A talent community is a curated group of promising candidates that, for some reason or another — perhaps there are no open jobs at the moment, there’s a pandemic-related hiring freeze or they’re not ready to leave their current job — can’t join your team at this time.
On top of that: a talent community is a multi-faceted opportunity.
They’re great candidates, and you don’t want to lose them. What do smart corporate recruiters and staffing firms do? They pull out all the stops to build relationships with those candidates for when the time is right. They send regular check-ins, email interesting tips and articles, share company updates and hear what the candidate is up to, too.
Sustaining the kinds of candidate experiences that yield trust and affinity requires an investment
It calls for your talent community platform, engagement strategy and employment brand to work together. It demands that you know your candidates, hear them, see them. It also means you need data.
Data from your talent community can help you see who’s in your candidate pool via sources like resumes, check-in notes, communication history, profile tagging, references, interview notes, salary requirements, portfolio examples, skills test results, communication preferences and even referral sources.
Having this kind of data in aggregate and on a profile basis can help you refine the content you share with your community members, how you deliver the information and how you improve your overall approach to talent engagement.
One common missed opportunity: mistaking your talent community for a mere email list with resumes attached. Your talent community should be embraced as a valuable network of talent leads ready to be engaged and nurtured.
They’re future team members (you hope!) who’ll not only benefit from keeping up with company updates, but might get a little FOMO when hearing about internal events, recognition or achievements.
Plant the seeds, grow your community
Candidates in your talent community aren’t simply ready to be nurtured for future opportunities in your company or on your clients’ teams. They can also be powerful sources for referrals.
Think about it: they’ve gotten to know your company, they’ve grown to trust you, they can vouch for your employment brand experience.
Regular check-ins with these candidates can become opportunities to encourage them to refer friends, family and colleagues for in-demand positions on your list.
Automating communication that educates your talent community on your referral program — how the program works, what incentives there are, where they can track progress, how easy it is to use the app to share jobs and refer friends — can help ease them into the program with care (but no extra lift on your part).
And using a talent community platform that makes it seamless to manage those referrals from every side of the experience can help ensure your talent community keeps growing.