How to source candidates for a role, start to shortlist

Sourcing candidates is the work between a hiring manager's brief and a shortlist they'll actually interview: splitting the brief into must-haves and nice-to-haves, searching five to eight angles across both active and passive channels, reading each profile for evidence rather than keyword matches, and packaging three to five candidates with a reason attached to each. On a normal desk, that run takes a working day for a role with a reasonable talent pool, and most of it is spent reading, not searching.

What sourcing candidates means before anyone searches

Typing a job title into a search bar is the smallest part of the job. Sourcing candidates is the full run: clarify the brief, decide which channels to work, build the search angles, read what comes back against the must-haves, and hand over a shortlist the client can act on without a second round of questions.

Five steps make up that run, and the rest of this article walks through each one in order: splitting the brief, choosing active versus passive channels, building enough search angles, reading profiles for evidence, and packaging the shortlist. Skip any one of them and the shortlist either arrives too thin or arrives full of near misses.

Split the brief into must-haves and nice-to-haves first

Most briefs arrive vague because the hiring manager is thinking out loud, not writing a spec. "Experienced site manager, good with subbies, ideally knows Procore" usually means one or two things are actually non-negotiable and the rest is preference dressed up as requirement.

Pull out the two or three must-haves before anything else: the ticket or licence that's legally required, the years in a specific environment (residential versus commercial, acute versus aged care), the system the team already runs on. Everything else, including the software preference above, is a nice-to-have that can tip a decision between two otherwise equal candidates but shouldn't rule anyone out.

This split decides every search term you type and every rejection you make for the rest of the day. Get it wrong and you'll either reject someone solid for lacking Procore experience they could pick up in a week, or send through someone who's never run a commercial site because they ticked every keyword.

Active and passive sourcing, and why a desk needs both

Active sourcing works people who are already looking: applicants against your current ads, candidates who've applied to roles like this one before, your own database from past campaigns. It's fast because the interest is already there.

Passive sourcing is reaching people who aren't applying anywhere, usually through a direct approach on a professional network or a warm referral from someone already in your network. They're often the stronger hire, because the person doing well in their current role rarely has a reason to go looking, and they're also the hardest to find and the slowest to convert.

A desk that only works applicants sees a shrinking slice of the market, mostly people between jobs or unhappy enough to apply cold. A desk that only does passive outreach burns hours on people who were never going anywhere. Most roles need both run in parallel from the first morning, not applicants chased first and a passive approach tried only when that list runs dry.

Where the first names actually come from

On a working desk, the first names for any new role come from four places, roughly in this order of speed: your own database from past roles in the same sector, a referral from whoever you just placed into a similar position, a direct search on a professional network for the job title and location, and whoever applies to the live ad once it's up.

Each one runs dry fast on its own. A database search for a payroll officer in a regional city might return four names, most of them already placed or no longer looking. A single search angle on a professional network returns a page of similar titles, half of them not actually doing the job you're hiring for. That's why a second and third search angle, not a second channel, is usually what finds the next ten names.

How many search angles a role actually needs

A role usually needs five to eight distinct search angles before the pool is covered, not one perfect search string. That means the formal job title ("Registered Nurse"), the plain-language version people actually search and write on their own profile ("RN", "nurse"), one or two adjacent titles that cover the same work under a different name (clinical nurse, nurse unit manager for a more senior variant), and the industry words someone in that job would use to describe themselves rather than the words in the job ad (aged care, acute, theatre, triage).

A search for "registered nurse" alone misses the person who titles themselves "RN, ICU" and the one who just writes "nursing" under experience. Running the plain-language and the industry-word versions alongside the formal title is what turns four names into fifteen on the same search.

Reading a profile for evidence, not keywords

The actual skill in sourcing candidates isn't finding profiles, it's reading them properly once found. A keyword match tells you the word appears somewhere on the page. Evidence tells you the person has actually done the thing.

Take a must-have of "managed a team of ten or more." A keyword search for "team management" returns a site supervisor who oversaw ten subcontractors for six weeks on one job and a construction manager who's run crews of fifteen for four years straight. Both match the keyword. Only one matches the must-have, and the only way to tell is reading the actual role history, not the skills list at the top of the profile.

That's the step that separates a shortlist worth sending from one that gets three callbacks of "this isn't what I asked for."

What a shortlist owes the client

Five candidates with evidence against every must-have beat fifteen with a covering email and a guess. A hiring manager interviewing off a padded list learns that fast, and the next brief comes with less trust and more detail to compensate, which costs you time on every future search.

Three to five names is usually the right size: enough for a real choice, not so many the client has to do your filtering for you. Each candidate needs one line before it goes out, not a full profile rewrite: why this person against this specific brief, in the client's own terms. "Ran a 40-bed ward through two accreditation audits" does more work than "strong healthcare background."

Where the hours actually go on a normal desk

For one role with a workable talent pool, a rough breakdown on a busy desk looks like this: fifteen minutes splitting the brief, thirty to forty minutes building and running five to eight search angles, and then two to four hours reading profiles against the must-haves before a shortlist comes together. Packaging the final shortlist, writing the one-liner for each name, takes another twenty minutes.

Reading dominates the day, not searching. That's the part worth changing if the day is too long, not the number of channels worked or the cleverness of the search string.

Sourcing candidates with Rectask: the search plan and the read, done once

The method for sourcing candidates doesn't change with any of this. What changes is how much of the reading gets done before a recruiter opens a single profile. See credits and pricing for how that sits against the plans.

Common questions

What is passive candidate sourcing?

Working people who aren't putting their hand up anywhere, through a direct approach on a professional network or a warm referral. They're harder to reach than an applicant, but often worth it because the strongest person for the brief is usually busy doing a good job somewhere else.

What are the main types of sourcing in recruitment?

Active sourcing works the people already looking, your ads, your database, people who've applied before. Passive sourcing is a direct approach or a referral to someone who isn't looking at all. A desk that works only one sees half the market.

How many candidates should go on a shortlist?

Three to five, as a rule of thumb, so the client has a genuinely short list to choose between rather than a pile to sort through themselves. More than that and the checking behind each name usually gets thinner, not better.

Why does sourcing take so long if the searches are quick?

The search itself takes minutes. Checking each result against the must-haves is what eats the hours, and it's usually the step that gets cut short when a desk is flat out.

The slow part was never finding names, it was checking each one against the brief. If that's the hour you want back this week, why Rectask next to the tools you already use and see what it's worth to your desk are the two pages worth a look before the next brief lands.