In short, more connections means more opportunities for your message to reach the right people. For recruiting, this is extremely important. Companies that are the
most competitive are being successful in building their Talent Network. Every recruitment marketing activity is a tremendous opportunity to build upon this Talent Network but in what ways can we make it easy for qualified candidates to add themselves to your network. Here are a few ways to get started:

1. Email / SMS Opt In - Create a easy to use Opt In page in your apply process. Collect interested candidate information and keep them in the loop on new opportunities that are available at your company.
2. Recruitment Database - Connect this opt-in page to a Database that allows you to send targeted recruiting messages to selected individuals. You don’t want to send every message to every candidate but only the messages that fit their interests and backgrounds. The worst thing you can do is get candidates to opt out of your recruiting messages!
3. Set up Social Network Profiles - Set up company and more importantly recruiting accounts on Facebook and Twitter. Give candidates an outlet to get in contact with you and leverage these profiles to connect with qualified (and interested) candidates that are following these accounts.
4. Recruitment CRM – Most companies won’t need to start from scratch in building their talent networks. Their recruiters and HR professionals should already have a great base of contacts that they’ve sourced over the years. The biggest action they need to make however, is centralizing these contacts in one place so these contacts can be leveraged across the whole recruiting organization. A Recruitment CRM can help you do just that.
5. Share great content - One of the best ways to create brand advocates is to be helpful at all times. Make sure that when you are sharing content with your Talent Network, you are providing content that is useful and helpful to your contacts. Sharing open job positions is great but also provide your contacts with information that can help them in their careers.

Recruiting is not just a numbers game, but it is a relationships game with each candidate being a possible connection to add to your Talent Network. These candidates not only become potential applicants for future jobs but all their connections become potential applicants as well. Recruiting is no longer about adding to your Candidate Pools, it is building your Talent Network!

About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly is the provider of the first recruitment marketing platform called WildFire that enables companies and staffing firms to easily distribute and more importantly measure the performance of their recruiting efforts online.

The WildFire recruitment marketing platform offers every tool you need for your recruitment marketing needs all in one centralized solution including Real-Time Recruitment Metrics, Job Ad Distribution (job boards, social networks, SEM, email & SMS campaigns), Recruitment Opt-In Database, Recruitment CRM, Web Commercials / Micro-sites and Resume Sourcing services.