Ensuring you always have the right talent in the right place at the right time requires a well-stocked and enthusiastically engaged talent pool of qualified candidates. Keeping your talent pool up to date can be a challenge for many in-house recruitment teams.
So how can you create talent pools of passive candidates and consistently and measurably engage with them?
Our research with The Firm got an insight into the minds of those responsible for recruitment, and it will come as no surprise that the benefits of talent pooling are plentiful. Tapping quickly into an engaged talent pool in a tight labour market can improve your quality of hire and time to hire. What’s more it can also reduce your reliance on other sourcing channels such as agencies (who will go straight to their talent pool!).
Talent pooling should be easy
Talent pooling should be proactive, aligned for current and future needs, combined with powerful data visualisation on your talent pool's strengths and highlighting areas to improve.
However, in-house recruiters seem to lag in executing decent talent pooling. Just 23% of members surveyed for a report from The Firm considered themselves as 'good' at talent pooling. Most (77%) consider themselves 'average' or 'poor' at talent pooling.
The single biggest issue is how to ‘fill up’ and manage talent pools compliantly.
If you are starting out, look for the following…
Sourced candidates.
Leads from traditional career fairs and virtual career fairs.
Passive candidates.
Candidate profiles on networking sites, such as LinkedIn.
Unsuccessful applicants that may be suited to a different role
NOTE 46% of those surveyed say they don’t filter talent pools for candidates that reached specific stages during previous applications (the classic silver medalist)!
Content marketing to connect talent pools
One of the most potent ways of leveraging your talent pools and networks is to connect them to touchpoints on the candidate journey – using those touchpoints to both articulate the EVP and engage the talent network.
In the early stages emotional drivers may be more appropriate – social media, videos, messaging that conveys it’s a good, perhaps even cool place to work
As the candidate gets closer it may be more appropriate to concentrate on decision-making (rational) factors such as pay and benefits
The desk-based research for the report showed that the tried and tested ways to engage are still the order of the day. Methods include:
Creating valuable content such as ‘top tips for revitalising your CV’, e-books about potential career paths and employee stories and videos
Sending regular e-newsletters and email campaigns, aligned to segmented talent and tracking engagement
Provision of additional information about job openings or internship programs
Connecting with talent through social media
Sharing blog posts about the company and its accomplishments or culture
Best practices around building talent networks and managing engagement include:
Funnelling candidates from all communication channels and touchpoints to a central hub such as the company careers site
Ensuring that the careers page acts as a one-stop-shop. A go-to destination for anyone who has shown an interest in the company or specific role that includes candidate centric content (you can find out all about optimal content for career sites by downloading this free candidate attraction report, see pages 32 – 35).
Download your copy of the Talent Pooling Insight Report that shares in-depth findings on talent pool engagement, benefits and barriers to talent pooling effectiveness.
