5 Tips for Creating Talent Pools During The Hiring Process

Using talent pools to hire can help to streamline the hiring process and make things easier when you need to find the right employee in a pinch. Hiring is all about speed – especially when filling a necessary position in your company. As your team grows, however, hiring becomes a continuous action instead of an ad hoc activity. You can stay ahead of the curve and be prepared to fill an opening at any time by creating talent pools.

Talent pools are lists of candidates who meet the qualifications for various immediate or long-term needs in your company. This allows you to leverage the candidates you have already sourced, or have already applied to your openings, to give you a head start when a new position needs to be filled. 

The best part? You can create talent pools at any time. Read 5 tips below.

The use of talent pools is a proactive strategy to ensure the right candidate gets chosen and good candidates stay part of the conversation. It’s easy to build your best team with the support of Trakstar Hire. Get a live demo of our fully integrated platform and see how we simplify hiring.

Start With the Application Form

An application is the easiest place to ensure you’re gathering the most information about your candidates. The application form allows you to ask pertinent questions about skill level, certifications, relevant experience, and even location.  

When applications are created properly, the answers will allow you to filter and sort your candidates – enabling you to make quick “go” or “no-go” decisions during screening. Post screening, these questions allow you to build lists and search for candidates from your talent pools. You can even use them in things like background screening!

Use Labels (Like Talent Pools) to Identify Key Information

Once candidates are applying using a comprehensive application form, make that information readily visible for easy review using candidate labels. These labels should act as a “tag” on the candidate’s profile to quickly identify key information. These labels should also be visible from candidate lists, making it easy to quickly scan for keywords or filter and search by specific labels. 

Here are a few examples of relevant candidate labels:

• Skill identification: Use labels to identify certain hard and soft skill sets. For example, if hiring for a computer programmer, a relevant label would highlight their proficiency in various programming languages. The labels could be: Python, JavaScript, Java, or C#.
• Relevant experience: Use labels to identify education level and previous experience required by your organization. The labels could be: Master’s Degree, Team Lead, Department Manager, or Director.
• Location: Use labels to identify the candidate’s current location and interest in relocation or remote work. The labels could be: Denver, CO; Arizona, Northeast, Willing to Relocate, or Open to Remote Work.
• Available start date: Use labels to add a hiring timeframe to a candidate’s profile. Perhaps you have an A+ candidate, but they won’t be available until later in the year. Or, someone isn’t looking for work now, but might be interested if you check back later in the year. The labels could be: Fall 2021, January 2022, or 5/1/2022.

Assign Candidate Status Accordingly

When building talent pools it’s important to only add candidates that you would be interested in pursuing in the future. Just as you do in the regular hiring process, candidates who are not a proper fit for the open role should be rejected as soon as you decide they will not be moving forward. This keeps your candidate lists clean for future hires. 

Candidates you are keeping in mind for future roles, but not actively pursuing, should be classified with a relevant status instead of a decision state. When taking this route, you can leave them in the role they applied for or consider moving them into a specific “Candidate Pool” opening. This can be one opening for all your candidate pools or a pool for each skill set (such as: Candidate Pool: Sales Roles, Candidate Pool: Customer Support Roles). 

If you do wish to deny a candidate for the role in which they applied, make sure to use a clear rejection reason to highlight areas they should not be considered for in the future. It’s also important to communicate your decision to these candidates. The correspondence should explain they are not a fit for the current role, but you would like to consider them for future roles.

Keep Candidates Informed of Opportunities

As you open new positions and begin considering candidates from your talent pool, reach out to them via bulk messaging to keep them informed of these new openings.

When drafting correspondence, consider using email templates to standardize message content and adding dynamic fields to make messages appear more personal – even when sent to a bulk list. 

Be sure to include an option for candidates to reply letting you know they are no longer interested in positions at your company. Don’t forget to update their status and remove them from your candidate pool.

Add an “Interested in Our Company” Application

If you’re open to collecting applications throughout the year, you can create an “open application.” This solicits candidates to apply at any time, even if they don’t see an opening that matches their current skill set.

When building this opening, make sure the application form contains enough information to screen the candidates, determine if they may be a future fit, and add them to one of your candidate pools (via labeling, moving to a role, etc). 

The use of talent pools is a proactive strategy for efficient and systematic talent management within your organization. It’s easy to build your best team with Trakstar Hire. Get a live demo of our fully integrated platform and see how we simplify hiring for hassle-free recruiting!