Talent Pool

Stockpiling has helped mankind through many a hard time. In view of demographic change and the associated shortage of skilled labour, more and more companies are also starting to stockpile one of their most important resources, their personnel. In so-called talent pools, HR managers collect contacts with qualified candidates who could be considered for important key positions in the future.

Suitable candidates for a talent pool could be former employees such as students or interns. They have already established themselves in practice and could be available for more highly qualified jobs after completing their training. Rejected applicants can also be considered as candidates, because the fact that another applicant was a better fit for the advertised position does not mean that the applicants who lost out will not be an asset to the company in the future.

All candidates who have a certain potential – be it through existing skills or possible further qualification within the next few years – are therefore talents that HR managers should keep warm. However, it is not only the company’s own employee or applicant database that provides potential candidates for the talent pool; HR managers also come into contact with numerous high potentials on social media and at trade fairs, company events and workshops.

Although a large and diverse talent pool has its advantages, quality clearly wins out over quantity here too. Only candidates who actually have potential as future employees of the company should be accepted.

However, collecting contacts is only the first step. If companies do not show sufficient commitment to maintaining contacts, they are quickly forgotten. A constant supply of relevant information and special offers from the company for talent pool members is essential in order to create a strong bond between the company and talent.

To strengthen this bond even further, the talent pool can be expanded into a talent community in which a constant, lively exchange between companies and talents is maintained. The development of special offers such as open days or question-and-answer sessions in chat rooms for community members are a key feature of such talent communities.

With the help of suitable talent relationship management software, many aspects of community management can be automated. In this way, companies can easily inform their high potentials about current job vacancies, news from the company, company events and so on. This keeps members interested and positions the company as an attractive employer for talented individuals. Regular contact and a prompt response to questions and comments from members are crucial to the success of the talent pool or talent community.

All too often, top talents are rejected by employers because there is no suitable position available at the time. Unfortunately, contact with the applicant is often abandoned as a result, which is a fatal mistake. It has long been recognised in customer relationship management that it is many times more difficult to acquire new customers than to retain existing contacts. Even worse: once a customer is lost, they rarely come back.

When applied to talent relationship management, this means that it is much easier to optimally fill future vacancies with candidates from the talent pool than through traditional recruiting measures. By maintaining existing contacts with top talent, large companies in particular can save a considerable amount of time and money on the complex and costly search for new employees, including placing job adverts, hiring headhunters and recruitment agencies and applicant management.

Another advantage is that candidates receive detailed information about their potential future employer at an early stage and thus build up a relationship with the company even before they join. The early and long-term commitment significantly increases the chance of an application and acceptance of a job.

The applicant management system from softgarden supports companies in setting up a talent pool by allowing interested candidates to be added to the talent pool with just one click via their application, a visit to the company website, a corporate LinkedIn profile or a specially created landing page. When a position becomes available, all members of the talent pool can be informed immediately. The software also automatically sends out regular emails to keep Talent Pool members up to date and to ask them about the current status of their data and their continued interest in joining the Talent Pool.