Building your own successful Talent Network can be a long and hard journey.  However, through duel purpose job ads, resume sourcing, recruiting / networking events, active web sourcing and mobile recruiting you can quickly and effectively build your own Talent Network.  The question, however, is how do you make sure that all the contacts you source are as fresh and usable a year from now as they are now?

Qualified candidates are consistently looking for new and better opportunities.  3-6 months after you add them to your Recruiting CRM or recruitment database, they can be at a new position, new company or have changed their contact information.  The value of these contacts has diminished.  And there’s not much you can do about it, right?  Wrong.

There are a number of ways for you to keep your Talent Network as fresh 6 months from now as it is today.  Here are a few ways you can go about keeping contacts updated:

Automated Follow-Up: Depending on the Technology you are using to manage and utilize your Talent Network, there may be the option to auto follow-up with your own contacts.  Every 2 months or so, an email can be sent to contacts thanking them for being part of your Talent Network and asking them to update any changed information for their profile.  This is a simple & easy way to automatically connect with contacts and update your own information.

Leverage Social Data: Social data on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can provide a wealth of data on qualified candidates.  Assuming a candidate provides their LinkedIn profile, you can have your CRM automatically update the contacts career information every few months based on changes in their LinkedIn profile information.  This is a great way to keep up to date with the career trajectory of your best contacts.

Leveraging Social Channels: If you have created social profiles for your recruiting organization on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, make sure to use them to keep in touch and engage with qualified candidates in your Talent Network.  Social Channels are a nice low leverage way to keep in touch with these contacts.

Use your Talent Network as a Primary Recruiting Channel: By this I mean that for every new recruitment marketing campaign that you run, you should send a email & SMS campaign to relevant contacts in your Talent Network.  This will not only get your more applicants for your job ad but will keep you top of mind as these contacts are looking for new and better opportunities.

Building a Talent Network in and of itself is not the end goal for recruiting.  Building a Talent Network that continues to grow and be relevant, however, is what you should strive for.  The key is to have processes in place that enable you do this.

Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Technology Blog.