One of the biggest challenges organisations face today is where to start with proactive Talent Pooling.  When you are tied up with business-as-usual recruitment activities and you’re operating in a lean environment – it is very difficult to make the time for being proactive. Starting with Talent Pooling basics is a simple and easy way to get started.

How does LiveHire help with Talent Pooling?

LiveHire works closely with recruiting teams who are embracing the Talent Community concept and are transforming the way in which they source, engage and recruit talent while using our Talent Pool functionality. At LiveHire, one of the most common problems we hear from recruiting professionals is the desire to be more proactive and be able to build a pipeline of talent for future roles. Unfortunately, many are constrained due to capacity issues, a lack of capability, no technology and/or lack of leadership support to do anything about it. Talent Pooling is an easy and proactive way for organisations to showcase how beneficial these tools are to support your organisation in recruiting for the future.

What roles should I be Talent Pooling?

A workforce plan is a great place to start. If you don’t have a plan, your best course of action should be to consult with the hiring managers and/or HR in your business to understand what types of roles they are forecasting over the coming 6-12 months. Ask them to consider projected attrition/turnover as well as potential and planned business growth. This may seem like an impossible task but you might be surprised with what you can learn by simply having this conversation.

Take a look back at your hiring outcomes for the past year and compare to what you are currently recruiting for. Ask what were/are the critical roles? Who are the retention risks? What were/are the high volume / high churn roles? What was outsourced to/filled by recruitment agencies? Start with these.

How do I build and manage Talent Pools?

Start by establishing the criteria of what you are looking for in your talent and the roles which you will be Talent Pooling for. It might be your entire workforce or it might just be your business critical, and hard to fill roles. At LiveHire, we consider the following criteria when Talent Pooling for our future growth:

• Key attributes, skills, and qualifications
• Geography
• Alternate job titles for the roles you’re recruiting

We often hear about Talent (Pools) being managed via spreadsheets – this makes us cringe. Spreadsheets are great for recording, organising and managing data, not people. As the Talent Pool(s) starts to grow – the management of this spreadsheet and the associated engagement activities becomes unsustainable. When you overlay that with day-to-day recruitment activities, you’ll soon find there is no time to be proactive anymore and your Talent Pool spreadsheet becomes a talent graveyard.

Sound familiar?

Consider investing in a technology solution that will help to manage your talent effectively and gives you the ability to nurture those relationships in a humanised and responsive way. The user experience will be far superior to your spreadsheet, not to mention the productivity gains you’ll make by eliminating the admin burden as a result. LiveHire’s Talent Pool Management is powered by smart matching so it does some of the heavy lifting for you. It will suggest high-quality people from your Talent Community that you should consider pooling based on the talent profile criteria you have established. It even makes it easy to communicate with your top talent to let them know your hiring.

How do I grow my Talent Pools?

1. Previous employees/alumni
2. Referrals
3. Past Applicants
4. Sourcing

Previous Employees/Alumni’s:

Understandably, not all employees that leave your business are ‘good’ leavers, but what about the ones that are? The ones that already know your business? The ones that your hiring managers would bring back in a heartbeat? Reconnect with your good leavers and let them know they’re welcome back any time!

Referrals:

Leverage your biggest brand advocates (your existing employees and Alumni’s) to refer quality people into your Talent Pools. Once you’ve established what talent you need to pool consider running a referral campaign to help grow your Talent Pool.

Past Applicants:

Revisit your past applicants who progressed to the interview stage – they are a great way to start growing your Talent Pool of potential candidates. Use the opportunity to identify these people and even better, reconnect with them to let them know you haven’t forgotten about them.

Sourcing:

Job Adverts and Expressions of Interest will always have a place in your sourcing approach and are a long term play. They are a great way to initially grow and then supplement and refresh your Talent Pools. However, they typically yield high volumes of active candidates of which only a very small percentage are the quality you are looking for. This is a reactive approach to sourcing and means you’re creating unnecessary and time-consuming work reviewing lots of applications and rejecting people, and that’s only if you’ve had time to review them.

Consider being targeted and creative in your approach. What is the demographic you are targeting? Take the time to understand who they are – What online platforms, forums, or social media are they on? What are they reading? What events/ expos/ meetups/ forums are they attending? Where do they hang out in their spare time? Ask the people already doing the role or the Hiring Managers in your organisation for this intel and use this to formulate your sourcing strategy.

The key here is to be proactive in identifying and qualifying people before the need (job vacancy) arises.

Why Talent Pool?

Proactive Talent Pooling is a great way to get your organisation ready to hire candidates. LiveHire research has even shown that previously Talent Pooled candidates will give you a quicker time to hire and a better experience for everyone involved. Early Talent Pooling allows you to pre-screen and engage with candidates so when a role comes up you can quickly reach out to your top 3 candidates and present them to the hiring manager. There is less candidate rejection with a smaller shortlist, less hiring manager time invested in looking through candidates that aren’t suitable and finally a quicker process for your recruiters so they can spend more time doing what they love – engaging with potential future employees for your organisation.

LiveHire offers an award-winning, cloud-based Talent Acquisition & Engagement Platform. It dramatically accelerates your end-to-end hiring process and revolutionises your candidate and recruiter experience

To learn more about how LiveHire can transform your recruitment process, visit us here. 🙌#GetLiveHired