Last week, I spoke about Talent Communities and inevitably what I envision them to be.  But let’s take a step back and talk about what many organizations have in place today: Talent Pools.

 

For those unfamiliar with Talent Pools.  Talent Pools are a collection of recruiting contacts separated by specific disciplines & other factors.  The contacts in these Talent Pools are then contacted and utilized to help fill future positions.

 

First off, Talent Pools are an incredibly efficient way to group and utilize contacts that you’ve collected through opt-in and sourcing channels.  With Talent Pools, you can create a systematic process that enables you to reach and connect with candidates that you think could be good for the position you are trying to fill.  And it’s easy to do so for every job you need to fill.

 

Talent Pools, however, get a bad rap for a few reasons:

• The contacts in these pools often get old, stale & become unusable
• Many organizations do not engage with contacts other than to push them jobs (which they may or may not be interested or qualified for.)
• Companies don’t offer a way for candidates to communicate with their organization (i.e. no bi-directional communication)

So how can we improve the Talent Pools that we currently have in place and embrace the Social Revolution to not only improve the experience of candidates in these pools but to make them more valuable to our recruiting organization.

 

Here are a few ways to make your Talent Pool process more social:

 

Become Content Sharers:  In order to provide more value to contacts in your Talent Pools, start sharing targeted content with each one of your Talent Pools.  Some of this information can be general about your company but also try and share content that is helpful only to select Talent Pools.  This content can be anything from white papers, industry developments to educational opportunities.  Your jobs are definitely content you will want to share but make sure to also provide other useful information so candidates see you as a valued source.

The biggest thing is that the content is specific to the Talent Pool you are communicating with.  For example, chemical engineers should receive content specifically designed for chemical engineers and not marketers.

Provide Options: You are currently enabling candidates to opt-in on your Career Site, via your job distribution campaigns and sourcing them directly into your CRM.  But what options are you providing candidates in terms of the way they want to be interacted with? Probably not many.

When candidates enter what I like to call your Talent Network enable candidates to engage and interact with your content and job info on the channel they choose.  Whether that’s email, SMS or social channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), provide options for how they would like to be contacted, receive content and interact with your brand.

Also be aware of information overload with certain channels.  You should not be sharing content via email or SMS multiple times a day.  But on social channels this is totally acceptable and encouraged.

Contact Directly: Mass communication to targeted Talent Pools has its place and usefulness.  And should be done for every job ad you are trying to fill.  However, it is no substitute from contacting someone directly.  For candidates that are most qualified, make sure to have a recruiter reach out to them directly.  That’s as social as it gets.

Leverage Social Data: In order to keep up to date with what contacts are doing with their careers, make sure to utilize social data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn within the candidate records you have in your Recruiting CRM or database.  This data can help your recruiters keep up to date with top candidates especially when they call them about new positions.

Create customer service channels: Whether it’s utilizing social channels or setting up a recruiting customer service email, provide ways for candidates to contact you and ask questions.  Most importantly, respond in a reasonable amount of time.  Also, share the questions & answers somewhere in your recruitment marketing process as it will be helpful to other candidates.

The value from Talent Pools doesn’t just come from the quality of the candidates that are in the pools (as this definitely has an impact) but also hinges on their engagement with your messaging.  The more value you can provide to these contacts on a regular basis, the more engagement (and hopefully more hires) you can expect from your Talent Pools.