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Top-5 mistakes recruiters make when sourcing
Top-5 mistakes recruiters make when sourcing
Learn from popular sourcing errors to tailor your boolean strings to be just perfect!
Alexandra from AmazingHiring avatar
Written by Alexandra from AmazingHiring
Updated over a week ago

As a Customer Success team, we regularly receive questions and support requests on various topics and there are always small things to tailor and improve in order to make our customers' searches as efficient as possible. Sourcing requires precision and accuracy, and it's very important to tailor good-quality searches to find the best talent. Today we are sharing the top 5 mistakes recruiters make when sourcing for you to know exactly how to type in your perfect searches.

1. Missed booleans

OR AND NOT are your helpers in creating a perfect search. But, recruiters often forget about adding them in between the conditions. Leaving the query without boolean operators automatically creates a strict request with all the conditions becoming obligatory, often leading to zero search results.

2. AND in current titles and locations

This is another mistake that commonly leads to zero output. On a regular basis, a person would have only one current title and will be present at a single location. So adding AND in those lines stops you from getting an extensive pipeline. Use OR only - in Current title / Title, City or Country, Current Company / Company.

If you'd like to tailor the search to be more precise, add extra conditions to analyse past experience.

3. Search logic

Sometime when you create a complex search it may be hard to keep up with the logic and prioritisation. Brackets will help here, as you can apply them to divide conditions connected with different operators (AND / OR) and never miss a perfect candidate.

4. Precise search without quotes

Looking for something specific? Don't forget to add the quotes around your keyword / company / technology to ensure the platform finds exactly what you are looking for.

Leaving the keyword without quotes will lead to wider, but less relevant results. And we for sure don't want to spend too much time screening profiles, right?

AmazingHiring always provides you with an opportunity to choose either our synonymised criteria or stick with Exact match search - feel free to make your strings super precise with the second option.

5. Incorrect conditions

A very simple but common mistake is choosing incorrect conditions for your role requirements. Apply:

  • Current title / Current company to analyse the most recent positions and employers

  • Title / Company to take a look at the background

  • Skills - for general knowledge / tech stack

  • Main skills - for tech stack in the current application

  • Additional criteria - for keywords, certifications, tags and anything else you'd need in the profile

Click on the name of the condition and move the toggle to ensure your search conditions are in the right place and lead you to the most relevant results.

Practice makes perfect

Would you like to practice your sourcing skills on the real examples?

Feel free to check out our online learning course and complete some tasks to test your knowledge 😎

Hope you do the homework and your searches become even more clear and efficient.

If you are at a challenging place with some positions, please feel free to request a quick sourcing session with our Customer Success Team - we love to brainstorm on the best strategies together!

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