Building a tailored talent pool

What is a Talent Pool and the benefits?

A talent pool is a database of potential job candidates, who are of high calibre and have expressed interest in your organisation. Building a tailored talent pool is one of the leading ways to secure the very best talent for your organisation, whilst reducing your cost-per-hire and time-to-hire. Recruiters and HR managers use talent pools as a reserve of top talent they can turn to when they need to fill a certain position.

Building an effective Talent Pool for your organisation can help you stay ahead of the competition and your talent needs. Instead of waiting until you have open job positions to start the recruitment process, you can already have a reserve of the top talent who are already interested in your organisation to choose from.

There are 3 main benefits:

• Reduced cost-per-hire
• Reduced time-to-hire
• Improved quality-of-hire

How to build your Talent Pool

Define suitable candidates for your talent pool

Fact: 76% of hiring decision makers say attracting quality candidates is their number one challenge.

To build an effective talent pool for your organisation, you need to define a profile of the type of candidates that would be the best fit for your organisation and any upcoming roles. The profiling can be based upon a number of criterias including; experience, skill sets and academic background.

A candidate worthy of being placed into a talent pool will vary among different organisations and their future hiring needs. Your talent pool will be used to fulfil future recruitment needs as well as any current ones, so you need to consider your current and future recruitment needs when defining suitable candidates for your talent pool.

Fill your talent pool with high quality candidates

Finding the right talent for your organisation is key to hiring high quality candidates. Filling your talent pool is an ongoing strategy that requires your organisation to actively search for candidates, rather than waiting for them to apply for your job vacancies.

Your approach to sourcing suitable candidates needs to be consistent - even if they are not actively looking for a new role. There are various strategies to finding the right candidates to add to your talent pool, including:

• Social sourcing: Social media is a great way to search and reach out to candidates to invite them to join your talent pool. Consider what your employer brand says about you on social media accounts, are your platforms showcasing your culture? You need to give candidates a reason to consider your organisation as a potential future employer. Join industry groups on LinkedIn, and connect with anyone you find that matches the values and needs of your organisation, but ensure you keep active to engage potential candidates, for example by sharing company news on your newsfeed.

• Employee referrals: Develop a programme in which your employees can refer you to candidates. According to LinkedIn research, companies can expand their talent pool by 10 times by recruiting through their employees’ networks. You can also encourage your employees to share company news and insights on their own newsfeeds.

• Networking events: Events can be a great way of connecting and engaging with your candidates. Hosting networking events can enhance your employer brand and give prospective employees the opportunity to ask questions and meet the team in advance. This works particularly well for graduate or early careers but can be a great way to engage talent on every level.

Manage the candidates in your talent pool

Once you have filled your talent pool with prospective candidates, you need to keep their interest in your organisation as a potential employer. Many candidates in your talent pool may not be actively looking for a new role, so nurturing them could be a long process. However, if a role becomes available in the future, this could be of interest to those candidates, so you want to keep them in your talent pool.

Try to send content that is relevant to the candidate to keep them interested in you, including content that is not necessarily regarding upcoming roles. This could be topical content of interest such as company news, a day in the life of a key team member or exciting active projects.

Utilising a talent pool in your organisation's recruitment process will build strong relationships with prospective candidates for your future roles, keep active and passive candidates interested in your organisation and find top talent more efficiently. 

For more information on building a tailored talent pool for your organisation, check out IRIS networx today.