Start Building a Talent Pool Today to Empower Your Growth Tomorrow
2020 taught us several things about the future of work. One of them is the connection between proactive talent acquisition and future-readiness. The candidate market is still incredibly competitive, and organisations are hard-pressed to attract and hire skilled team members. The days of merely trading resumes and rejection letters with your applicants are over; it’s time to start building a talent pool and reaping the rewards of an improved candidate experience. Why building a talent pool is better If you are simply sending rejection letters to everyone who doesn’t make the cut for your vacancy, you are not making the most of the talent you’re attracting. According to a survey released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in June 2021, nearly a third of businesses are struggling to find suitable candidates to hire. The chief reason for this is a lack of applicants, as candidates continue to be cautious and more selective with their roles in the wake of the uncertainty of 2020. If so many Australian businesses are struggling to attract applicants at all, then why do most organisations continue to rely on reactive hiring? Building a talent pool of people is a much more proactive and brand-friendly approach to sustainable organisational growth. What is a talent pool, anyway? Essentially, a talent pool is a database of candidates who have previously shown interest in joining your organisation. For whatever reason, they may not have made the cut for the role they applied for initially. However, they could be a great fit for your team and are open to hearing about suitable vacancies in the future. Building a talent pool and maintaining it well is key to reducing your time to hire, improving your employer brand, and growing your organisation sustainably, even in a tough candidate market. A good talent pool includes a variety of details about each candidate, including: How they came in contact with your organisation; The kind of roles they want to be considered for; Their key strengths and skills; Where they are currently working, and; Notes about their suitability and fit from their interviews. Benefits of building a talent pool We’ve already mentioned that building a talent pool is more proactive and efficient than starting a recruitment campaign from scratch. But there are myriad benefits of effective talent pool development. Let’s take a look at these in more detail: A live digital talent pool When well-managed, your talent pool is a “live” database of up-to-date candidate information. You have a record of each candidate’s availability, skills, and experience. You also have the confidence that they would like to work with your organisation. With this, you increase your productivity and reduce the manual admin of posting and managing a new job ad every time you hire. A better candidate experience In a market that’s currently led by candidates, you have to make a good impression and be sure not to burn any bridges. Most candidates face rejection letter after rejection letter if they hear back from an organisation at all. Repeatedly iterating their value to potential employers with little to no positive feedback takes its toll. The process often leaves a bad taste in a candidates mouth about the brands in question. So, how do you overcome this? By creating an exceptional candidate experience. Set your organisation apart by talent pooling, rather than rejecting most of your candidates. Instead of saying, “You’re not right for my organisation,” you can say, “You’re not the best fit for this role right now,” and maintain contact. Keep your top candidates looped into your latest news and career opportunities. Contact them regularly to see where they’re at and keep them posted on upcoming vacancies. A talent engagement tool helps to automate this process and the resulting positive candidate interactions go a long way towards strengthening your employer brand. Reduced time to hire With a growing database of interested candidates, your organisation is empowered to hit the ground running with every new hire. Review your talent pool first and reach out to suitable candidates directly when a new role becomes available. A traditional recruitment campaign is only necessary if no one in your talent pool fits the bill for that role. You’ll reduce your time to hire and enjoy a smoother hiring process overall. Lower cost per hire Logically, it follows that a reduced time to hire implies a reduced cost per hire. You save time and money when you pay for fewer advertisements, limit time spent on interviews, and time spent waiting for applicant responses. And, you reduce the risk of a “bad hire” and the damage it could do to your productivity and culture. You can combine this strategy with powerful talent acquisition software to get the most out of every campaign and save time along the way. Improved quality of hire If you are always hiring reactively, you are constantly under the pump to fill roles as they come up. You run the risk of hiring a candidate in a rush without thoroughly investigating their competencies and culture fit. Flash forward to four weeks in. You may have spent a lot of time and money hiring a candidate who can’t hit their KPIs and doesn’t gel with their team at all. The best way to avoid this kind of catastrophe is to build and nurture a talent pool. This proactive strategy cuts out a lot of time and resources when it’s time to hire. And, you gain the confidence that your new team member is engaged, lives your purpose, and contributes to your culture. Increased access to passive candidates A passive candidate is someone who is not actively searching for a new role but is open to being figuratively (or literally) tapped on the shoulder and offered an interview. Astoundingly, about 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive candidates! That’s a lot of people who aren’t scouring job boards for a new role but wouldn’t say no to the right opportunity. We unpack the difference
