| name | candidate-sourcing-plan |
| description | Use when opening a new search or reviving a thin pipeline — turns a role's intake spec into a targeted sourcing plan with an ideal-candidate profile, channels, search criteria, and outreach messaging. |
Candidate Sourcing Plan
A playbook for filling the top of the funnel with the right people, not just a lot of people. The failure mode it prevents: blasting a generic role to a broad list, getting a pile of mismatched replies, and calling that a pipeline.
Start from the scorecard (not the job title)
- Pull the must-have competencies from the role's intake spec. List only the three to five that a candidate genuinely cannot lack — everything else is "nice to have" and must not narrow the search.
- Translate each must-have into an observable proxy: what has someone with this competency actually built, shipped, or owned? Search for the proxy, not the buzzword.
- Write the ideal-candidate profile as a paragraph a stranger could recognize a match from — the work they do, the scale they do it at, the adjacent titles they may hold. Include the profiles you would be wrong to exclude.
Map where they actually are
- List candidate pools by where the profile congregates: communities, prior employers, adjacent roles, referral networks. Rank pools by density of fit, not by how easy they are to search.
- For each pool, define the search criteria — the specific signals that qualify someone in. Keep criteria tied to the proxies from step 2; a criterion that doesn't map to a must-have is noise.
- Set a realistic pool-size estimate. If the qualified market is too small for the target, flag it up now — that's a comp, level, or remote-policy problem, not an outreach problem.
Write outreach that earns a reply
- Draft a message template that leads with why this role fits this person — one specific, honest reason — before anything about the company. Keep it short enough to read on a phone.
- Leave explicit slots for personalization; the template is a scaffold, never a send-as-is blast.
- Pre-empt the top objection you expect for this profile with one honest line.
Quality bar
- Every search criterion traces to a must-have competency.
- The profile names who to include, not only who to exclude.
- Outreach is personalizable and honest — no overselling, no fabricated urgency.
- Pool sizing is stated, so a too-small market surfaces before weeks are lost.
Output format
Sourcing plan: role and must-haves → ideal-candidate profile → ranked pools with search criteria → outreach template with personalization slots → pool-size estimate and risks.
