We can firmly say that recruiting skilled and talented employees is one of the most important aspects of any organization’s success story. However, many companies approach the hiring process in a reactive manner, waiting until the new position opens up to start looking for candidates. This kind of recruitment process often leads to rushed decisions, lower-quality candidates, and therefore higher employee turnover rates. To prevent this from happening, companies should shift their perspective from a reactive hiring approach to a proactive one. That means companies should create a workforce plan and segment their talent.
Talent pipelines are very helpful in the hiring process. They streamline talent acquisition and provide timely access to candidates, which results in lower costs and time to recruit for different industries. When you know how to build a talent pipeline, it becomes easier to have this kind of approach in your company. A rogressive talent pipeline also reduces the need to post or work with recruiting agencies to find your talent.
What is a Talent Pipeline?
Talent pipeline management is a modern approach where you identify and manage many talented individuals for current or future positions in the company. It has many different strategies to attract and engage potential talents that meet your company’s hiring needs. Talent pipeline development includes creating an ongoing stream of qualified candidates for job vacancies. To build an effective talent pipeline strategy you need to precisely define talent’s profiles, and proactive sources, and emphasize employer branding.
Having a talent pipeline in the organization has many relevant benefits because it’s like an investment in the future of your organization. When you proactively nurture and engage with qualified talents, you can streamline the hiring process and reduce the time to recruit.
When you know what is a talent pipeline, you use it correctly and effectively. The talent pipeline involves creating relationships with industry professionals before they’re on the way to search for new roles. It can also improve recruiting quality as talents could be more invested in organizations that show interest in their careers. With correct talent pipeline management, you can also hire quickly as you have early established communication with talents.
Steps to Building a Talent Pipeline
If you need to know how to build a talent pipeline, read through this section thoughtfully, and let’s discuss the steps you need to take for developing a progressive talent pipeline.
Identify key future hiring needs
To create a strong talent pipeline, the first logical step is to understand your company’s strategic direction, which means to identify positions that presently need to be filled. You should also anticipate future growth that may impact your recruiting needs. Think of any potential outcome that can affect the recruiting strategy. This one could be the most difficult step in building the talent pipeline because you need to meet up with every department, brainstorm, and identify hiring needs. This step is often called talent mapping, which will absolutely be worth it in the long term.
Sourcing passive candidates
When you already did the first step, now you need to fill your talent pipeline. This step is an ongoing process that requires you to actively search for qualified talents rather than waiting for them to apply to your job openings. There are many different ways for you to fill your passive talent pool, which include: Referrals – where your employees refer candidates and receive bonuses in case of hiring them; Social sourcing – LinkedIn is the platform you’ll use the most to find people appropriate for your needs or you can try other social platforms too. Networking – look through your close people related to the industry, or go to networking events where you can directly engage with qualified candidates.
Building relationships and engaging talent
When you find the candidates, it’s time to start building relationships with them. At this stage, you don’t ask them to apply for your vacancies, rather you make an honest connection which you’ll need to make long-term. Engage with them and discuss their experiences and plans for the future. What are their goals and how do they see their careers developing? With this approach, you build talents’ trust and have their connections when they are ready to pursue new roles.
Using technology and recruitment software to manage your pipeline
Recruiting software is like a helpful and powerful tool for organizations to make the recruitment process easier. It supports posting jobs, reading CVs, keeping track of applicants, etc. The software automates different tasks so recruiters can spend more time on more relevant things. Recruiting software can integrate with your existing systems, like HRIS, ATS, or CRM, and provide you with a centralized platform to manage the hiring pipeline.
Talent Pipeline Strategy: Proactive vs. Reactive Hiring
Want to know how to build a talent pipeline? First, let’s see the difference between proactive and reactive hiring. Proactive and reactive hiring both have the same goal, to hire new candidates for the organization but they have different styles of approach.
Reactive hiring isn’t an ongoing process and doesn’t happen until you have a new vacancy in your company when proactive hiring takes place all the time. Proactive hiring considers long-term plans, as it seeks talents that could fill future positions. As for reactive recruiting, you wait until you have an open position, then post a job and stand by before applicants approach you. A
lso, once some position opens up in your organization, you can usually fill it faster as you already have a pool of very talented candidates from proactive hiring. But with a reactive approach, when you have to look for a candidate after opening up the vacancy, it may be delayed in time and if rushed, you make the wrong decision.
When you start communicating with talents who aren’t looking for a job at that moment and start building an honest connection with them, they’ll be more invested and interested in your organization once they’re ready to look out for new roles. Candidate nurturing could often be a timely intervention to improve your time to hire. Building effective relationships helps you to stay in touch with potential job seekers, even when you’re not actively recruiting.
Using Data and Analytics to Improve Your Talent Pipeline
Recruitment data is a measurement used to track hiring effectiveness and streamline the process of recruiting talents for the company. When recruitment metrics are used correctly, you evaluate the hiring process and see if the organization is hiring the right people for their positions. It can also provide you with the data that can be used to improve future recruitment processes as it’s an integral part of the data-driven hiring funnel.
There are different key performance indicators (KPIs), which you can use to track the effectiveness of your talent pipeline. Apart from knowing how to build a talent pipeline, it’s also crucial to know how to measure its success. The key indicators you can use for it include time to fill; time to hire; cost per hire; applicant satisfaction; quality of hire; employee performance; and retention rate. These metrics will help you to measure before and after recruitment process effectiveness and help you to find gaps for improvement.
Best Practices for Talent Pipeline Management
Talent pipeline management is a very effective way of hiring the exact talent you are looking for, and this has a reason. When you build a progressive talent pipeline, you have dozens of connections of people, who in the future will be ready to gladly join your organization. That happens because, throughout the pipeline, you create a seamless experience with the candidates, build honest relationships, and learn about their future career goals.
While developing a talent pipeline strategy, you have the ability to look very forward. This is because, at this moment, you don’t look for exact candidates for exact positions, instead you look for talents that you can hire in the future. That gives you the opportunity to leverage diversity in the pipeline and choose candidates from different industries with different visions and experiences. That’s why it’s better to go with proactive hiring, as it has already found the talent you’ll look for in the near future.
Challenges in Talent Pipeline Building and How to Overcome Them
One of the first pitfalls when building a pipeline is to align it with the company’s goals. For that, you need to communicate with business owners, find out their goals, and get their support. Otherwise, you could end up with an unmatched candidate, that can be very talented but not right for the role. This is why it’s always important to know what a business wants and needs.
The next challenge is engaging candidates effectively. When you start building a talent pipeline strategy, it may become difficult to engage and source the talents appropriately. You need to use many channels to reach out to them, like referrals, social media, LinkedIn, or other social platforms. Always remember to keep these found talents interested and informed throughout the pipeline. You can provide them with updates, feedback, and information about new opportunities.
One of the challenges is to properly manage and evaluate data in the talent pipeline. For that, you need to have a simple and reliable system, where you can store and organize all the data. But it’s not only to manage these data, you need to measure these metrics to identify the performance of the pipeline. You can use these data to see source effectiveness, retention rates, quality of hire, etc. Then you can make informed decisions and can find the gaps in your pipeline to improve and make it more successful.
Another challenge for the talent pipeline can be balancing the candidates’ quantity and quality. You need to have enough talent in the pool to fill present and future vacancies, but therefore, you also need to make sure they are properly qualified and right for the positions. That could be done by creating effective criteria and screening processes for potential hires.
FAQs About Talent Pipeline Development
What is an example of a talent pipeline?
An example of a talent pipeline could be – going to a business event, where many talents from different industries gather and make connections there. This way you can identify high-potential employees, and build relationships with them, for example with developers, and when the same position opens up in your organization, contact them and offer the opportunity. To learn how to build a talent pipeline, you can start with this approach. This is the talent pipeline strategy where you identify and build relationships with potential and qualified candidates for your future job openings.
How do you build an internal talent pipeline?
To build an internal talent pipeline, first, you need to find critical positions for your organization’s success. Forecast some potential gaps that may appear because of retirements or any other factors. After that, you should assess your internal employees and their skills to find the ones who could be acquired for these positions in the future. Conduct their skill assessment which can help you to align your internal talent with future growth opportunities. Also, you should promote internal mobility culture and cross-departmental opportunities by regularly posting jobs.
What is talent pipelining?
Talent pipelining means developing and building relationships with talented industry professionals, often before they start looking for new roles. This kind of approach creates meaningful connections and can be beneficial for hiring managers and potential talents at the same time. This way you identify talents way before an open vacancy comes up in your company which suits their experience and qualifications.
What are the most effective ways to automate your talent pipeline?
To automate your talent pipeline, you can use a CRM system that will help you manage and update candidate profiles, their information, and resumes. Or you can segment them with skills, preferences, or location and send them personalized messages. You can also use referral programs, where your employees will refer candidates for the open roles. They can act as brand ambassadors and attract talents who might not be looking for new jobs.
How do you build a good talent pipeline?
Do you need to know how to build a talent pipeline? We’ve got you. To develop a talent pipeline, you should start a proactive hiring process, build connections with future candidates, attract their interest and attention, and create an impactful talent experience. Forget about the reactive recruitment process, as it can delay the recruitment process, or make you decide faster on who to hire, etc. With a proactive hiring approach, you can use some technologies and automation to engage potential candidates more easily and send personalized information to them. It keeps them updated and interested in your organization.
What is a talent roadmap?
The talent roadmap has three main inputs, which include: A team-wide performance assessment, trajectory assessment, and competency assessment. These assessments create a foundation for the talent roadmap and help you to establish a very good understanding of the team’s starting point. With this strategy, you can develop the perfect talent roadmap.
