There’s a difference between sourcing candidates as a theory and truly sourcing the right candidates. It has little to do with catchphrases or platitudes, and everything to do with using the most effective tools available in human resources today.

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Like too many things in the corporate world, creativity in sourcing has become one of those catchphrases. It sounds great, and it seems to make sense, too. When there’s an applicant drought, something obviously has to be done. But creativity for creativity’s sake doesn’t work any better than outmoded recruiting methods. It might sound great in a staff meeting, but the results will still be watery thin.

Why Creative Sourcing is a Thing

It’s not that creativity isn’t necessary, it’s that the idea of being creative is talked about without a lot of defining what it means. There’s a documented shortage of qualified applicants for many jobs because unemployment is down and some folks are happy where they are. And it doesn’t just happen in larger companies.

The Wall Street Journal says “About 33% of 848 small-business owners and chief executives said they had unfilled job openings in June because they couldn’t identify qualified applicants.” And that’s an increase of over 30 percent from 2012.

In response to the drought, being creative naturally emerged. Unfortunately, too few people seem to know what that really means. Recruiting Daily thinks this mindset evolved because some recruiters simply didn’t know how to respond to a shortage of qualified applicants. And like “thinking outside the box” and other corporate lingo, being creative went from an idea to an expectation – an expectation without any real definition.

How Great Recruiters Really Get Creative

The great recruiters see through jargon to find the substance in the issue. There is a shortage, and it must be filled. Traditional methods don’t work well in this climate, so it’s time to get creative. All of that makes sense. But for it to work, it needs some direction. What’s been missing is the literal match between candidate and job, and that’s what new technology and tools are proving to change.

LinkedIn had become a gold mine for sourcing, but even that’s drying up, says Recruiting Daily. So many sourcers saw the wealth of connections and possibilities, and that led to a whole new level of the same old ineffective evaluation. The odds of getting the right match don’t necessarily improve with a larger group of passive candidates. In fact, it might be harder than when applications come flooding in on their own.

Candidate matching technology helps break the mass marketing mindset where candidates, one and all, are spammed from every direction. It transforms sourcing into something tighter, tidier and more effective because it’s designed to do the difficult job of identifying. When you know which candidates in that great big pond are a good company fit, then you’ll know which ones to target. And that’s what you’d hoped for in the beginning. With the tools that are available now, a lot of that work is done for you.

Using RealMatch candidate matching technology, you write the job ad and the software places it where it belongs – in front of eyes that are pre-screened, so to speak, for the qualities and qualifications that you’re looking for. Are they open to a new job, even if currently employed? Do they have a certain skill set that you need? All of that information is available, and candidate matching finds it. And it happens without spamming far and wide in the hopes of a deluge of responses.

Being creative might be a hot topic that sounds a bit fluffy, but it does have real meaning. Or at least, it can. Instead of focusing so hard on finding new, “outside the box” ways to merely find more candidates, your tools can work for you to attract more people who actually fit the job and company based on real data.