What is Talent Pool – Ways to Build And Manage it

For a progressive organization, it is necessary to grow toward its long-term goal and that is only possible through an efficient team. Developing and optimizing an adequate talent pool is the key to turning the company toward growth. The process of building an efficient talent pool is the way to onboard an efficient team in the company that can help to take the company towards its goal. Let’s read about what is a talent pool, how to build a talent pool, its basics, and how to optimize them.

What is a Talent Pool?

A talent pool refers to the databases and places where recruiters and hiring managers keep the records of their top candidates and stay in touch with a variety of skillful candidates.  For building talent, HR managers should comprehend hiring goals and consider activities that ensure future growth. Talent pools contain databases of potential candidates sourced from various channels and a set of people who can fulfill the future needs of the company (if they get hired).

In other words, candidates sourced from different stages in their career journeys can become a part of the talent pool.

How Talent Pools Work

A talent pool contains all the information about candidates such as their years of experience, companies they have worked with, qualifications, certifications, etc. that a hiring manager can use in scrutinizing them for the open position. Ex- colleagues, former permanent employees, freelancers, retired personnel, and previously non-shortlisted candidates can be included in talent pools which are managed by an ATS system as part of the managed service program.

The talent pool comes in handy especially when there is an urgent need of closing a position. For building an effective talent pool, organizations must be willing to invest in a candidate and their employment experience. For that they must ask workers and applicants for their honest feedback and interest in suitable opportunities should they arise in the future

Why Build and Manage a Talent Pool?

Talent pools are great for growing organizations but they are also suitable for organizations willing to hire strategically. Having a pool of talent in hand implies that the organization can hire in a more resilient way.

Reduces the Cost of Recruitment- An adequate talent pool saves money in two different ways- firstly by reducing the time to hire. Secondly, it lowers the cost per hire and saves your spending on advertising job openings.

Reduces the Time to Hire- An adequately segmented and managed talent pool ensures that the database you possess, has a candidate pool who are eager to work in your company. So, when there’s a vacancy in the future, you have ample applications to choose the best candidate from. It will help to lower the recruitment time to hire a candidate with what you already have, a pool of great candidates!

Improves the Quality of Hire- Lower quality hires happen because of four main reasons: not enough qualified applicants, not finding exact matches, time constraints, and not enough time to keep a check if the best candidate is the perfect fit for the job. As the most appropriate candidates reject the job offer, companies have to settle for the second best.

An effective talent pool can help you to avoid these four mentioned scenarios and ensure a steady flow of qualified candidates for the job.

How to Build an Effective Talent Pool

Companies have adopted Artificial intelligence to make their hiring process easy. It is a crucial way of talent pool management which results in swift recruitment specially in technical recruitment. Implementing HR Tools for recruitment helps in building efficient and productive workplaces.

The intervention of several HR tools can make the recruitment process easy and free-flowing. Tools help in easy recruitment and swift onboarding procedures as they are driven by automated processes and also help in performance recognition and measuring success rates. The use of tools can make managers forget about the splitting headaches of recruitment and build effective talent pools.

7 Ways to Build an Effective Talent Pool and Maintain it

1. Make use of Human Resources Software

HR recruiters are worried about doing all sorts of recruitment expenditures starting from finding candidates to training them. HR software comes in handy to handle each phase of recruitment starting from finding, engaging, recruiting, managing, training, and developing candidates or employees’ talent pool.

 It is important for HRs to consider recruiting costs before initiating any hiring in the organization. HR or the recruiter should plan and ensure the cost involved in hiring. Without proper planning, and allocating a recruitment budget, employers can tend to overspend on hiring procedures and end up shedding lots of money through the recruitment process instead of getting value out of their investment in recruiting services.

2. Social media campaigns

48% of hiring managers see social media as a source to build a quality hires community.  In this age of infotech./Technology, when people have become so tech savvy, Tech-driven social media platforms can make or break the company. Hiring managers in a company use digital media to spread the news that they are hiring. It helps to convey the message to the masses and reach the desired audiences. Social media improves candidates’ experiences and employers simultaneously as the hiring manager gets to know about prospective candidates’ interests beyond corporate.

3. Beam into internal talent

We often ignore the ones who are right in front of our eyes. Every organization has a set of diverse talents. Do not hesitate to look into talents who work in your company first. When you already know people who you share your workplace with, it can help you to zero down your efforts in finding candidates for your organization. And the best part is that you already know them as a colleague and can figure out their potential while looking at their performances. So you have a diligent workforce ready at your back, right in your own working space.

Since recruitment is powered by more and more marketing, recruiters have realized that in order to stay competitive in the market, it is imperative to hire the best talent. Hence they have started using  Recruitment Marketing software to hire talented people.

4. Build a community

Things that worked for you in the past don’t necessarily mean will work in the present and future too. So, upgrade the talent pool and keep in touch with the candidates you have approached before. There are many AI-based tools available to trace and track the application changes over time. Make use of it and build a community.

5. Re-engage with unsuccessful candidates

The data of a talented workforce can be any company’s useful asset. HR recruiters can filter out the employees they have shortlisted before and approach them to fill in future openings.

6. Build out Your Referral Program

69% of offline recruitment in the US has been made from employee referrals. HR should build a referral program within the company which can help them in easy and trustworthy hiring. Referral effectiveness is real in workplaces as it helps to ease the burdens of finding a person with desired skill sets.

7.Build Out Targeted Social Media Recruiting Campaigns

Some social media postings are done based on geolocation and specific keyword matches. Building specific social media recruitment campaigns can help to bring in refined candidates into the company and build a strong talent pool.

Conclusion

It is building and maintaining your talent while recruiting candidates for your company. First, the talent pool needs to be filled with qualified candidates, then you need to properly segment your talent pool. After you’ve done all those segmentations, the real work begins. Try maintaining the talent pool by engaging candidates with interesting communication throughout their journey. Distributing recruitment content is the most powerful step toward communicating with the candidates.

FAQs:

1. What is talent pool management?

Talent pool management is the comprehensive segmentation of HR processes that includes attracting candidates, onboarding, developing communication, motivating them to join, and retaining them for a longer time.

2. How do you build an employee pool?

Talent pools are more than just a database of suitable candidates’ profiles. Building a talent pool is the most effective method for proactive recruiting and is an effective long-term strategy for filling job positions with high-quality candidates faster than ever.

3. What is the purpose of a talent pool and how to maintain it?

Talent pool management is aimed at improvizing business performance through cost-effective recruitment practices that make employees more productive and helps them stay relevant.

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