What’s hard to find, harder to keep, and virtually impossible to replace? Great employees have become a rare breed in today’s business world. Much as it may help to invest in building an employer brand, it seems like there’s nothing you can do to make your recruitment drives more fruitful.
Or is there? Chances are that you wait for positions to fall vacant before commencing your headhunting. The problem with this approach is that it leaves too much room for uncertainty. What you need is a framework that continuously identifies and reaches out to suitable candidates. Better known as a talent pipeline management, this will pay off in more ways than one.
Save Time and Money
The rationale is quite simple: Your talent pipeline comprises of individuals that your firm may want to hire, either to fill up vacancies or occupy newly-created positions. While setting up the framework will require an investment on your part, it’ll cut down the time and money spent on attracting and qualifying candidates.
Avoid Salary Wars
A proactive talent pipeline puts you one step ahead of the competition in the recruitment process. Specifically, it allows you to approach prospects before they enter the job market or, rather, before their demand shoots up. More crucially, it helps you identify under-the-radar candidates who’ll likely miss the attention of other organizations.
Minimize Disruption
As said earlier, the readily-available talent pool will reduce the turnaround for filling up open positions. This in turn minimizes the disruption caused by unexpected vacancies. You’ll also find the shorter recruitment drives to be less-invasive as well.
Improve Recruitment Quality
Having a healthy talent pipeline means you’ll be familiar with available candidates and the steps you could take to initiate a career move on their part. With such a candidate-centric approach, you stand to hire individuals whom you’d otherwise struggle to find with a traditional hiring process. More importantly, you will hardly ever be forced to lower your standards due to the inability to fill vacancies.
Better Retention
This is based on your relationships with potential hires — the two-way communication over a long period means you’ll be familiar with each other’s expectations. From the candidate’s perspective, there’ll be no surprises after they start because they’ve had more time to learn about your company. Likewise, your talent pipeline software will acquaint you with each individual’s background way before they join your staff community.
In a nutshell, a talent pipeline might be just what your business needs to attract top talent. Keep in mind that 90% of today’s workforce actively look out for fresh opportunities, regardless of one’s current employment status. If you’re lost for ideas on how to kick-start your pipeline, feel free to talk to a talent sourcing consultant.