The challenge facing talent acquisition leaders centers around finding the right technology solution; one that drives AI recruiting transformation and adoption.

Suggested Read: Discover the right AI recruiting solution with this comprehensive guide

Overcoming Tech Integration and Adoption Obstacles

8 out of 10 HR leaders have difficulty with tech adoption yielding little to no return on their tech investment. At a time when maximizing ROI is critical to business success, there must be a better way. Fortunately, there is.

A dynamic integration that promises to revolutionize your direct sourcing capabilities – the collaboration between industry-leading applicant tracking system, Bullhorn, and the advanced AI-driven sourcing tool, Leoforce by Leoforce.

Unlike other AI solutions, Leoforce’s integration is supported by a dedicated client success team who do all the heavy lifting of integrating with Bullhorn in just weeks. Leoforce’s supportive client success team offers comprehensive, ongoing training and performance tracking to help you drive swift user adoption and maximize the value of your technology stack.

Boost Recruiter Efficiency Up to 5x with Bullhorn ATS Integration with Leoforce

Let’s dive into how you can unlock the full potential of your Bullhorn ATS.

Rediscover Ideal Candidates in Your Existing Talent Pools

Optimize the internal channel data you’ve already invested in with Bullhorn. Leoforce allows you to reconnect with and repurpose talent in your existing talent pools, substantially reducing costs associated with sourcing and engaging new candidates.

Optimize Recruiting Workflows with Auto Search and Match

Leoforce’s advanced search and match capabilities empower you to precisely identify and rediscover hidden gems in your existing talent database. Leverage the power of AI to refine your direct sourcing strategy and pinpoint candidates with the right skills and qualifications faster than ever before.

Consolidate Multi-Channel Sourcing

Boost the power of your Bullhorn software by seamlessly integrating with a centralized solution that combines your internal candidate data with the largest proprietary database of 850+ candidate profiles sourced from 70+ channels. Integrating with Leoforce allows you to capitalize on the strengths of both platforms, providing you with a cohesive and efficient workflow that increases recruiter productivity by up to 80%.

Reduce Recruiting Costs

By optimizing the value of your existing data and leveraging Leoforce’s capabilities, you can minimize both internal and third-party recruiting costs. Make the most of your investments with a recruiting strategy that saves your team valuable time, is cost-efficient and reduces your sourcing spend by up to 50%.

Increase Applicant Quality

Leoforce’s intuitive AI surpasses conventional resume keyword matching, enabling you to rediscover talent that other tools may miss. Leoforce considers hundreds of attributes and 7 multi-dimensional data points to predict the likelihood of a candidate’s success – going a step further to provide a detailed explanation for why they are an ideal fit. This ensures you not only identify the right candidates faster – but also empowers your team with data-driven insights for better hiring decisions.

Stay Connected and Nurture Your Existing Pool

Utilize Leoforce to create new talent communities within Bullhorn. Foster engagement by consistently nurturing relationships with candidates and building responsive talent communities tailored to the evolving needs of your organization.

Streamline Engagement to Boost the Candidate Experience

Powerful communication channels and targeted engagement strategies directly contribute to a higher response rate and streamline the recruitment process. Leoforce’s multichannel communication dashboard seamlessly integrates with Bullhorn, amplifying your reach with talk and text to email and chatbot options that allow you to engage with candidates across various channels. Streamline communication, enhance engagement, and build stronger candidate relationships directly from your Bullhorn interface.

Increase Recruiter Hires by up to 60% with the Powerful Combination of Leoforce and Bullhorn ATS

Integrating Leoforce’s AI-driven solutions with Bullhorn’s robust applicant tracking system represents a paradigm shift in direct sourcing capabilities. By capitalizing on existing data, fostering new talent communities, and embracing advanced AI features, recruiters can not only increase efficiency – they can also elevate the quality of their candidate pool. The Bullhorn and Leoforce integration is not just a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic move toward maximizing the true potential of your recruiting efforts.

Learn More about Leoforce’s AI recruiting platform or integrating your ATS with Leoforce.

The post Unlocking the Power of Direct Sourcing in Your Bullhorn ATS appeared first on Leoforce.

There are several factors driving the increasing popularity of Direct Sourcing in the recruiting ecosystem:

• The need for emerging or specialized skill sets
• Excessive costs from third-party staffing models
• Rising demand for improved diversity hiring
• Need for faster hiring and program agility
• Increasing desire for flexible talent pools

These are just a few of the reasons Direct Sourcing is growing as a hiring tool across the industry spectrum. During our June 14th webinar, our panel of industry experts tackled these questions and discussed why Direct Sourcing is important, what it seeks to accomplish, how to leverage the right AI recruiting tool to achieve your Direct Sourcing goals, and so much more.

Our Panelists

Taylor Ramchandani, Vice-President of Strategy, VectorVMS

With over 7 years of experience in the contingent workforce technology space, Taylor helps her teams build technology that helps clients manage their extended or contract workforce by making it easier to source and manage non-employee labor. She has extensive experience working with direct sourcing technologies and works with clients to add additional ways to source talent by incorporating a direct sourcing recruiting model into their talent acquisition strategy.

Bret Coin, Former SVP, TA, Okta

Bret is an industry leader with more than 25 years of software technology and talent acquisition experience working with notable companies including SAP, Intuit, and Cisco. His background also includes serving as Head of People for a fast-growing, public start-up, as well as founding and growing a successful RPO business focused on small to mid-sized tech firms.

Kelly Crissy Clark, Account Director, Bullhorn

Kelly recently joined Bullhorn with an extensive background in HR tech and talent acquisition. Her professional career includes serving in sales, operations, and account management leadership roles, with notable staffing firms such as Adecco, and Sunbelt Staffing. Kelly leverages her in-depth knowledge of the staffing industry with a passion for driving success through strategic process improvement to deliver exceptional solutions to a variety of HR challenges.

Wade Pierson, Chief Revenue Officer, Leoforce

As CRO, Wade provides comprehensive oversight and leadership for the Partnerships, Sales, Marketing, and Client Success teams at Leoforce. His background encompasses 20+ years of diverse experience across the talent acquisition industry spectrum, and includes broad, global expertise in the SaaS and talent acquisition technology space.

Deconstructing Direct Sourcing 2023

Moderator Taylor, Ramchandani began the webinar discussing what a Direct Sourcing recruiting model can do for your business when it’s done well. Referencing a study from LiveHire of 15,000 contingent hires, Taylor spoke to the benefits of proactive talent pooling via Direct Sourcing and shared the following statistics:

• 41% fewer applications to process per hire
• 24% improvement in submittal-to-hire ratios
• 30% reduction in shortlisted candidates withdrawing per hire
• 31% less time to submit

While the benefits of implementing a Direct Sourcing recruiting model are tangible, it does seem there are perceived challenges to adoption. When asked what their main challenges or limitations are to implementing Direct Sourcing, webinar participants responded with:

• 57% – limited access to niche or specialized talent pools
• 23% – higher initial investment in technology and tools
• 57% – Time-consuming sourcing and screening processes
• 20% – Internal resistance or lack of buy-in from stakeholders
• 17% – Adoption by the recruiting teams
• 31% – The process can be unpredictable

The panelists went on to discuss what Direct Sourcing in recruiting means to them individually, with Taylor offering this response:

“For me personally, coming from a contingent perspective, when I think about direct sourcing, I think about it as candidates self-selecting to be considered for different roles. So, when we look at Direct Sourcing at VectorVMS, we look at it as adding an additional sourcing channel beyond traditional sourcing. You’re sending your job through a system to your suppliers, but also putting them where candidates are looking for open positions on job boards, career sites, opening up that additional channel where talent can self-select or self-identify into your talent pools as well as your contingent positions.”

Wade views Direct Sourcing as a proactive strategy versus a reactive strategy

“To me it’s really a proactive strategy versus a reactive strategy. You’re reaching out to passive group of people in a variety forms and engaging them and creating a high-level understanding for them of the culture of your company, the nature of the roles, what you’re trying to accomplish, and how you’re trying to do it. It’s a proactive versus reactive strategy to identify, engage, and build ongoing relationships with candidates.”

In a proactive Direct Sourcing model, companies are building a curated talent pool of candidate resources that can be used over and over again.

Kelly emphasizes the connection between Direct Sourcing and employer branding

“It’s a creative, different approach to contingent staffing using a different method or style, and the difference being you’re really leveraging the brand name. After all, your marketing team has spent so much time and effort, and money building a brand name the company is proud of, so why not use it? I think it serves as a better reminder that the brand name is so important but it’s also using what all that time and energy you’ve already put into it to proactively reach out to candidates. It also makes candidates feel like they have more of a say in the types of jobs and the companies they want to work for, which has been a big trend we’ve been seeing for the past few years.”

Not only is leveraging your employer brand a key component to an effective Direct Sourcing program, it has the added benefit of increasing brand exposure and enhancing your brand reputation with candidates who are happy to spread the word about your organization being a great place to work.

Brett shares the corporate perspective on Direct Sourcing in recruiting

“One of the things I like about the corporate space when it comes to direct sourcing is that you can have a team of direct sourcers on the full-time recruiting team to do that passive outreach, get that engagement and start to build talent pools. And then on the contingent side, as you scale your contingent workforce program, often you’re working with a managed service provider, or somebody who’s handling a lot of that work, and they’re putting your contingent roles out to search. When you start taking some of that search on yourself internally and direct sourcing candidates for contingent roles, as a leader, I like that because we can really get our costs down.

How does Direct Sourcing help keep costs down?

An effective Direct Sourcing program can definitely reduce costs associated with outsourcing your talent search to third-party vendors. But another way a successful Direct Sourcing program can decrease overall costs lies in the curation of your talent pool. A talent pool comprised of pre-vetted candidates who are already engaged with your company brand. The result is a robust pool of ready-to-work candidates with the power to decrease or even eliminate employee turnover – which can cost a company an average of 1.5 to 2 times an employee’s salary.

Is an AI-powered sourcing tool the key to a successful Direct Sourcing program?

All of our panelists agree that defining your goals and building an effective roadmap to launching a successful Direct Sourcing program starts with the right technology tool. But all AI-powered sourcing platforms are not created equally. If you’re ready to maximize ROI and capitalize on your own candidate resources, arm yourself with Leoforce – the award-winning, AI-powered sourcing tool with Talent Intelligence that scores and ranks talent for compatibility, simultaneously sourcing candidates from 70+ channels for 90% of jobs in 5 minutes or less, reducing candidate review and shortlisting time by 50%. Book your demo of Leoforce today and join the industry leading companies taking recruiting to the next level!

To watch the full webinar, click here!

The post Direct Sourcing in Recruiting: Insights from the Webinar appeared first on Leoforce.

One solution that is gaining traction across the business spectrum is Direct Sourcing. In fact, in a survey conducted by Staffing Industry Analysts, (SIA) 60% of businesses surveyed said they plan to make Direct Sourcing a priority in the next few years to meet their workforce demands.

Incorporating Direct Sourcing into your recruiting toolbox can give you an edge over the competition by helping you build a more agile, cost-effective, and scalable workforce. But before we explore the benefits, let’s discuss what Direct Sourcing is and how it works.

What is direct sourcing in recruiting?

Sometimes referred to as self-sourcing, Direct Sourcing in recruiting is precisely what it sounds like – the process of a business engaging and sourcing talent directly, by strategically leveraging their employer brand and essentially capitalizing on their own network of candidate resources (i.e., silver medalists, former employees, referral programs, interns, freelancers, retirees), to create a centralized pool of highly curated, on-demand talent.

One critical benefit of Direct Sourcing is the ability to craft a pre-qualified pool of candidates to suit the specific needs of your business in terms of culture, skills, diversity goals and overall compatibility.

The history of direct sourcing

Historically, Direct Sourcing in recruiting was primarily focused on leveraging an employer’s brand to cultivate and nurture a talent pool of contract labor or contingent workers curated from a variety of internal and external sources. This was one of the main differences between Direct Sourcing and traditional recruiting in years past, and can be attributed in part, to the rise of the gig (freelancer) economy in recent years.

Currently, there are an estimated 70+ million freelance, or contingent workers in the U.S. alone; a number that is expected to rise to more than 90 million by 2028. Factor in a recent global survey in which 90% of corporate leaders said they use freelancers, also stating they would be increasing their reliance on them in the future, and it’s easy to see why so many organizations started adding Direct Sourcing to their talent acquisition strategies.

In a Direct Sourcing model, the talent acquisition team is typically internal, and workers in these highly curated talent pools are often people who showed interest in working for the company in the past but were not selected but remained relevant candidates to be considered for future roles. These candidates can be engaged, and re-engaged by a company, essentially becoming a valuable, and also – reusable resource. On the flip side, traditional recruiting methods are typically geared towards finding full-time employees to fill long-term positions and often include third-party recruiters and staffing agencies.

Who uses direct sourcing and why?

Staffing agencies, managed service providers (MSP), and vendor management systems (VMS), have been at the forefront of Direct Sourcing since its inception and have been an integral part of the evolution into more mainstream talent acquisition strategies. However, even though the Direct Sourcing model has its’ origin in the world of the contract labor or contingent workforce, the way it is used today and by whom, has changed a great deal. There are companies who outsource their entire Direct Sourcing

program to an external Managed Direct Sourcing provider (MDS), some who apply a hybrid approach, and still others who take it all in-house. Being able to better manage and tailor your workforce is likely why more and more enterprises are leaning into the Direct Sourcing model to address their staffing needs.

Enterprise case for direct sourcing

The talent acquisition challenges faced by businesses today are virtually unparalleled, with more than 10.1 million jobs in the U.S. remaining unfilled. As enterprises both large and small, struggle to meet internal staffing needs from a skills perspective, they must simultaneously find a way to satisfy the broad expectations of today’s candidates. And there is the classic supply and demand issue, with the overwhelming demand for qualified workers far exceeding the available supply. This is where direct sourcing can help in a myriad of ways.

How does direct sourcing benefit enterprises?

Proprietary pool of curated talent

Enterprises utilizing a traditional recruiting approach where third-party staffing agencies or external recruiters are doing the sourcing, are essentially sharing talent with any other companies a particular agency works with. With Direct Sourcing, your talent pool is a proprietary pool of candidates curated from your own sources, who are very likely pre-vetted and also proven candidate resources.

Leverage your company brand

Enterprises can leverage the power of their own company brand to attract more candidates from diverse sources to build a thriving pool of talent, whereas a staffing agency or external recruiter often relies solely on the job description to attract candidates.

Decrease costs

One of the more obvious benefits of Direct Sourcing comes from the ability to bypass traditional staffing suppliers with high markups. The Direct Sourcing markup is typically much lower – in the 10% – 15% range, with companies saving approximately $14,000 per contingent worker annually. But there are also savings associated with the ability to manage compliance processes more efficiently by taking your recruiting in-house. Savings that can ultimately help cover the costs of launching a Direct Sourcing initiative.

Boost skill levels

The skills gap in today’s workforce can be another hurdle for businesses trying to source talent with emerging or specialized skills. If your only options are the full-time employees on your payroll or pay the high cost of recruiting new talent, you’re always going to be limited by the skills they possess. Direct Sourcing through a curated pool of candidates means access to a broader set of skills as your talent pool grows.

Capitalize on talent you’ve already invested in

One of the fundamental elements of a direct sourcing program involves tapping into your own candidate resources, past, present and future to curate your talent pool.

In doing so, you are able to capitalize on candidates you’ve already invested time and training on.

Hiring agility, enhanced productivity

Being able to quickly engage qualified talent from a pool of known, vetted candidates who can hit the ground running, not only speeds up the hiring process – it drives productivity, increases efficiency, and enhances your bottom line.

Reduce employee turnover

There’s no question some employee turnover is inevitable. But it can cost companies an estimated 1.5 to 2 times of an employee’s salary to lose an employee. This is not the case in a Direct Sourcing model. Having a robust pool of ready-to-work candidates can mitigate and even eliminate the issue of employee turnover.

Scale your workforce quickly

With a database of pre-qualified talent, expanding your workforce when you need to, is faster and easier. Conversely, if market conditions change – you can scale it back down just as quickly.

What is the most important element for a successful direct sourcing program?

There are certainly a multitude of benefits to be gained by establishing a Direct Sourcing program. But to build it effectively and reap those benefits, it’s essential to understand that one of the most powerful aspects of talent acquisition today is rooted in constantly evolving technology and choosing your Direct Sourcing technology wisely. Here are some must-haves for an effective Direct Sourcing technology platform.

AI – driven advanced skills matching

When it comes to AI technology, it’s safe to say that not all platforms are created equal. To maximize your ability to build a truly curated talent pool filled with candidates most likely to excel in the jobs you are looking to fill, it’s essential to invest in AI technology that goes beyond simple skills matching.

The Leoforce recruitment platform takes AI to a whole new level with Artificial Intuition. Uniquely focused on delivering the most compatible candidates and the best long-term outcomes, the Artificial Intuition in Leoforce scores talent against 300+ attributes most AI tools ignore and doesn’t just deliver candidates. Leoforce delivers the candidates most likely to excel in the role, thus reducing time-to-hire and minimizing employee turnover.

Advanced market intelligence capability

Transforming key market insights into actionable strategies is a critical step to building a successful roadmap for your Direct Sourcing strategy. By leveraging the advanced market intelligence capabilities in Leoforce, enables businesses to forecast, strategize and develop a more comprehensive, effective Direct Sourcing plan that meets the specific needs of their business in a given market.

Automated and customizable workflows

Increasing recruiter efficiency by automating repetitive tasks and customizing workflows are essential for an effective Direct Sourcing tool. The automation and customization capabilities within Leoforce streamline the recruiting process, allowing you to focus on more important tasks.

Create custom talent segments

The ability to create tailored talent segments by job title, industry, geographical location, etc., can fast track your sourcing efforts. The advanced market intelligence in Leoforce provides key insights to help you segment, engage and monetize your existing and growing talent communities.

Superior candidate experience

An unparalleled candidate experience and personalized communication is more important than ever to find and retain the right talent. The multichannel candidate communication dashboard in Leoforce makes it easy to connect, engage and nurture candidates through the platform’s talk, text, email and chatbot functions.

Easy integration into your tech stack

Whatever stage your business is at from a tech perspective, you’re going to want a platform that not only plays well with your existing tech stack but can be seamlessly integrated without disruption. Leoforce is built on an open API platform allowing for smooth integration into your existing applicant tracking system (ATS) and vendor management system (VMS). Maintaining your existing workflows while you simultaneously speed up sourcing and improve candidate quality is a win-win for everyone.

It’s safe to say the Direct Sourcing “movement,” is here to stay for the foreseeable future. But that doesn’t mean every business will apply it in the same fashion to their talent acquisition playbook. The benefits are plentiful but the real beauty of the Direct Sourcing model of recruitment, is the flexibility it can bring to your workforce planning at a time when gaining an edge over the competition is harder than ever.

Whatever your short or long-term talent acquisition goals are, arming your business with the right tools is a step in the right direction. With next level AI guiding the way, Leoforce is the platform that can help you achieve them

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