By Karen Bucks, an iCIMS Blogger

Yes, I know, I just made up that word, but read on and I'll show you what I mean.

It’s almost 10:00 am, I’m sure most of you are well on your way to reaching out to those top talent candidates you have in your recruiting pipeline. Or, if you are on the employee side, you are probably looking for new trainings to offer or new benefit programs to implement. Candidate and employee engagement is an ongoing topic HR professionals must look to improve. Why? Because the talent you currently employ and the prospective talent you hope to employ is that which will power overall company success.

Whether you are talking about candidates or employees, if HR professionals didn't maintain talent engagement, those people would be gone in a flash. Some known tips include targeted and frequent email messaging, branded career sites, new trainings, and visibility into opportunities for promotion. But one other technique to foster greater candidate and employee engagement that is too often forgotten and equally as important is: to simultaneously power your own HR engagement.

Taking a few lessons from candidate and employee engagement, HR professionals should be provided with the right tools to allow them to succeed in finding top talent that will augment company success.

So how engaged are you? Maybe it’s time to implement a few programs for your benefit.

1. Professional development sessions - HR professionals should have dedicated time where they can focus on optimizing current recruitment processes or learning about the latest techniques.
2. Time allocated to departmental rotations - HR professionals should be given the opportunity to regularly spend a substantial amount of time with each department to understand the interworkings as well as what type of talent is needed to promote departmental and organizational success.
3. Tools provided to facilitate talent management - HR professionals should be provided the right tools to simplify their tasks and make them successful. Such tools could include software like a candidate relationship management solution and an applicant tracking system or they could be something as simple as an open door policy to discuss important issues with the executive team. Either way these tools should simplify an HR associate's daily tasks.

What are some ways you promote your own engagement as well as engagement among your HR coworkers?

On a side note - if you are interested in this topic be sure to check out HCI's webinar from last week, called “Cultivating Talent inside of Acquisition”. This webinar discussed the importance of empowering recruiters and the effects this has on recruitment and company-wide success.