Imagine coming across a remarkable candidate who has shown interest in your company and you know they would be a fantastic and successful addition to your team but you do not have a suitable open position for him or her at the time. How do you track this candidate for future opportunities and how do you ensure their ongoing interest in working for your company in the future. The best solution for this situation is to add this individual to your talent pool.
Talent Pool - Defined
A talent pool is defined as an organized, digital collection of professional profiles of people who are of high potential to take on future open positions at your company. A talent pool can be an in-house list of current, high-potential employees that you are training or intend to develop for future, higher-level roles roles, or an outside list of qualified and promising candidates that have shown interest in your company but have yet to be hired. For this article, we will focus on the latter group when referring to a "talent pool."
The Value of a Talent Pool
Making a great hire can be a long and arduous process however, keeping a maintained and active talent pool will ensure that you have quality candidates at the ready when you have an open position. Instead of starting from scratch in your search for a new hire every time you have a position open up, a talent pool could save you a lot of time and effort - especially for roles that become suddenly and unexpectedly vacant.
Talent Pool Maintenance
An active talent pool cannot fulfill its purpose without a bit of regular maintenance. Highly qualified and highly promising candidates can lose interest in your company as an employer over time, or move away or retire etc. To keep your talent pool up-to-date and to maintain a candidate's interest level in your company, small but regular amounts of engagement should be made.
By staying in touch with the people in your talent pool, you will be able to determine any shift in a candidate's availability and, more importantly, show the candidate that you still have them on your radar for future roles in order to keep their interest piqued.
This demonstrated consideration and diligence will also show your future potential hires that your company is a notable employer that highly values and appreciates its employees (both current and future).
Things you can do to keep potential future candidates engaged include sending them personalized content (whether through email or over social media platforms), inviting them to events (hosted by your company or other events related to their profession), share your company newsletters with them, or just reach out on occasion to verify that their information is still up to date.
Members of your talent pool are also likely to follow your company developments through news, social media, or through your website. Therefore it is also important to maintain your employer branding and promotional materials. Consistently publish press releases and social media posts about the latest and most exciting developments at your company to keep your talent pool interested and engaged.
Conclusion
Maintaining a talent pool is a proactive form a recruitment that results in having accessible candidates who are far more likely to respond to your open opportunities. By investing a bit of time and effort into potential future employees, you can save a great amount of time and effort when it comes time to hire.
