A talent pool is pretty much a tag (segment), in your database – so the idea here is to segment your database based on skills or role type (whatever works for you) so when you need a candidate to match a vacancy, you should be able to go straight into the right segment (pool) and find a great match from there and so easily too.
Having to pay for one or more ads every time you have a vacancy to fill, will simply make your ability to attract good candidates directly dependent on how much you can afford paying. This means companies who are prepared to pay more, will appear before you on a job-board and will, therefore, attract the majority of good candidates and you end up with the left-overs.
The best way to answer this question is to give you an example. Here’s what I would do if I recruit B2B sales and Marketing people – I would create the following talent pools:
You shouldn’t make the location part of the talent pool description, instead, your ATS (Applicant Tracking System) should allow you to do dynamic location search. OK, say that you’re looking for an Inbound-sales person to work at your office in Melbourne? In this case, you would follow the following two quick steps (2 clicks really):
Step 1 – Click on the “Inbound-sales” talent pools – this will show me all of them across all locations
Step 2 – I would type Melbourne within 30K in the location search
And that’s it – this will show me all the inbound salespeople in Melbourne.
Your ATS or recruitment software should allow you to easily communicate with your talent pools on a regular basis – you need to create and communicate relevant content to the relevant talent pools. In the candidate record, you should be able to capture a resume file as well as social ID(s) for the candidate across many social sites – you should have their Facebook ID (URL), their LinkedIn ID, Snapchat, Instagram etc.
Your ATS (recruitment software) should allow you to preview the social profile of the same candidate from the same place.
Your Applicant Tracking System should allow you to send an email requesting your candidate to update their details, by clicking on a button (URL). They should be able to update their latest skills and competencies in less than a minute using a few simple drop downs.
Let me ask you this question – Where do all the applications generated from the 100s if not 1000s of expensive adverts that you’ve paid for, over the years… where do they go? Are they sitting in the complex and maze-like structure of inboxes, that you’ve built in your outlook over the years?
Look, you’re not alone in this situation where you’re wasting the opportunity of building your own database – probably 40% of corporate HR still run recruitment this way! So I think that 40% HR out there, either don’t have a system or have one that doesn’t allow them to leverage their advertising dollars into talent pools.
You can NOT continue to rely on having to pay big $$$ every time you have a vacancy to fill! Your own talents-on-tap database MUST be your end-game!
You need to acquire a recruitment software platform, that allows you to create and manage the perfect set of talent pools for your business and start leveraging all these applications that are generated from your ads.
There are no excuses these days not to have a modern recruitment software platform because there are some vendors out there like MyRecruitment+ for example, who come with ZERO setup cost and with a very small subscription fee, which makes both the RISK and the UPFRONT INVESTMENT very very small.