Talent Pooling: How To Build a Network of Candidates

Talent pooling is one of the most effective methods of hiring top talent for your business, and keeping recruitment costs to a minimum.

Generating and maintaining a talent pool for your company enables you to engage with a wider range of candidates for any job opening, not only those who are actively searching for a new position, but recent graduates, current employees and applicants who may have been unsuccessful in a previous interview process.

According to Glassdoor research, finding top quality candidates is the number one hiring challenge for recruiters. Rather than simply posting a job advertisement and hoping for the best, HR teams and recruiters should devote more time to proactive recruiting and preempt job openings to future proof their recruitment pipeline. Talent acquisition becomes a much easier feat once a pool of talent is at your fingertips!

What is talent pooling?

Talent pooling is the process of building a database of candidates who hold the required skills and talents to work for your organisation and have registered their interest in working for your company. This may sound like an idealistic concept for many hiring managers, but a talent pool can be built and maintained effectively by implementing simple steps into your recruitment process.

A talent pool can act as a baseline for your recruitment process, streamlining the amount of time it takes you to fill a new position, reducing your costs per hire and generating a positive candidate experience. Managing a talent pool is the process of upkeeping a network of candidates and maintaining their engagement and awareness of your employer brand. Building talent pools should be a significant element of your candidate experience strategy, as unsuccessful applicants, passive candidates and former employees can maintain a positive view of your brand and be keen to apply for future opportunities in your company.

Keep reading to find out some of our top tips in building and maintaining your own talent pools.

Building a Talent Pool:

Utilise a Candidate Portal

Offering a candidate portal as a feature on your company website is a sleek way to attract talent to your organisation. Enable prospective applicants to create an account on your candidate portal to hear about the latest job opportunities in your company. Hireserve’s Candidate Portal software acts as a custom careers site for your business, giving your potential candidates a personalised, self-service experience which empowers them to upload and update their own information, even if they are not actively involved in a hiring process for a specific position.

As an open, cloud-based platform, Hireserve Candidate Portals enable talent to add additional information and experience they may acquire between job openings in your company, meaning that once a job opening comes up, a pool of potential candidates with up-to-date information is in your grasp.

Employee Referral Programme
Attract top talent to your company by utilising your business’ greatest assets – your current employees. Recruitment becomes a lot easier when your applicants have word of mouth recommendations about your company from their own networks. Potential candidates already have knowledge of your business and company culture through their connection and you can assess whether a hire would be a good fit through your employee recommendation, saving you time in the recruitment process.

University Career Fairs
Reaching out to students who will shortly be graduating is a foolproof method to build an effective talent pool. Attending careers fairs, whether online or in person, immediately gives you an edge as an employer as you develop a rapport with top talent before they enter the job market.

Recruiting new graduates can be risky as often students do not have the skill set or experience to be the right fit for a position immediately. A talent pool can act as an effective recruitment strategy in this instance. Engage graduates by registering their information and once they’re in your talent pool, you increase your chances of securing them for your company once they have gained skills and experience.

Maintaining a Talent Pool:

Talent Pool management software

Talent pools can become overwhelming to manage as the database becomes filled with the talented individuals, former employees, passive candidates and more, all with changing circumstances. Utilising an ATS for your talent pool enables you to strategically contact and maintain relationships with candidates with the most appropriate skills and experience for your organisation. Talent pool management software enables recruiters to segment audiences by skill, experience, location and more to streamline the shortlisting process.

With in-built privacy statement options, custom data retention periods and consent mechanisms, talent pool software saves you GDPR headaches when reaching out to potential applicants as they are in control of how much data they share with your organisation at any one time.

Social Media

Social media campaigns for talent acquisition can broaden your reach when advertising for opportunities, making recruiting easier and more effective. Individuals may come across your company through social shares, adverts or mentions, gaining holistic and organic insights into your company.

Posting job advertisements with links to your Candidate Portal on social media is effective in attracting candidates from wider audiences and re-engaging unsuccessful candidates from the past, creating a talent community who keep up to date with your business.

Talent pools are crucial for the sustainability of your recruitment practices.

Getting started with creating a talent pool can be challenging, but to keep it going long-term requires time and energy. The talent in your database will likely be contacted by other companies, so you need to ensure your talent community favours your employer over others. Recruitment software can be a real game changer when maintaining your talent pool. Make sure you have top quality candidates ready to hire by using software to streamline your recruitment and talent pooling. Take a look at our talent pooling functionality today.

Additional links that may be useful:

• Using talent pools and the GDPR
• Can your ATS do this? (Choosing Guide)
• Product feature talent pools
• Use talent pools to prepare for your seasonal hiring