad spend plus the screening load it creates	Selects for people who are looking, not people who are best
Agencies	Coverage of a market where you have no network at all	Typically 20-25% of first-year salary per placement	The market map and the relationship stay with the agency

There is no single best channel, only a best channel for the role in front of you. Senior and scarce-skill roles are won on outbound search; high-volume roles are won on inbound plus fast evaluation; the two failures to avoid are running one channel for every role and running a channel you cannot sustain.

The overnight version of the same loop

Sourcing is a loop, not a task, and it decays because nobody re-runs it. On The Cognitive, overnight scouting re-scans an open role while nobody is logged in: 'While you were away' reports what it found, the durable role pool keeps everyone the role has ever surfaced, and taste memory tunes the ranking toward the kind of profile you actually shortlist. You start the morning on a shortlist rather than on an empty search box.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is sourcing in recruitment?

Sourcing in recruitment is the proactive half of hiring: identifying people who fit a role and approaching them directly, rather than waiting for applications. Recruiting then carries whoever responds through screening, interviews and an offer. Sourcing is what fills senior and scarce-skill roles, because the people who can do them are usually employed and not reading job ads.

How do you source passive candidates?

Find them by profile rather than by application, reach them on a personal channel they actually read, and lead with the specific reason you approached them. The Cognitive covers all 3 steps: search across ~900M profiles, a verified personal email at 5 credits or a direct phone number at 10, and sequences with AI voice calls that fall back to your team when nobody picks up.

How many candidates do you need to source to make a hire?

Work it backwards from your own funnel rather than from a published benchmark: take your reply rate, your interview-to-hire ratio and your offer-acceptance rate, and multiply. The number is role-specific and market-specific, which is why the useful discipline is measuring your own conversion at each step and re-sourcing the moment a stage stops producing.

How to Source Candidates