Talent Pooling: Enabling you to hire when it matters most

Do you have a talent pool you can utilise to quickly and effectively locate talent with hard-to-find skills?

In the words of Eric Feng: "25% of the workforce is actively looking [for a job] at any given time, but 85% is willing to talk”.

This quote summarises the current employment market where candidates, especially those with niche skills, are hard to find and hard to keep.

If your organisation is continually driven by the need to hire significant volumes of candidates with hard-to-find business-critical skills, but you’re reluctant to outsource your recruitment, targeting passive candidates by developing talent pools might be a good solution for you.

What is the goal of talent pooling?

The goal of the talent pool is to identify professionals who may not be ready to move to a new job or who you may not be ready to hire just yet, but who meet all of your potential hiring requirements and would be willing to work for your organisation in the future.

The candidates entered into your talent pool might be there for days, weeks, months or even years before they come aboard but through that time, they should be kept engaged, communicated with and interested in your organisation.

There is a number of different resources organisations can and should use in order to develop their own talent pools:

• The right technology to collect and store data and communicate with users in the database.
• Sourcing tools and technologies such as traditional advertisements, social media, PPC, job boards and other online and offline platforms.
• Talent pool manager responsible for coordination of project and resources.
• Sourcing specialists.
• Community manager responsible for engaging with the audience on an ongoing basis to keep them warm and interested in your company.

Building a talent pool is a long, complex and time consuming process, but one that can:

• Significantly reduce your costs of recruitment
• Reduce the time to hire
• Give you quick access to candidates, especially when you need them most
• Streamline your recruitment process
• Free up your HR and TA specialists to focus on adding value to your broader business

There are two ways to acquire talent pools: either build your own or outsource the project.

How does talent pooling outsourcing work?

Successful talent pooling requires a combination of infrastructure, resources, market knowledge, technology and, above all, ongoing commitment.

Here’s an example of how we design, develop and manage talent pools for our clients:

1. Everything starts with the brief. This detailed brief is what enables the talent pooling service provider to understand the roles, skills required, aptitude and attitudes for successful hires.

Hiring managers and existing employees are interviewed to identify the traits of a great employee. We learn how your business works, what challenges you face on a daily basis and what your goals are and the issues you’re looking to fix.

2. Every talent pooling project has a dedicated manager appointed at the beginning of the process. This manager serves as a single point of contact for the client and manages all database specialists, every aspect of sourcing, market mapping and all the other resources and tools.

3. The execution of the project begins with extensive research and market mapping. Our research centre is what allows us to design the most effective strategies. We move into a deep sourcing exercise which is based on various online tactics. We continue expanding the talent pool through the use of social media, networking, our global forums and platforms, alumni groups and societies, fairs and events.

These processes and campaigns steadily expand the scope of the talent pool.

4. Once the talent pool is built, your talent acquisition team receives access to technology that allows you to browse through all the candidates in the talent pool in an easy way. It gives you access to their details related to their experience, skills and other information that allows you to asses who best fits your immediate requirements. You are provided with any training you might require.

5. The project isn’t over yet as ongoing outreach work is carried out to continue engaging with candidates in your talent pool to promote your brand and maintain their interest. The goal here is to make sure that they are open to a conversation and ready to enter your recruitment process, whenever the need arises.

6. Talent pooling must be consent-based and compliant with the applicable local data protection regulations. We aim to achieve consent through positive communication of your company, your values and the benefits of joining your organisation – communication must therefore always be useful and relevant. This allows us to always stay 100% compliant.

7. In terms of keeping more senior professionals and specialists with hard-to-find skill sets engaged, it is common to organise regular in-person communication opportunities, ideally face-to-face. This is crucial even if the candidates aren’t actively searching for jobs as the goal is to be on their radar once they become ready to make their next career move.

People and technology: The 2 key elements

The entire projects relies on two elements: people and technology.

People bring their market knowledge and experience, those who are familiar with the most effective techniques and tools and those who have wide networks and strong relationships in the industry.

Technology then integrates seamlessly with marketing automation and campaign management tools, which track the status of candidates through the “funnel” from first contact to placement, while maintaining just the right level of contact during the stages in between.

The end result is a highly customised talent pool full of suitable candidates engaged with your brand and on standby to be recruited by your in-house talent acquisition team when it matters. In this way the cost and time to hire can be dramatically reduced – it moves your talent acquisition from the reactive to the proactive.

If you’d like to find out if talent pooling would be suitable for your business and recruitment model, please get in touch with us here to arrange an informal conversation.