Talent Pool

    Talent Pool Meaning

    A talent pool is a group of qualified candidates (by employment preference, experience, skills or geographical) that can be contacted when a vacancy is received.

    With the job market is as complex as it is, talent pooling is a vital resource that can help you find the right talent for each role in a bank of relevant candidate profiles. If you’re looking to build a talent pool, it can consist of both active and passive candidates and will ultimately increase efficiency in filling roles.

    Why are talent pools important to recruitment agencies?

    Talent pools play a vital role in the success of a recruitment agency. Not only does it help improve the employer branding to have a robust talent pipeline, but it also has a number of other benefits, such as:

    Access to Suitable Candidates

    By building talent pools and actively engaging with skilled candidates within it, recruitment agencies can find top talent to fill open roles quickly and efficiently. Accelerate the recruitment process by quickly reaching out to potential candidates that have already taken talent assessments and are thus pre-qualified to fill a role.

    Reduced Time to Fill

    Talent pools enable a recruitment agency to build a group of qualified candidates that have expressed interest in an opportunity. Recruiters can then quickly source qualified, potential candidates that can meet both current and future needs without starting the recruitment process from scratch.

    Access to Passive Candidates

    A talent pool enables a recruitment agency to engage passive candidates that may not be actively looking, but are open to exploring other career opportunities. By engaging with passive candidates, a recruitment agency won’t risk losing the best talent and will ultimately have more successful candidates.

    Who should fill your talent pool?

    There are many potential applicants you can utilise to build talent pools to help speed up the hiring process and ensure that you have a secure talent pipeline:

    • Active Job Candidates – Candidates that are actively looking for a new job and are interested in being contacted and considered for open positions.

    • Passive Candidates – While passive candidates aren’t actively looking at job boards, they could still be great candidates and are typically open to the right role or development opportunities.

    • Former Applicants – People who have previously shown interest and applied for roles with a company or with a recruitment agency. Even unsuccessful candidates for one role can be perfect for another and the benefit of building talent pools and using an applicant tracking system is that you can retain their details to re-engage when the right role comes along.

    • Referrals – Candidates that have been put up for the role by current employees, clients, former employees, or other contacts. Referred talent comes with a higher level of trust and credibility that makes them strong candidates for current and future opportunities

    • University Graduates and Interns – Recent graduates, interns, and graduates to be can all be a strong addition to your talent pool for entry level roles. Build relationships with universities and colleges, through career fairs and partnerships, to engage students and identify top talent early in their career.

    How to use your talent pool

    Integrating your talent pool strategy with the Eclipse recruitment management system is a valuable method of streamlining processes and improving the candidate experience.

    Once you have built your talent pool, there are several things you can do to aid your recruitment efforts:

    Source and Organise

    Eclipse integrates with job boards, social media platforms and more to find sourced candidates to add to your database. You are also able to import candidate data from existing databases or spreadsheets and consolidate your talent pool. This can save time and improve the candidate experience as you are not having to locate or ask for the same information multiple times.

    You are then able to use custom fields within the software to capture specific information on both external candidates and internal talent that aligns with your objectives and goals. Using tags and categories will enable you to segment candidates based on skills, experience, industry and other relevant criteria.

    Communication

    Maintaining contact with your talent pool is key to improving the candidate experience. Using the Eclipse software you will be able to set up automated emails and notifications to send items such as job alerts, industry news, newsletters and updates. Maintaining regular communication with your candidates is essential, it will help you to retain top talent and engage new candidates.

    Data and Analytics

    The value that can be gained from data and analytics should not be underestimated. Within Eclipse, you can use dashboards to get all the necessary relevant information and real time data. Using this data you can analyse if your talent pool strategy is working and if there are any gaps or areas for improvement.

    Showcase your talent pool

    Curating a talent pool is a pointless task if you’re not going to showcase it. You can provide clients with a list of the best employees that will meet their requirements, present top candidates through various channels such as email campaigns and social media.

    You have worked hard to find the perfect candidates, putting them in front of the right clients is essential. Providing clients with customised reports and candidates that meet their needs is key to maintaining strong relationships and having a competitive edge in the recruitment industry.