Building a Talent Pool? This is How You’ll Fill It Up

A lot of companies approach recruiting in the following matter: write a job description, post it on job boards and social media, collect resumes, conduct phone interviews, test for skills, perform face-to-face interviews, and finally extend an offer to the most qualified candidate. Lather, rinse, repeat. Some might do this using their in-house recruiters, while others choose a retained executive firm or a contingency recruiter to assist with the process, but the procedure remains the same.

If your company is expanding and new roles need to be filled, or you just want to become more efficient with the recruiting process in the future, you may want to consider building a talent pool, instead of going through the same process over and over again. This will save you both time and money, as the candidates in your talent database will already be vetted. You could also skip the entire process of advertising every single role, and instead approach candidates directly. 

Talent pool management: How to build and fill your talent database

A true recruitment pool will not be efficient unless you keep it fresh with the most relevant and qualified candidates in your industry. These are the most useful methods to fill up your recruitment pool:

1. Candidates that weren’t hired

First and foremost, you should fill in your talent database with people who are qualified enough to work for your company, but maybe don’t have the exact skills needed for the role you were looking to fill. Alternatively, these could be people who had every skill needed but decided to join a different company or were beaten to the role by even more talented candidates. Out of 20 or 30 people, you only end up hiring one, but at least three more could be just as valuable for future jobs.

2. Employee referrals

It has been proven time and time again that employee referrals are not only cost-effective when it comes to recruiting, but they are one of the most efficient ways of finding quality candidates. Your employees are likely to recommend someone qualified, as they don’t want to look bad, and they are even more likely to do so if there’s an incentive involved if that person is hired. With the aid of a talent referral platform, you could fill up your talent database in no time.

3. Attend industry events and cultivate relationships

A great way to reach out to passive candidates is by building business connections. Go out and attend networking events in your industry, participate in college fairs, accept invitations for coffee meetings from people in your field — everything that will get you talking to more people. All of those may not be people who are looking for work now but can be added to your recruitment pool for future consideration when a new role becomes available.

4. Employer branding

Another good talent pool management tip is to get candidates to come to you, by creating compelling content, a strong online presence, and an appealing employer brand. If your company seems like the best place to work for, people may consider applying for your talent pool, even if they are not looking for work right now. 

Ways to do that are by maintaining a blog with the latest industry news, updates, and research. Make sure to also create good social media profiles that engage with potential candidates and encourage them to apply to the talent pool, and make it easy for them to apply with a page on your careers site.

In order to keep your talent database organized, you can use a good ATS software. These allow you to add tags to candidates’ profiles, rate them, and add comments — which will make it easier to find them when searching at a later date. This may create some initial added work but will streamline your hiring process in the long run.