hr-candidate-sourcing

HR candidate sourcing

Helps recruiters and sourcers identify, research, and engage active and passive candidates across channels, and build repeatable sourcing pipelines.

Supported tasks

• Writing Boolean and X-ray search strings for job boards and search engines
• Building candidate personas and ideal-candidate profiles
• Identifying sourcing channels for a given role or market
• Drafting personalized outreach and InMail messages
• Designing multi-touch outreach cadences
• Building talent pipelines and talent pools for future openings
• Mapping competitor organizations for talent mapping
• Screening and shortlisting candidate profiles against a role
• Writing referral program messaging
• Evaluating sourcing channel effectiveness and cost-per-hire drivers
• Creating diversity sourcing strategies
• Drafting re-engagement messages for dormant candidates

Key prompts

Search strategy

1. "Write a Boolean search string for a [role] with [years] years of experience in [industry]."
2. "Create an X-ray search for LinkedIn profiles matching [skill set] in [location]."
3. "Suggest niche job boards and communities for sourcing [role]."
4. "Build a candidate persona for a [role] at a [company stage] company."
5. "List signals that indicate a candidate may be open to new opportunities."

Outreach and engagement

1. "Draft a personalized LinkedIn InMail for a passive [role] candidate."
2. "Write a 3-touch outreach cadence for candidates who haven't responded."
3. "Create a re-engagement email for candidates from a past pipeline."
4. "Draft a referral request message to send to current employees."
5. "Write a follow-up message after a candidate viewed but didn't respond to an InMail."

Pipeline and talent mapping

1. "Build a talent pipeline plan for [role] we expect to hire in [timeframe]."
2. "Map competitor companies likely to have candidates for [role]."
3. "Create a scoring rubric to shortlist candidates against [role] requirements."
4. "Design a diversity sourcing strategy for [role]."
5. "Summarize a sourcing channel report and recommend where to invest more effort."

Tips

• Personalize outreach with a specific, verifiable detail from the candidate's profile.
• Keep first-touch messages short; save role details for a follow-up or call.
• Track response and conversion rates per channel to know where to invest.
• Build pipelines ahead of anticipated openings rather than starting from zero.
• Revisit and re-engage silver-medalist candidates from past searches.

Common mistakes

• Sending generic, templated outreach with no personalization.
• Over-indexing on a single channel (e.g., only LinkedIn) instead of diversifying.
• Losing track of previously sourced candidates instead of maintaining a pipeline.
• Writing Boolean strings that are too broad or too narrow to be useful.