How I Build Up a Talent Pipeline in 3 Steps: Reducing Time-to-Hire

Early in my career, I had to search for talent from scratch every time I had to work on an open requisition(reqs). This would take too long to fill it up. Does that resonate with you? This struggle made me research the important elements of talent pipelining. As a result, I soon started using a proactive approach to developing a list of potential hires for my ongoing and hard-to-fill positions.

In this article, I am going to share three ways to build a talent pipeline for your company; and if you use them, as I do, you will be able to fill your open positions much faster.

First things, first: What is a talent pipeline and why is it important to build one?

A talent pipeline is a list of qualified candidates with specific skills, such as Java developers, that you might want to hire for current or near future needs.

Not only does this help you in reducing your time to hire, but it also makes you more strategic in the eyes of your hiring managers.

Now that you’ve understood the importance of having a talent pipeline, let’s get into the key steps of how to develop one for your open reqs.

No. 1 Identify Talent Needs:

Start off by having a meeting with your hiring managers or department heads about the reqs that are to be filled currently or in near future. Also, anticipate any changes that might impact your talent pipelining, for example, change in the project start date or change in the skills required.

To let you know, I was fortunate enough to come across hiring managers who were more than happy to share their LinkedIn connections with me. We all agree that talent knows talent, so I usually ask my hiring managers which companies, online communities, or conferences to target for getting the required skills. Most hiring managers love to share those details, so don’t hesitate on reaching out to them.

Also, ask hiring managers all basic questions such as:

What are the skills that a business would need on a regular basis?

Is the business expanding its project or restructuring its team?

Or are these backfilling positions due to high turnover of employees? 

Also, try to understand the reasons for turnover so that you can fix as many of those issues as possible while forming a pipeline. Also, try to understand as possible what are the reasons for turnover so that you can fix as many of those issues while forming a pipeline. So, instead of telling candidates what positions you have for them, it should be other way around where you ask candidates about their aspirations and align them to the right jobs. This way, you’ll have a more promising talent pipeline.

No. 2 Develop a Sourcing Strategy:

Once you’ve identified your business needs, it’s time to fill your talent pipeline. It is an ongoing process to proactively searching for qualified candidates.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to sourcing talents. So, I am going to share a couple of tactics that I often use for sourcing, as we don’t know which one of them would lead to a closure, right?

(i) Online Sourcing: LinkedIn is one of the most reliable sources for hiring. I often use it to connect with my targeted audience. I reach out to candidates even if they are not currently looking for a job change. We don’t know when a passive candidate might turn into an active candidate, so keep them on your radar all the time. For this, I usually do two activities daily.

First, I hand-pick the kind of candidates I need by using specific Boolean search or company-wise search. I use a trick here: instead of looking at the first two pages of results, I go to the last two pages of the results because many recruiters don’t realize that they might get some relevant profiles towards the end of the list.

I reach out to candidates via InMails and send them personalized connection invites to let them know why I want to be in their 1st connections.

Here is an example: Hi Sara, I’m reaching out to you because your experience in Java would be a great fit for our company’s open role for a Java Lead Position. Are you open to learning more about the position now? If not, let me know if we can connect for future openings.

 It has to be brief when sending connection invites due to word limit constraint, unlike InMails wherein you can write longer messages.

 Second, if you have a LinkedIn recruiter or Lite seat, save your searches under projects, and set your alerts "on”. The system automatically matches new people with your search criteria and moves them into saved searches. That way, you automate the process of talent pipelining.

 You must be wondering why I didn’t talk about LinkedIn Job postings. I do use them, but personally speaking, I receive better InMail responses over job posting, which most of the time gets me irrelevant profiles. Does that happen with you, too? Let me know in the comments. I am curious to know??

(ii) Candidate & Employee Referrals:  Referrals are a great way to gain access to excellent candidates who may not be looking for a job or might not have the time to hunt for employment. Let me share some of the tips I often use. 

 First, I would emphasize the importance of having a candidate referral program in addition to employee referral program, which most companies already run these days. Let your candidates know about the reward that they might receive when their referral results in a hire. But, I know, some candidates are reluctant to share referrals, so always assure them upfront that they're not referring competition to the job they're applying to. 

Second, you might bifurcate your entire referral payment in two parts. Pay out some amount as submission reward and the rest as a hire reward when a candidate joins, particularly for niche reqs.

Third, request two to three referrals from each person you interview. Ask for current supervisors’ details and assure them that you won’t reach out to their boss without their consent. That way, they can share their boss’ details with you without fear of being labelled disloyal. Your current candidate’s supervisor might become a future candidate themselves. We never know, right? 

Finally, ask candidates about the resources they use when they're looking for a new job, so that you can make sure that you are tapping most all the resources for your talent pipelining. 

(iii) Networking Events: Do attend networking events such as conferences, webinars or meetup groups of your targeted candidates that gives you a chance to engage with potential candidates. If possible, practice leads in your company should host online technical events for your targeted candidates to educate them about the technology your company works on. This not only elevates your employer brand, but it also provides you a list of folks who signed up for the event. You may eventually approach those folks and try to build up a rapport with them and share relevant job posts or related blogs with them. If they are not interested now, they might be interested in future, or they might refer someone who is looking for a change.

No. 3 Talent Branding:

While your employer brand can be built up by your organization’s leaders, talent brand comes directly from employee experiences and feedback. In other words, your current, past, and even potential employees shape your talent brand through commenting on social media posts, such as FB or LinkedIn, or on review sites such as Glassdoor.

So first off, reach out to your trusted employees; encourage them to share their experiences via various social platforms and review sites such as Glassdoor.

Second, make your career site rich in content that candidates seek, such as videotapes of your employees, and let them share their experience and what their typical day looks like in a company. Plus, post recent pictures of the team in action, both inside and outside the workplace.

Finally, reinforce constant communication throughout the recruiting process. Be sure applicants know where they are in the process and have regular status updates for giving them a positive candidate experience.

Seeing all this, you might feel creating a talent pipeline requires a lot of time and effort, but it’s a worthwhile investment to build up your talent pipeline no matter what the size of your company.

Happy Recruiting??