How to Build an Effective Talent Pool: 5 Easy Ways

Talent Pool: A long-term recruiting strategy

A talent pool is a group of highly-qualified candidates who are interested in working for your company.

Talent pools are more than just a database of suitable candidates’ profiles. It is the most effective method for proactive recruiting.

Building a talent pool is a long-term strategy for filling positions that may not even exist at the moment!

Why should you build a Talent Pool?

Imagine if every time you had a new job opening, you had a reserve of highly qualified candidates interested to work for your company.

The only thing you’d had to do is simply pick out the best one among them!
You could skip all the hard work:

You wouldn’t have to create a compelling job posting from your job descriptions.
You wouldn’t have to design and execute brilliant marketing campaigns to promote your open positions.
You wouldn’t have to create and optimize your career site to get more applicants.
You wouldn't have to spend a lot of money to promote your job openings on social media or job boards.
You wouldn’t have to waste your time on a mass of unqualified candidates.

Sounds great, right?

Well, this is why you should build a Talent Pool. Talent Pools are one the most effective methods of Talent Acquisition.

With Talent Pools you can hire better people faster and cheaper.

How to build an effective Talent Pool?

Unfortunately, great candidates don’t come around as often as recruiters would like.

This is why you have to proactively search form them.

So where and how can you find talent to fill your talent pool with? Where to get started?

Start with the candidates that have already applied for your open job positions.

According to Robert Meier, President of Job Market Experts, only the “Top 2%” of candidates make it to the interview”.

And among those candidates that get an interview, you hire only one. So what happens with the second and third best candidate? They are probably the rising stars you will hear more about in the future.

These candidates are called silver medallists and you should definitely sustain relationships that you build with them during your recruiting process.

Besides candidates that have applied for your open job positions, you should also proactively reach out to passive talent, because your best job candidates are probably among them.

Luckily, there are 5 proven ways to do it.

5 ways to build an effective Talent Pool

I will present 5 easy ways to find high-quality candidates to fill your talent pool with.

Pick and choose methods that suit your recruiting needs best!

1. Sourcing tools

Modern sourcing tools perform web search scans of millions of online profiles to retrieve passive and active candidates’ details including email addresses, resumes and more. The profiles that you choose are then automatically added to your talent pool.

2. Referrals

Employee referrals are another great way for building talent pools. Did you know that by using your current employees’ networks you can expand your talent pool by 10 times?

Besides, employee referral programs are proven to improve time, cost and quality of hire.

3. Social media campaigns

Many companies are already using social media to promote your Employer Brand and showcase your company culture. However, a very few are creating a targeted social media recruiting campaign with an aim to invite potential candidates to become a part of their talent pool.

4. Inbound recruiting

Inbound recruiting is attracting candidates to willingly join your talent pool because of the awesome content you are providing. Attract your potential candidates’ attention by writing interesting blogs on your career site, produce company culture videos and share employee testimonials.

5. Landing pages on your career site

The simplest way to grow your talent pool is to create a special landing page on your career site that will serve as an invitation for joining your talent pool. Explain what they can gain by joining your talent pool in and give them instructions for becoming a member of your talent community.