The only right answer to the question “Which talent sourcing tool is best for my business?” is “It depends.” Annoying, but true. It takes time and tantrums to sift through the dozens of talent sourcing tools on the market and identify which combination might actually solve your sourcing problem for good.
To save you some headspace and help you decide, here’s our take on noteworthy talent sourcing options. (The title promises 19, but that’s just where we stopped counting – we’ve included a lot more solutions for you to explore!) Our guide covers some big hitters in the talent sourcing industry and some nifty little tools we think will lighten your workload and brighten your day. Happy sourcing!
To Be Upfront….
Visage is a talent sourcing platform. We’re proud of our Visage platform and our global sourcing team. Our clients love us. But we have an agenda – we want you to try us out. But that doesn’t mean we’re not impressed with other talent sourcing solutions. In fact, our own sourcing community uses them, and we constantly try out new tools on a continual basis – so we’re happy to give kudos where it’s deserved.
The State of the Market
The market is big, and getting bigger every day. It’s also extremely fluid, with immense overlap between sourcing, engaging, hiring, and onboarding tools. Some sourcing tools are single-use, whereas others are incorporated into larger platforms that cover the entire hiring cycle.
Types of Sourcing Tools
There’s an important distinction to be made between candidate databases and proactive sourcing tools. Candidate databases like X, LinkedIn, GitHub, or more granular databases, such as conference attendee lists, are talent sourcing tools – they contain the identities of your target candidates.
You’re probably already using social media like LinkedIn, X, and Facebook for sourcing talent, which can be useful.
Social platforms offer a cost-effective channel and an impressively wide reach that’s chock full of engageable passive candidates. They can also help you develop an attractive brand promise. But you must also consider the quantity vs. quality aspect.
Popular collaboration tools, like Slack and Discord, also host recruiting and interest communities to dip into and expand your sourcing.
| Candidate Databases: Some Examples | ||
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| Job Boards & Resume Databases | Specialist Databases | Associations & Networks |
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Use more dynamic, proactive sourcing tools to mine, match, engage, and all the other recruitment-adjacent activities to maintain a healthy talent pipeline. Here are some examples of proactive sourcing tools:
- Job ad posting tools across multiple boards like Manatal.
- Address finders like Kendo, SalesQL, and SignalHire, useful for hunting down candidate contact details across various databases. Check out our other favorites, too.
- Internet searches using Google X-Ray search special operators or Recruit’Em Boolean builder for X-Ray searchers across social media.
- Browser-related Boolean builders, such as Bool, available as a Chrome extension.
- Candidate outreach tools like Lemlist.
- Email validation tools like Bouncer.
- Applicant Tracking and Engagement Software, such as RecruitCRM and Zoho Recruit, which contain sourcing features.
Top Talent Sourcing Tools for 2024
Let’s take a deeper dive into five popular talent sourcing tools:
1. Visage (Spoiler alert: it’s us)
Visage is a talent sourcing and candidate engagement platform that combines AI’s efficiencies with the power of human connection. What sets Visage apart is our global community of 4,000 talent acquisition specialists in 65 countries. Each of them is trained to deliver best-fit candidate leads ready for clients to review in 24 hours.
We do this by using several of the tools mentioned in this post. For teams low on resources or overwhelmed by tool options, the Visage platform acts as a tech stack consolidator.
What’s special about Visage?
Visage is strong for clients with DEI targets: diversity is built in with certified diversity sourcers, and it’s especially known for sourcing for life sciences, healthcare, tech, and finance. Visage’s customizable engagement templates bring 4x more interested leads than LinkedIn Inmail.
Key features:
- Fast, global sourcing
- One-click candidate outreach, with personalizable templates
- Data-driven candidate matching
- Predictive analysis for accurate resource planning
- Robust analytics and reporting
- Collaborative workstream
- Easy to use
- Flexible pricing
- Integrates with all key ATS (or any other that has an open API)
2. LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn Recruiter is every talent sourcer’s go-to platform and it’s designed for hiring from the massive global LinkedIn membership. It’s fairly easy to use, with useful candidate engagement tools such as InMail, personalized touchpoints and AI-assisted messaging.
On the downside, everyone else is using LinkedIn Recruiter, too, which means there’s tough competition for the best candidates. Pricing can be a barrier for smaller organizations. Some talent sourcers prefer LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
What’s special about LinkedIn Recruiter?
LinkedIn is the standard, accepted and trusted membership community for professionals anywhere in the world, and, of course, used widely by candidates for job-seeking, too. Love it or hate it, it’s a solid and trustworthy platform that’s optimized for talent sourcers.
Key features:
- Global reach: LinkedIn’s network contains around 1 billion professionals
- Easy to use
- Good candidate engagement features
- Diversity tools to close gender gaps
- Multi-user dashboard
- 28+ integrations
3. Gem
Gem is an all-in-one recruiting platform that aims to “make recruiting more efficient, but transform how companies grow,” and its own growth in the last few years reflects its ambition. The passive candidate capabilities are robust, and clever two-way ATS integration means a less buggy funnel. On the downside, some users feel the dashboard isn’t intuitive enough.
What’s special about Gem?
Gem has managed to herd all the cats successfully by offering a unified system that consolidates customer tech stacks and ATS into a CRM. The sourcing tools are pretty good, and we also liked Gem’s automated two-way syncing that refreshes passive candidate profiles to keep them up-to-date for the next engagement. The data analytics are top-notch.
Key features
- All candidates viewable under a single pane of glass
- Strong diversity tools
- Automated candidate engagement
- Integrates with 20+ sourcing channels
- Advances filters & Boolean search for fast sifting
- Free for startups
4. Findem
Findem is a consolidated talent acquisition and management platform for “multi-channel sourcing, candidate rediscovery, CRM, market intelligence, and talent analytics.” At No. 8 for product innovation on Fortune’s America’s Most Innovative Companies for 2024, Findem is rising to new heights, and for good reason.
“It’s a tremendously powerful validation to be included on this list. Innovation is embedded into our company’s DNA – whether it’s developing a platform that pushes the boundaries in the talent space or developing a culture that celebrates everyone’s unique contributions, we’re always keeping innovation at the forefront,” said Findem CEO Hari Kolam.
What’s special about Findem?
Findem’s talent acquisition and management is founded on “3D data”: a heady blend of 1.6 trillion data points and client ATS data, turned into always-updating talent trends and multi-dimensional “attributes” for clients to search by.
Key features:
- Market intelligence alongside innovative data collation and analysis.
- Prioritizes highest-performing talent acquisition channels.
- Precision search.
- Responsible AI: personal data is never shared with public large language models.
- Ability to build DEI pipelines.
5. SquarePeg
SquarePeg is an end-to-end recruitment platform with an eye on passive and diverse candidates as well as full functionality for sourcing active ones. Its templates and triggers drive automated messaging that makes managing communication with candidates fast and easy. Pricing is competitive.
What’s special about Squarepeg?
We liked the at-a-glance candidate comparison tool and the simple easy-on-the-eye user interface.
Key features
- Job board distribution.
- Diversity analytics.
- User-friendly pipeline management.
- Candidate comparison tool.
- Useful metrics tracker.
Talent Sourcing Tools for 2024: Nothing Stands Still
As the functionality and reach of AI continue to expand, so, too, will the number and capability of talent sourcing tools on the market. It’s super-fluid and the choice for customers can be overwhelming at times.
We’re continually refining our AI capabilities to get even better results for our clients. But that’s not all.
Our unique, human-based approach to talent sourcing is driven by our team of 4000+ talent sourcers across 65 countries, and because nothing stands still, we’re always working hard to develop our one-of-a-kind crowdsourcing capabilities, too.
Curious about what we can do for you? Reach out for a demo.
Director of Sourcing Operations at Visage, Evelyn has experience in agency, RPO, and in-house roles spanning 12 years in the recruitment industry. Evelyn has built and oversees a 4000-member global freelance sourcing community. Every Christmas in Ireland, she enjoys putting up her THREE Christmas trees.