Building a Talent Pool that is Hungry to Work for You

In 2017 the debate rages on about where companies should focus their recruitment efforts. Many hiring professionals argue that active candidates are equally as desirable as passive candidates and reject the notion that all the best talent are in secure jobs and not firing off applications on job boards. Regardless of your position on the whole active vs. passive conundrum, we can all agree that building and fostering a talent community will save you time, money and will attract the right people to help grow your company.
Here are three tips on how to create a talent pool of candidates who will be hungry to work for you:

 Attract

First of all, you need to attract candidates to your business. Unfortunately, no matter how expertly you have crafted your EVP, most candidates will never find it tucked away on your company website. So, herein lies the problem. How can you get your business in front of the right talent and communicate to them all the fantastic things about your company?
We suggest employing PR fundamentals in your recruitment strategy. Before you throw in the towel know this – you do not need to be a public relations superstar to use a PR strategy to recruit A-grade candidates to your company. Let’s start with an example:

Challenge

You just had a meeting with senior management and they identified the company will need a team of expert coders to help grow the company in 2017. Finding these highly skilled workers in a skill-short market will be challenging to say the least.

Where are they?

Where do coders and tech-heads congregate to chat about their craft? Ask your current team of coders where they find information online. They will tell you about blogs and websites such as Ode to Code, Wired and Developer-tech.

How do you reach them?

Ask your coding team to guest post on one of these blogs or websites about something awesome they have done. I’ll bet they have written a piece of code or solved a problem for your company they are immensely proud of. Ask them to share their success with the coding world! These websites are screaming out for guest bloggers.

What are the benefits?

Your brand is in front of people who may never have heard of you, but more importantly – you are now a thought leader. You have demonstrated the incredible skills of people who work for you.
So now, they might go straight to your careers section or they’ll be more likely to apply when they see your job posted on job boards such as Adzuna. There’s no reason why the concept doesn’t work for recruitment agencies too. Hiring and hiring strategy is covered in most industry publications.

 Activate

You now have scores of talented coders who want to work for you. They are inspired by what people in your organisation are achieving and they want a piece of the action. The problem is, you don’t have enough roles for everyone right now. So, how do you keep them interested?
Send them company updates about what you are up to next. Share your successes and plans for the future with them.
Invite them to company events – drinks, pitches, games nights. Here, you can mix with your talent pool and find out exactly who you might be keen to hire next.

 Convert

This is usually the hardest part about recruiting new people to your business. When you have successfully acquired and activated your talent pool, the best talent is at your fingertips. You can quite literally tap someone on the shoulder and ask them if they’d like to come to work for you.
If you’d like to learn more check out our webinar, Candidate Acquisition: The Power of Passive Talent, here. Or join us at the upcoming Sourcing Social Talent 2017 conference series, where we will share with you our insights into the ever-changing Australian jobs market.
Images: Shutterstock

This article is sponsored by Adzuna.

If engaging and hiring diverse active and passive talent is important to you, check out the upcoming Sourcing Social Talent conference: