What is a Talent Pool?

- Why should I have a talent pool?
- How to plan a talent pool
- Who should I add to my talent pool and how?
- How to find, engage, nurture, and communicate with my talent pools?
- Summary

A talent pool is an organised group of strong potential candidates for your future hiring needs. Candidates in a talent pool may have particularly desirable skills and experience, have previously applied for roles with your organisation or simply expressed an interest in working for you in the future.

Talent pools can be created and saved anywhere but are most commonly held within an ATS or CRM, where they can be easily created and managed.

Why should I have a talent pool?

Talent pools or talent communities should play a central role in any recruitment strategy. They provide a framework and a place to save, find, create, and foster relationships with potential future hires across the key areas of talent where you plan or need to hire and develop people as part of your business growth plan.

The creation and management of talent pools should always align with your people and organisational plan, so it’s always important to start with this in mind or run the risk of numerous buckets of people with no clear organisation or value.

Having easy to access, well organised, qualified and engaged groups of candidates can provide an invaluable pipeline of people for your future hiring needs. These groups can save significant amounts of time and cost in terms of being pro-active, prepared, saving time-to-hire, having better qualified candidates, and consequently better quality hires which perform better too.

How to plan a talent pool

It’s good to start with a clear plan of the key roles within your organisation which are either hard to hire or are most commonly recruited for. This is where the greatest value will lie for you in terms of pre-qualified and engaged potential hires.

You may also want to create a structure that aligns with your organisational design in terms of all the key roles and levels, to provide a clear unified framework and ideally lock it down, otherwise you can end up with numerous groups with differing names set-up by recruiters for their individual needs, as opposed to the wider company. If you operate across multiple locations, sites or divisions, consider this when planning out your pools too and ensure that they’re easy to identify for recruiters and hiring managers alike.

You might also want to consider additional groups for ‘early careers’ and even an alumni group, for those that have left your company but might return or be able to help you to share opportunities or workplace stories to help grow awareness of your employer brand and the opportunities you offer!

A good ATS will offer lots of flexibility to organise talent pools by department, location and even access rights so that users only have access to the talent pools which are relevant to them. You might also want to lock-down the ability to create and edit talent pools to certain users, to make sure they stay organised and consistent. 

Who should I add to my talent pool and how?

In the planning phase, you’ll have considered the hardest to recruit and in-demand groups of potential hires and this is a good place to start.

Everyone’s approach will be different. Some reserve their talent pools for pre-qualified candidates only, whereas others will create clear and open ‘Join our Talent Pool/Talent Community’ areas and forms on their careers website for the different areas of the organisation.

Typical groups might include:

• Via careers fairs, recruitment open days and events
• Capturing speculative candidates via the careers website or job pages (often for high volume needs like drivers or carers)
• By a recruiter from the ATS – especially for qualified, desirable candidates who may have been silver medallists (a candidate who came a close second at interview stage) for previous roles.
• Alumni groups, added when they leave your organisation – they may be keen to help with sharing jobs, content, and recommending referrals.

Don’t ask for too much information (from recruiters or job seekers) when adding a candidate to a talent pool, but make sure you capture key data including:

1. Name
2. Email
3. Job title
4. LinkedIn profile link (if relevant)
5. CV
6. Job category or department
7. Region or location

How to find, engage, nurture, and communicate with my talent pools?

It is essential that you have a clear plan to communicate with all groups in your talent pools, otherwise you’ll be left with a list of names of people that are not engaged and will most likely choose to opt out and leave after a period of time.

You may want to tailor the communications you send out too. Set-up simple filters by Type (e.g. Alumni, Silver Medallists, Speculative applicants etc), Business Area/Specialism, and Location.

Its most common form is potential jobs or job alerts (which candidates have signed up for) shared via email and text message. An email newsletter where candidates receive information on a monthly or quarterly basis helps them better understand the company, its values, news updates etc, so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not to apply when they are ready for a new job.

Online (webinars) and offline events (careers fairs and recruitment days), and other forms of communication can also be used when keeping in touch with these potential hires.

You should be able to easily identify all activity against each member, what they’ve been sent, who’s called and contacted them, and also any notes too.

Think of your talent pools or community as THE place to go to find and engage with anyone that has shown and interest in working for you.

Summary

The idea behind talent pools and communities is pretty straightforward but its potential impact on hiring effectiveness and efficiency can be huge!

A good ATS will give you all the tools you need to create your talent pools, and with a bit of planning and preparation and some regular time invested in bringing these groups to life with communication and engagement, your effort will be paid back over and over and give you the edge over the competition!