Are you using your time in lockdown to your business’ advantage? Whilst this is an unpredictable and overwhelming time, it could also be the ideal time to work on your business and open your mind to new ideas.
There’s never been a better time to assess your organisation to help you to prepare for life after COVID19, including the people within it.
Recruitment is a topic many businesses are shying away from right now, and it’s difficult to plan which roles you’ll be ready to fill when the pandemic is over. However, there is a way you can ensure that when you can hire, the best people are ready and waiting.
Building a pool of suitable candidates interested in working for you, can be done through smart recruitment marketing, social media and digital campaigns. You can also include previous applicants, sourced and referred candidates to fill your database with talented people. A talent pool is almost a queue of candidates ready to step into roles including a wide range of skills and people at different stages of the candidate journey. In a world of data-driven recruiting, talent pools are more useful than ever before.
But if you’re still wondering if spending your time in lockdown building a talent pool is a good move for your business, here are just a few reasons why.
Talent is ready and waiting for you
It may seem like an obvious point to begin with but building a talent pool now means that when you can hire again, and hopefully you will be soon, the talent will be ready and waiting for you. By putting in the hard work now, you’ll have a group of engaged and talented candidates ready to contact as soon as roles become available. As they’ve registered their contact details with you, you can be confident that they are interested in working for your business, which give you a head start once it’s back to “business as usual.”
Better quality of hire
Because you aren’t rushing to fill urgent requirements, using this time to build a talent pool means that you have longer to collate and source the best talent, which is a luxury that is rarely available. With a wide range of individuals and skills to choose from in your talent pool, all of whom are ready to start working, you’ll be able to compare expertise to find the best talent for you.
As there is less rush to fill key roles, it also means you won’t miss out on talented candidates that may miss the deadline by a few days. Instead, you’ll have collated them over the lockdown period, however long that may be.
Greater diversity
As you aren’t recruiting for a specific role, your recruitment marketing campaigns will attract an incredibly diverse and varied range of candidates. By advertising your proposition digitally, using social media, paid media and through attraction campaigns, you’ll be able to appeal to a wide range of people globally (of course for practical reasons location targeting can be much more specific).
With a talent pool, there is no end to the talent on offer to you. You’ll be able to attract people with skills that you didn’t even know your business needed but, when reviewing the talent pool, you’ll realise will be crucial to driving your business forward post coronavirus.
Faster hires
It should go without saying but having suitable talent at your disposal will make filling vacancies a much quicker and smoother process. When you’re eventually ready to hire again, it will be beneficial if you can hire talented people quickly so that critical roles can be filled, and your business can return to normal! This will give you more time to focus on growing and rebuilding other aspects of your business, knowing that the recruitment side is very much under control.
Plus, with many people, unfortunately, being made redundant as a result of COVID-19, the sad truth is that the faster you can make a talented candidate an offer, the more likely they are to accept. In the aftermath of a pandemic, people will need employment and crave job security. As much as we hate to admit it, when it comes to the best talent, it may just be the early bird that gets the worm.
Reduces the cost of recruitment
Investing in building a talent pool now could potentially save you a lot of money down the line. You can significantly cut back the costs of advertising every job that becomes available, using external recruitment agencies for individual roles and even reduce the amount of admin work which costs both time and money. With a strong recruitment marketing campaign, data management system and ways of keeping in touch with your prospects, you can significantly reduce the amount you spend on recruiting in the future.
Instead of advertising individual roles for a high cost, you can dive into your talent pool and select the candidates with relevant skills and experience. The money you save can be better spent on rebuilding areas of your business that have been affected by COVID-19 or improving the experience of your existing employees.
Identify future needs and future talent
Having interested talent in front of you means that you can see and compare all candidates at once. You can identify the individuals who have the right expertise for you right now but also any individuals that may be able to grow with your business; for example, someone may have the practical skills you need but with minimal leadership experience. This is your chance to help them develop and offer a career opportunity which should give you a competitive edge as an employer.
A talent pool can also help you to identify areas of your business that you may want to invest in in the future. For example, if you have a lot of developers showing interest, this may help you to envisage a digital transformation for your business after COVID-19, enhancing your business offering.
Improved candidate experience
Another advantage of building a talent pool for recruiting is that there is less rejection. As candidates are not applying for specific roles, you don’t have to turn them down. Instead, you can hold onto their details for when something appropriate comes along. This is a much more empowering method of recruitment and means that candidates are left with a favourable opinion of your company, even if they aren’t successful straight away.
Build relationships with candidates
The talent pool approach to recruitment is largely candidate-centric, giving candidates more control. It helps you to build long term relationships, giving the candidates a chance to learn more about your business and what you can offer them. They’ll become familiar with your employer brand as they follow you on social media, receive your email updates and even research your business on their own. This makes it much more likely that a candidate will want to work for you, increasing the chances of your offer being accepted. Regular updates and content are essential to maintaining your talent pool; this provides more touchpoints to capture the attention of passive candidates and helps you to build relationships.
Talent pools also encourage two-way communication; unlike standard recruitment practise where the employer holds all the cards, engaging with your talent pool creates opportunities for candidates to talk to you. This improves the candidate experience massively as the recruitment process feels much less lonely and more transparent.
To find out more about how you can build a ready-to-hire talent pool, get in touch with the team at Talent Works International. Our experts can help you to conduct talent attraction campaigns, manage candidate data and most importantly build up and maintain your talent pool ready for when this pandemic is over.
