Talent Community

Companies are increasingly lacking qualified young talent. It is therefore important to retain promising young talent in the company as early as possible. This is often done by setting up a talent pool in which contacts to potential employees are collected and approached as required. In order to maintain contact with high potentials in the long term, it is a good idea to develop the talent pool into a talent community in which an active exchange on interesting industry and career-related topics takes place between the community members and the company. In this way, the companies remain present without appearing intrusive.

Whether talent pool or talent community: the first contact with promising talent is usually through an internship or working student position. According to the Talent Relationship Management Study by Intraworlds, 39 per cent of the 370 students and young professionals surveyed described an internship as the most important work experience during their studies. A full 57 per cent could imagine working for the employer in question later on. The respondents also stated that maintaining contacts was extremely important to them, although in retrospect they would have liked to have been informed about job offers or company events much more often.

Most companies are therefore unable to retain former interns and working students in the long term in terms of talent relationship management. Only 14 per cent of respondents rate the TRM offerings of the company in question as good. The solution would be to expand the talent pool into a talent community, but what steps are needed to achieve this?

Independent online communities such as squeaker.net or e-fellows.net as well as social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter are suitable platforms for talent communities. For more exclusive messages and offers that are only intended to reach people who have already had initial contact with the company, communities run by the company itself are more suitable (e.g. BMW’s “Cube”).

A diverse talent community should not only include interns, working students and trainees. Current employees can also enrich a talent community with career tips and reports on the company. Other valuable contacts can be found, for example, among workshop participants, trade fair acquaintances and recommendations from employees. A talent community can be actively advertised, e.g. in the form of e-cards, e-mail signatures, announcements in newsletters and on the company’s own social networks.

A talent community requires some maintenance. In addition, it often only pays off after years of development work. Companies that want to set up a talent community should therefore be sure that they have sufficient resources available in the long term to look after the community and regularly feed it with new content. A credible presentation of your own employer brand and a prompt response to questions and comments from users are also prerequisites for success.

By creating a talent community, companies can open up completely new opportunities in the recruitment process. The young talents remain in contact with the company and thus within the talent pool, from which they can be recruited at any time. Through regular dialogue, the company’s offers can be better tailored to the wishes and ideas of high potentials – a considerable competitive advantage over the competition in times of a shortage of skilled workers. The time and costs required for a successfully managed talent community are offset by lower expenditure on job adverts and time savings when reviewing applications and conducting interviews with ultimately unsuitable candidates. Larger companies in particular can therefore benefit greatly from setting up a talent community.

The e-recruiting software from softgarden makes it easy for companies to set up a talent pool. Interested candidates from the company’s own website, the corporate LinkedIn profile or a specially created landing page can be added to the pool with just one click. If there is a vacancy, all members can be informed immediately. To create an external talent community, the contact details only need to be transferred.