Source smarter: 5 sourcing tools to tailor your search to the role

How to choose the right tool

Sourcing to find the right candidates is an essential part of recruiting, especially in competitive industries. But it’s often time consuming and tedious, which isn’t great when you want to fill roles quickly. The good news is that taking advantage of sourcing tools can make your search more effective and less stressful. 

When it comes to choosing the right tool, you have to ask yourself what features are the most important for your needs. There’s no single perfect tool – different candidates are active on different platforms so it’s important to know where to look. Meeting candidates where they’re at helps you to find the best talent. 

To get you started, we’ve compiled a list of recruitment sourcing tools based on what type of candidate you’re sourcing for.

Best tool for sourcing students & recent grads: Handshake

Handshake is an early talent recruitment platform that partners with universities and has a database of over 12 million students and alumni.

Notable features: 

• Customizable filters based on major, year of graduation, skills, and student groups 
• Can track results and analytics from job board postings
• Offers different ways of connecting with candidates: coffee chats, career fairs, info events
• Lets you personalize each message that you send to students
• Company profiles can feature employee testimonials and media content to help you share your employer brand

Best tool for sourcing in healthcare: CareerVitals

CareerVitals is a job board that’s completely devoted to healthcare hiring and allows employers to post jobs and manage candidates.

Notable features: 

• Searchable resume database that lets you input keywords, job titles, skills, and location 
• Social network integration that makes job postings easily shareable on other platforms
• Candidate management platform that makes it easier to track and organize talent pools 
• Flexible pricing options based on how many job postings you need

Best tool for sourcing in hospitality: HCareers

HCareers is a job board that specializes in the hospitality industry and offers talent acquisition software for employers.

Notable features: 

• Resume database that allows filters based on location, skills, experience, past job titles, and spoken languages
• Employer branding is designed for hospitality – includes media gallery, property description, employee profiles, culture highlights  
• Scoring algorithm that uses AI to match candidates with employers based on skills, culture, and salary expectations 
• Pricing is per job post

Best tool for sourcing designers: Behance

Behance is a popular portfolio platform for designers to showcase their work and connect with other creatives and employers. 

Notable features:

• Searchable filters for design tools, location, education, and many design fields like UI/UX, graphic design, branding
• Design profiles have sections on work experience, past projects, and references 
• Allows job postings for full-time, freelance, and internships roles and has an analytics dashboard 
• More suited for larger companies because pricing for single job listings are expensive compared to most job boards

Best tool for sourcing at startups: Wellfound (formerly Angellist)

Wellfound is a startup community that includes a database of 8 million candidates who are specifically interested in startups 

Notable features:

• Includes unique candidate details such as job search status, time zones, salary expectations, and remote work preferences 
• Allows users to search for active and passive candidates 
• Users can upgrade to Wellfound Curated which sends you biweekly tailored candidate lists provided by their in-house sourcing team
• US-based and focuses on roles in engineering, design, product, and sales