Honing in to Source Quality Contractors Even More Efficiently

Molly Colsant is a recruiter’s recruiter—literally. She’s a Recruiting consultant at The Wellington Group, an HR Consulting firm specializing in referring HR and recruiting professionals. Founded in 2002, the firm works with mid-market and Fortune 100 companies to fill full-time positions and, most notably, contract projects.

As any staffing agency can tell you, sourcing contractors can be a challenge: many of the most qualified candidates still favor full-time roles over temporary ones. “Even though contracting is moving to the norm in the industry, there’s still a large group that think a permanent direct hire is the only way to go,” says Molly. “The risk involved with contracting sometimes scares them.”

Couple that challenge with exacting standards and breakneck turnaround times, and you’ve got a task that can feel insurmountable to even the most experienced staffing firms. And yet, that’s exactly what Molly and The Wellington Group do best. They’ve built a premium brand on sourcing skills with speed. Some of their largest clients contractually require referrals within 72 hours—but they’ve come to expect them within 48.

Thankfully, LinkedIn Recruiter’s new contractor sourcing feature has made Molly’s job a bit easier, allowing her to go straight to candidates who have signaled that they’re open to contracting or candidates who would likely be open to contract positions based on their LinkedIn profile data.

Sourcing Contracting Candidates in Concentric Circles

When a new job order comes in, the clock starts ticking and Molly bounds into action. With an arsenal of tools at her fingertips, she’s learned to drill down to a highly refined talent pool, expanding outwards in widening concentric circles as the search continues.

“Time is of the essence,” says Molly, “with almost 40 openings to work on at any given time, efficiency is paramount. The contractor sourcing tool provides you the ability to streamline and research in seconds, so that every hour of your day is productive.”

The new contractor sourcing feature, found on LinkedIn Recruiter’s Open Candidates spotlight feature, has made a major difference for Molly. Just as Open Candidates allows members to signal that they’re open to new opportunities—giving recruiters access to a new pool of open talent—contractor sourcing enables candidates to broadcast their interest in contract work.

“It’s one of the first things I do,” says Molly. “We received an important search this morning for a top client in Chicago. After posting the jobs, I immediately searched for the job title in Recruiter and received around 11,000 results. I then filtered by the new Open to New Opportunities feature, which surfaced 95 potential candidates. Finally, I filtered down an additional layer and used the contractor sourcing feature to narrow it down to 47 people and reached out.” In just two weeks of use, Molly has already used the filter to find over 20 quality candidates, with promising potential hires in the pipeline.

“Having the ability to reach out to candidates that are open to contract work through a highly targeted search changes everything,” Molly shares. “Think about the amount of time it takes to reach out to a candidate via InMail, receive a response, and set up a call. It’s crucial to make sure these candidates are the right fit.

It’s the difference between having five really great phone calls, and having 30 that don’t lead anywhere. Now I can reach the most interested candidates as quickly as possible.”

Widening the Search to Open Talent

After contacting this select group, Molly moves on to the second circle: Open Candidates. “I’ll remove the contractor filter, but narrow it down to people who are only open to new opportunities,” she says. “More people keep their eye on the market than we realize—it’s opened a new category of folks who we wouldn’t have known about.”

Instead of wading through a sea of people who may or may not be interested, Molly uses her time far more effectively by almost exclusively going after open talent. These days, Molly rarely has to broaden her search beyond this second circle. “It really helps me and my colleagues in our day-to-day tasks,” she says,

“it has completely streamlined the way we work.”