What is a talent pool?

Simplified, your talent pool is your database of potential job candidates. Those included within this database are usually of a high calibre – highly qualified and engaged, having previously expressed a vested interest in your organisation or having been identified and actively head hunted – either through previous applications, signing up to your database, work placements and experience or through having previously worked with you through third parties.

Your talent pool allows you to foster positive relationships with individuals whose skills and expertise align with your business goals, values and culture.

An effective talent pool will contain information on each candidate – including their core competencies and potentially suitable roles, how they fit within your culture and with the future of your business.

Your talent pool gives you a strong starting point when it comes to recruiting for vacancies within your business – starting with a list of highly-qualified candidates who are already engaged with your business.

Building and maintaining a high quality talent pool forms a core part of any candidate attraction and recruitment strategy, providing the following core benefits:

• Reduced cost-per-hire
• Reduced time-to-hire
• Improved quality-of-hire

How do I build my talent pool?

1. Define suitable candidates
To build an effective talent pool for your organisation, you first need to define a profile of the type of candidates that would be the best fit for your organisation. This profiling can be based upon a number of criteria that fit within the traditional recruitment process, including, but not limited to; experience, skills and qualifications.

Successful talent pool candidates will vary from organisation to organisation. The role of your talent pool, as highlighted above, is to aid the successful and timely fulfilment of your future recruitment needs as well as existing vacancies. To this end, it is vital that you consider both current and future needs when setting your profile(s).

2. Fill your talent pool with suitable candidates
Identifying the right talent for your business is key to talent acquisition and retention. Filling your talent pool is an ongoing strategy that requires the ongoing proactive search for candidates, as opposed to reactively responding to applications.

Your approach to this proactive search should be defined and applied consistently. Strategies for identifying the ideal talent include:

• Social sourcing:
Social sourcing is more than simply posting vacancies on your own social profiles. You can use social networks to identify individuals that align with your talent pool profile and build a relationship with them – building trust and aligning them with your organisation and building them into your talent pool. Join industry groups on LinkedIn to help with your search, and ensure you remain active within your own company profile page(s) to keep those you have engaged with up-to-date and interested.

• Internal Referral Programme:
Your own internal network of talent are vital to the successful identification of candidates. Their interests and values are already aligned with your organisation and will likely be reflected by their own networks – personally and professionally. By creating an internal referral programme you can incentivise and empower those within your organisation in shaping the future of your business.

• Networking:

Hosting and attending network events serve as a great means of engaging with and attracting talent.
Ongoing Engagement and Management of your Talent Pool
Once filled, it’s vital that you continue to engage your talent pool. Dependent on your strategy and profile(s), many of your candidates make be passive job seekers, so converting them may take time. Keeping them up-to-date with current and identified future vacancies will keep them engaged, as well and keeping them informed with changes within your organisation that could positively engage them.

For more information on building a tailored talent pool for your organisation, get in touch today!