For such leading employers, talent pipelining is one prime tactic used by recruiters today. Talent pipelining involves database building of qualified candidates in relevant domains to fulfill future hiring needs. A well-built pipeline is extremely important for companies since they would never have to start from scratch when it comes to hiring.
An organization which is planning for expanding its footprint can conduct a “needs assessment” to think about the different skills that are required for supporting its future growth. Site expansion or branch-outs can lead to different scenarios in recruitment. Specific steps need to be taken for different scenarios.
Talent Pipelining: Leveraging the Employment Scene
A decade back, employers preferred posting ads in local newspapers to post jobs rather than posting them on the internet. A career fair would have been an ideal choice for mass recruitment while employee referrals served well for well-connected organizations. Hiring the right candidates involved a lot of waiting, which was never productive.
Nowadays, this reactive approach has given way to the proactive approach since the recruitment landscape has changed completely. HR and recruiting agencies are tasked with hiring challenges for delivering high quality candidates by making optimum utility of the existing resources. Talent pipelining is helpful in this regard. Talent pipelining involves:
- Attracting and engaging the best people always even when there is no need of a specific position
- Maintenance of a pool of potential candidates who are interested in a specific position
- Best use of employment brands to keep even the most resourceful candidates interested in the company
- Maintenance of social networking profiles in the best interest of the company's image
- Best treatment to the in-demand candidates and build relationships to thwart the competition
The war for talent is heating up and a talent pipeline keeps the organization in the hunt for hiring valuable candidates. Employers have an edge over their competition which is not putting in enough effort to hire candidates.
As the job market opens up, the hiring process intensifies and many employees tend to leave companies in the event of a drastic organizational change or an economic upheaval. Employers are always faced with the challenge to retain their best employees while also building their pipeline of job seekers.
Talent Pipelining — Essential Steps
Talent pipelining helps in saving overall time and recruitment costs. Frantic hiring mostly leads to hiring of the wrong candidates. Lots of money goes down the drain when hard-to-fill positions remain open for a long period of time. Talent pipelining helps recruiters to avoid irrelevant applications, thus saving on lots of productivity time.
Smart employers approach recruitment like advertising — by constantly building the talent pipeline with interested, qualified candidates for future hiring needs. Creating an effective talent pipeline requires all-round commitment and buy-in at all levels too. Create measurable, quantifiable goals centered on your sources and your hiring needs. Lastly, engage in relationship-building constantly, leveraging social media channels and mobile technologies to stay in touch with the market.
As the economy recovers and hiring needs increase, companies who invest time and effort to build talent pipelines will surely have success in the years to come.
