How to Use Talent Pools Successfully

November 9, 2016

 

iCIMS Staff

3 min read

A talent pool also referred to as a talent pipeline, is an organized group of candidates qualified to assume open positions that have been newly created or vacated. To avoid a costly and lengthy time-to-fill, employers can build talent pools and nurture passive talent until they are ready to apply for an open position. Instead of operating in a reaction mode, recruiters can use recruitment marketing software to be proactive and stay ahead of talent needs. Building talent pools is an effective way to ensure a constant flow of candidates are available if needed.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to build and use your talent pools successfully.

1. Assess Strengths and Weaknesses

What you don’t know can hurt you when it comes to developing robust talent pipelines. Before building and organizing your talent pools ask yourself the following questions to guide how you source talent to your pipeline.

– What critical positions and skills are needed at my company?

– Where does my company currently ­and its best hires?

– What is your average time to ­fill?

– What is your company’s talent makeup?

– What is your company’s projected growth?

2. Segment Your Talent Pools

Once you have uncovered your talent acquisition team’s strengths and weaknesses, you can segment your talent pools based on your current and future talent needs. Strong segmented talent pools ensure that a company always has a pipeline of talented and qualified candidates to select from when a job becomes available. In order to get the most out of talent pools, recruiters must group candidates together based on similarities and continue to communicate with these connections through personalized content.

Examples of how to organize your talent pools include tagging by:

– Education level

– Work experience

– Interested role or department

– Location

– Hierarchy level

– Skills

3. Send Relevant Information

Sending automated personalized, branded communications based on what talent pool they belong to makes passive candidates more likely to think of you when ready to apply to a job. Here are a few examples of marketing content that an organization can send via automated, scheduled email campaigns to engage candidates from their recruitment marketing automation tool:

– Employment newsletters that include spotlighted jobs

– Pictures or videos with top performing employees

– Social media links

– Positive news about the company, and new professional development programs at your organization

– Company updates or press releases that pertain to new products, expansion, growth, or social/civic activity

– Industry news that explains how the update is likely to have a positive impact on your organization

– Professional development ideas that relate to your industry or a specific field in which the candidate has expressed interest

– Notifications about your upcoming job fairs, or other events at which the candidate can network with members of your team

– An organized and robust recruitment marketing automation tool ensures that recruiters are able to quickly and easily determine what types of emails to send to which candidates. By leveraging your employment brand and technology you can maintain a constant pool of warm candidates, shortening your time-to-fill and cost-to-fill metrics.

4. Ensure Your Company Stays Top of Mind

Clearly, you will want to drive as much talent to the recruitment marketing automation tool as possible so you have a sufficient pool of candidates from which you can draw. To drive more traffic towards your brand, incorporate an attention grabbing, graphical link that invites passive candidates to sign up to receive notifications from your company and join your talent pools on all recruitment marketing materials, career pages, and corporate social media sites. Make it easy for potential talent to get to know your company.