Ben Slater — March 25, 2017 Follow @BenJHSlaterTalent pools are shortlists of candidates that are not currently being considered for a role (i.e. not applicants). They could be people that your team has sourced, leads from events and more.
With the time pressures that recruiters typically face, there’s a common misconception that there’s no time to build talent pools.
While a true strategic talent pooling strategy needs to be something that an organization carves out time for, there are a few quick ways that recruiters can fill their pool.
1. Re-engaging former applicants
Anyone that has applied in the past is an ideal fit for your talent pool. These candidates have all expressed an interest in your company and they all identify with your Employer Brand. Although many won’t ever match your company DNA, some unsuccessful applicants could be a good fit for future roles (or even other positions that you have open).
You’ve assessed these candidates in the past, so it should be simple enough to take the most promising, the “silver medalists”, and add them to a new talent pool. From there, your team can identify the people that are worth re-engaging.
If you can make hires from this pool:
- You’ll be reducing hiring cycles – there’s no time spent searching the web or waiting for applications
- You’ll be reducing costs – you already “own” this candidate data
2. Consolidating sourcing lists
If your team is currently doing any sourcing at all, it’s likely that there are multiple spreadsheets and LinkedIn projects lying around, full of candidate leads.
Spreadsheets work well for individual recruiters working on a small number of roles, but when there is a need for collaboration and scale you need something more.
Run a sourcing audit, and ask your team to submit all the spreadsheets, scraps of paper and notes that they’re working on. You can then consolidate all of this data into one central talent pool.
This has an instant impact. Sourcers can work faster and collaborate on projects, and searches never have to start from scratch – there is always have a pool of candidates to dip into.
3. Leads from events
Investing resources in recruiting events is a great way to build your Employer Brand and attract top talent to your company.
The only problem with events, is that it can be hard to manage and nurture all of the candidates that register and attend. Often they’re consigned to a spreadsheet deep in your team’s “Shared Folder” and possibly sent the occasional email blast.
Some of these candidates might apply in the future, but will you really know if your event was the reason?
Talent pools are a far more effective way to keep tabs on these candidates. They give you a systematic way to manage and nurture new leads from events, and let you track which candidates end of applying (giving you a simple way to calculate the ROI of different events).
If you already have spreadsheets of these candidates sitting around, it’s usually pretty simple to import them into a CRM or whatever solution you’re using to manage your pools.
So there you have it, 3 easy ways to get started with talent pools. Let us know if there are any other things that have worked for you in the comments section.
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