11/20/2017  //  By deanna kane  //  recruitment marketing
[socialwrap][socialicon name=”linkedin”][socialicon name=”twitter”][/socialwrap]When there is a single open position and multiple top candidates, keeping in touch with the silver medalists is an important part of the talent lifecycle. Developing relationships with candidates who didn’t receive the initial offer will eliminate starting from scratch every time a new requisition needs to be filled. These candidates have already shown interest in your organization and have been pre-vetted, so it’s beneficial to continue communication with them, in the event there is a future career match. Building a talent community can help continue this engagement at scale. Read on to learn how a talent community can help engage candidates who didn’t get the initial offer.

Talent Community Benefits

Adding past applicants to a talent community and continuing to nurture this candidate pipeline is key to your company’s long-term recruitment strategy. To successfully connect with these candidates, it’s important to keep the engagement authentic. A talent community can help you stay in touch with top candidates, to facilitate a positive candidate journey with your company. Additional benefits of a talent community are below.

Save Time Sourcing

Your team doesn’t have time to be slowed down by clunky, out-of-date systems. Use a talent community to collect candidate data stored in multiple places or track down past conversations with previous applicants across multiple mediums. Source candidates directly from the talent community to reduce candidate discovery time and up-front vetting.

Create Better Relationships

A talent community serves as an outlet to better connect with prospects. Let them get to know your organization through unique content, such as videos that showcase your culture, early-access company updates and skill-specific educational content.

Improve the Quality of Hire

A well-vetted talent pipeline can improve both the quality of hire, as well as the overall company culture. The silver medal candidates who weren’t the best fit for the original job they applied to can be the perfect fit for future openings, and have likely been already well-received by the hiring team.

Invest in the Future

Nurturing passive candidates is a key component to evolving your company’s long-term recruitment strategy. Authentic interaction with a talent community keeps prospects engaged until they are ready for a new role or until you have a position relevant to them.

Learn more about building and nurturing the ultimate talent pipeline.

Talent Community Engagement

A talent community won’t produce results unless you have a plan to regularly nurture and engage this candidate pool. Ensure you maintain continual touch points with your talent community to stay top of mind. The following ways will help your team engage with talent community members.

Segment Audiences

Maximize the impact of your talent community outreach by organizing this group into relevant sub-groups. This may include technology-focused careers and business-focused careers, so individuals within the talent community only receive content appropriate to their background and career goals. Previous high-potential candidates have already expressed an interest in your company, so send candidates highly personalized email communication that pertains directly to their position, level, expertise, location, etc.

Automate Communication

The additional communication required to authentically engage your talent community doesn’t need to create hours of extra work. Do the prep work up front, and automate candidate email and text campaigns to ensure every candidate who enters your talent community is receiving relevant content: job listings, industry news and your company’s latest achievements.

Create Shareable Content

Send past applicants regular communication they can share with their networks, including employee testimonials, comments from your CEO or CHRO, industry insights, company blog posts and recent media coverage. Regularly update the careers page to ensure it reflects your current recruitment marketing efforts. Avoid sending out a steady stream of job postings, and when you do, position them as a featured job to boost interest and create urgency.

Highlight Non-Traditional Perks

Showcase your company’s unique strengths, be authentic and own your brand characteristics. Highlight the additional benefits outside of job responsibilities, benefits and pay. This may include unique career paths, flexible work arrangements, parental leave policies, sabbaticals, or any other lesser-known perks. It’s also important to highlight your unique brand attributes, mission and culture, rather than focusing solely on filling open positions. While filling open roles is important in the short-term, evolving your recruitment brand will achieve long-term success.

Keep in Touch

Develop a face-to-face connection with past, high-potential applicants. Keep in touch by periodically meeting for coffee or lunch to stay updated on their current career plans. Make these meetings more about personal connections and their career goals, and less about your company and open roles.

Regularly Audit

Once your talent community is up and running, conduct quarterly check-ins that allow applicants to opt-out if they aren’t interested in your company, and so you can review their backgrounds to ensure they are still relevant. Most importantly, don’t forget to leverage this resource to source your talent!