I know I’ve been speaking a lot about Talent Communities on this blog lately but for this post I’m going to use a term I like better, which is Talent Network.  A Talent Network is a collection of candidates that your organization engages with from a recruiting perspective.  The engagement is bi-directional with the hope being that you not only engage with the individual but you are eventually able to engage with the individual’s network as well.  It is not a community in the sense of the word but can be just as powerful in terms of engaging with potential candidates for your company.

No matter the term you use, your Talent Network (or Talent Community) is only as valuable as the candidates that you have as part of it.  If you have no one in your Talent Network, you have no one to engage with or send targeted messaging towards.  So the question is how do you get candidates into your Talent Network so you can start engaging?

When I look at this question, I break the answer into two main activities: Opt-In and Sourcing.  Most if not all the candidates that become a part of your Talent Network will come from these two activities.

Let’s take a deeper look into these two ways to build your Talent Network.

Opt-In

Opt-In refers to the process of enabling candidates to opt-in to your Talent Network on all the channels and content that you utilize.  A candidate will make a conscience choice to provide your company with their contact information so that they can be engaged with and kept appraised with opportunities at your organization.

The biggest advantage of Opt-In channels is that they are low maintenance.  Once you set them up, you should be able to capture candidates without doing any additional work and instead focus on engaging with the candidates that make their way into your Talent Network

When candidates opt-in they can come in from a number of different channels.  Here’s a few to keep aware of:

Dual Purpose Job Ads: When you a looking to fill a job position you are more than likely going using multiple job boards, social networks, job search engines, etc.  With each job distribution campaign you run, you have a unique opportunity to drive candidates not only into your ATS as applicants but also into your Talent Network as contacts.

To do this, many companies are adding simple opt-in forms directly into the apply process right before the job application.  Once a candidate clicks apply they are taken to a simple form asking for basic contact info (name, email, phone, etc.) and then are passed to the application afterwards.  Nearly 70-80% of candidates fill this out and it makes a great way to build contacts in your system.

Career Site: Candidates may be interested in your company but there might not be a job position currently that fits their skills & experience.  For these candidates it’s essential to have a form on your website to drive them into your Talent Network or Recruiting CRM.

Recruiting Content: Your organization has a lot of recruiting content out there and it’s important to enable contacts that view this content to easily opt-in to your Talent Network.  Recruiting content can include your YouTube channel, employment blog, your recruiter’s blogs, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, Twitter profile, your Recruitment SEO site, etc.  Anywhere you are promoting your employer brand, you should provide candidates with ability to opt-in.

With all the channels you use, it’s important to understand where the most recruiting contacts are coming from.  Make sure to set up recruiting metrics in your process so you know where your contacts are coming from and see if you can increase the number of candidates that come into your Talent Network.

Sourcing

This method is a much more involved process than opt-in with recruiters and sourcers actively going out and bringing candidates into your Talent Network.  The one major advantage of this over opt-in is that you have control over who is brought into your database (anyone can opt-in) and therefore the candidates should mostly be qualified and good potential candidates for your company.

Whether you are sourcing candidates through Google, LinkedIn, resume databases, networking events, career fairs or any number of other channels, you need to make sure your process and the technology you utilize enables a few things:

1. Easily enables you to enter (mass) contacts into your CRM.
2. During this process, your sourcers must be able to add notes, tags and other identifying information to contacts when they enter the CRM.
3. You need to be able to simply search your contacts to find candidates that fit future positions.  As your Talent Network, should be your first sourcing channel you use.

Sourcing can be a great way to get qualified candidates into your Talent Network for current & future jobs.  You need to be careful in acquiring consent from candidates and making sure that you are providing value to the candidates that you engage with that didn’t necessarily opt-in.

Where does Social Recruiting fit in?

Social Recruiting definitely offers potential in both methods and offers shades of grey into the process.  Any candidate that follows or joins your Social Recruiting profiles essentially is opting in to your recruitment marketing messaging.  They are giving permission to engage with them.  When you add in having simple opt-in opportunities associated with your Social Recruiting profiles it can definitely help on the opt-in side.

From a sourcing perspective, social channels are becoming important in finding candidates as well.  Organizations are beginning to realize the potential of these social channels (a vast number of the population is a part of one or more of these channels) and proactively search these channels to find qualified candidates.  This should only become more prevalent.

With Social Recruiting, it’s becoming more and more important that the technology you use enables not only the ability to source from the big three (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) but also to be able to retroactively pull these profiles for candidates that come in from another method.

The Big Finish

A successful Talent Network is continuously being updated and added to.  Adding candidates to your Talent Network is an important step but it’s only the first one.  Once contacts are in your system, you need to actively filter and screen the candidates that are in your CRM and identify the ones that you want to engage with.  It’s through this engagement that you gain value from your Talent Network.

Just like the recruiting process itself, your Talent Network will be a continually changing and evolving tool in your recruiting arsenal.