How to source candidates?
Sourcing candidates means finding and engaging people who could fill a role before they apply. The work runs in a loop: define the profile precisely, decide where those people are, search there, reach out with a message specific to the person, track every response, and measure what converts. Most of the skill is in the first two steps.
Start with the profile as a set of filters rather than a job description: the skills that are required, the seniority, the location or time zone, and the industries where the experience transfers. Then build a target list of companies where people with that profile work. Search profile databases, code and design portfolios, communities and conference speaker lists. Write outreach that says why this person, not why this company, and send it in small batches so the reply rate can be read. Log everything in the ATS or CRM, and review the funnel weekly: contacted, replied, screened, submitted, hired.
Posting data helps with the target list, which is where sourcing is usually weakest. A search for the required skills or titles with status active returns the companies currently hiring the same profile, and those companies are where the people already exist. A search with status closed and a recent closed_at returns companies that just took a role for that profile off the market: they either hired, in which case the runners-up are warm, or removed the requisition, in which case a team that was planning to grow is not. closed_reason says whether the posting was removed, expired or replaced, not whether someone was hired.
The queries are one call each to POST /v1/jobs/search with skills_or or job_title_or, job_country_code_or or remote for location, and job_seniority_or for level. The company field on each row is the target list, technology_slugs shows the stack each team runs, and company_name_or with discovered_at_gte turns the list into a standing watch. Posting data holds jobs, not people, so the person search itself happens in your own sourcing tools; what changes is which companies you search.
The full treatment is on Talent intelligence.
Related questions
How do you source passive candidates?
Passive candidates are found by employer, not by job board, because they are not on the boards. Build the list of companies that employ the profile, which is what a skills or title search of live postings gives you, then search those companies' people in your sourcing tools and write outreach that names the specific reason this person fits.
What is the difference between sourcing and recruiting?
Sourcing is the search and first-contact stage: finding people and getting a reply. Recruiting is the whole process from requisition to accepted offer, including screening, interviews, offer and close. Large teams split the two into sourcer and recruiter roles; small teams have one person do both. Sourcing feeds recruiting; it does not replace it.
How do you measure sourcing?
As a funnel: people contacted, replies, screens, submissions to the hiring manager, and hires, tracked per channel and per message template. Reply rate is the earliest signal that the profile or the message is wrong; submission-to-hire is the signal that the profile is right. Time from first contact to hire tells you how far ahead of a requisition sourcing has to start.
Can an AI agent source candidates?
An agent can build and refresh the target-company list, because the search_jobs tool on the MCP server at mcp.jobspipe.dev returns which employers are hiring a profile and which just closed a role for it. The people search and the outreach still run in sourcing tools and under the consent and data rules that apply to personal data in your jurisdiction.
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