How to Build a Talent Community That Works

A talent community is a vital part of strategic recruitment. When the time comes to recruit new talent, you should already have a ready-made pool of interested candidates you can select from. You can start contacting them immediately instead of starting from scratch. You will save money, time, and energy. Above all, you are more likely to find people who match your needs.

What Is a Talent Community?

A talent community, or talent pool, consists of potential employees you could eventually hire. The database can be as specific as you like—you could group candidates by area of expertise, location, or availability. You can add the candidates you did not hire but who showed potential and talent from career fairs and social media.

Here are some examples of community groups:

• B2B salespeople
• Full-stack developers
• University students
• Construction workers
• Part-time waiters

Five Reasons Why Talent Communities Are So Important

If you were a salesperson and needed to make a deal in the next two weeks, wouldn’t you need to have your leads by now? Yes, you surely would. The same applies to recruitment. To hire fast, you need to find leads as quickly as possible. By building and growing your talent community, you can be ahead of the game. You can move from reactive to proactive recruitment.

Below are some of the most important reasons why talent communities are so important.

1. Identify Quality Candidates for the Future

Did you know that companies lose as many as 89% of potential candidates due to prolonged screening processes? By having a talent community, you can identify potential candidates before you even have a position open. Thus, you can study and understand the skills and availability of talent beforehand.

2. Reduce Costs of Hiring

The average company in the United States spends about $4,000 to hire a new employee. That is quite a lot, isn’t it? A talent community can help you to reduce the cost of hiring. Instead of spending lots of money on advertising your job opening, you can look for a potential job candidate directly from your talent community.

3. Reduce Time Spent on Recruitment

On average, 55% of the candidates believe it should take between one to two weeks from the first interview to being offered the job. Unfortunately, recruitment processes take much longer. Talent communities will help you select the best candidates in a shorter period of time. Processes such as screening and prequalifying candidates have already been done.

4. No Wasted Potential

Imagine you are acing your recruitment process and have many potential candidates in the pipeline. You can hire only one. Instead of saying goodbye to the other potential candidates, you can invite them to your talent community and continue the dialogue. You are no longer wasting their potential.

5. Engage Your Talent

Over 75% of professionals are passive candidates. When those candidates are part of your talent community, you can spend time developing a good relationship with them. Engage your talent with regular communication and offer them value as a thank you for their membership.

Want to enhance your knowledge about modern recruitment? Download our comprehensive guide for solving the biggest challenges in recruitment!

A Five-Step Process for Building a Talent Community

This simplified process will allow you to plan your activities. Take a look and create your own!

1. Define Your Target Group

Example: If you are looking for cashiers for a grocery store, you could target students who are searching for a part-time job while studying at university.

2. Define Your Goals

Example: Reach 500 students and grow your brand awareness among them.

3. Choose Your Channels

Example: Attend recruitment fairs and other student events. Use paid ads on Instagram and display ads on university campuses.

4. Define Your Engagement Strategy

Example: Organize events where you give your target group tips about career planning. Send newsletters to advertise your new job opportunities and organize competitions at student fairs.

5. Choose Your Tools

Example: Use an applicant tracking system (ATS) that allows you to build and grow a talent community.

How to Grow your Talent Community

You can grow your talent community in so many ways. Try these, for example:

• Attend fairs and encourage candidates to join the community on the spot by filling out their information on a laptop
• Use paid ads and social media to attract talent to join the community
• Ask for referrals from your existing community members and employees

Your talent community cannot be static. To make the talent community work, you need to nurture the community members, just like sales leads. For example, you can offer these to your members:

• Newsletters
• Book tips
• Career stories
• Tips for job seeking
• Meetups (try online!)

Continue reading more about the biggest challenges in recruitment and dig deeper into different solutions!

Build Talent Communities with the Help of TalentAdore

TalentAdore offers a great recruitment solution for building and growing your talent communities. Gather referrals, source candidates (i.e., create automated shortlists) within your community with the help of AI, and invite candidates to apply for your open positions.

Check out the video below and request a demo if you want to learn more!

Building a talent community pays off. You will save time and money and can improve your employer brand at the same time. You will no longer just open and close job ads. Instead, you will be recruiting all the time. 💎