On this blog, we talk a lot about building your Talent Network and we go over all the ways that you can start building it today.  But the question that comes up most when we're talking to recruiting professionals is how do you leverage your Talent Network once you've built it?

Your Talent Network is a group of recruiting contacts that you collect through both active and passive sourcing efforts and store in a database, recruiting CRM or excel spreadsheets.  It is comprised of contacts that are both actively looking and are job shopping but most importantly these contacts have an interest in the jobs you offer and the industry you are in.  The larger you build this Talent Network, the longer the reach of employment branding messaging.

A Talent Network is your own free recruiting channel to leverage in your recruitment marketing strategy and needs to be implemented into every job campaign you run in order to get the most out of it. Measure these campaigns against other recruiting channels you use such as job boards and social networks with recruitment metrics and try to improve the performance of these campaigns.

Here are a few ways that you can effectively leverage your Talent Network to get more applicants:

Send Targeted Communications for every job campaign: You've built your Talent Network, why not use it?  For every job campaign you send to job boards and social networks, also send an targeted email or mobile recruiting campaigns to the recruiting contacts you have that have had interest in similar jobs in the past.  Some of these contacts not only will apply but just as important you will keep your organization top of mind as they are looking for jobs.

Referral rewards aren't just for employees: So you have a job that is hard to fill or you need filled fast and you put a referral reward on it for your employees.  The real question is why not offer this outside the company as well?  One of the first places to start is to include the referral reward info in your targeted email campaigns to your Talent Network.  Make it easy for them to take advantage of these opportunities and you'll have your referral program working better than ever.

Rate and reach out individually: Not every contact in your Talent Network is worth the same with some contacts are more sought after than others for your organization.  So it's important to continuously look through the contacts in your Talent Network and begin categorizing and rating them for use in future job campaigns.

Once you have these contacts categorized, you will then be able to take actionable steps to search your Talent Network and find the best Talent Network candidates that your recruiters can reach out to for new open positions.  The key is to target the best candidates and reach out to them individually instead of just a bulk email campaign (which isn't a bad 2nd option).

While targeting these better candidates may take more time for your recruiters in the short term, it can save time and energy once you get to the interview stage as you know that you have quality candidates that are now in your recruiting process.

Your Talent Network is a free recruiting channel that you should utilize as much as possible.  Every new job campaign you run should include a campaign to a targeted group of contacts in your Talent Network.  While building your Talent Network is an important first step, it's useless unless you strategize how to use the contacts you collect to drive candidates to become applicants in your ATS.

Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog.