Talent Pipeline - Why it Matters, and How to do it!

Written by

Lisa Gonzalez

· Last updated on

June 14, 2023

Much of developing an effective recruitment process depends on building a talent pipeline made up of the best potential candidates. 

In order to do this companies must invest time in establishing a rigorous, strategically-based, approach to their recruitment efforts. 

Having an established talent pool not only reduces the length of the recruitment cycle but saves companies money and helps in establishing an overall work culture across the entire business.

In this article, we’ll examine all the essential elements necessary for building a talent pipeline and assess how recruitment software like Jobspage can help make this process more efficient and effective. 

What is a Talent Pipeline?

A talent pipeline is a recruitment resource that consists of having a steady, constant pool of qualified potential employees to rapidly fill any vacant or newly created positions in the business. 

With Jobpage’s applicant tracking software, you can collect and store candidate resumes, contact details, and other key data to create a repository of the best candidates for your future recruitment needs. Try Jobpage for free and start building your talent pipeline today. 

 Why is Talent Pipeline Important?

There are many reasons a talent pipeline is important to a business. Some of the top reasons include

  • Shortening the time-to-fill for open positions
  • Enhancing the employer's brand and reputation
  • Providing a better candidate experience
  • Improving continuity and succession planning
  • Reducing recruitment costs
  • Increasing employee engagement and retention
  • Improving overall performance and productivity

How to Build a Talent Pipeline?

Step 1: Identify and Prioritize Key Positions

Before you can start building a talent pipeline, it is first necessary to determine your current and future recruitment requirements. 

This involves ascertaining 

  • Which roles are most critical to your business 
  • Those positions or departments that tend to have a higher turnover of employees 
  • How the plans for business expansion will inform your recruitment policies 
  • Assessing the performance of your existing employees to determine if the business would be best served by replacing any of your current workforce

Step 2: Find the right talent.

It is first important to recognize that finding the best talent isn’t an exclusively external process.

Succession planning is a core component of talent identification. People retire or get promoted or leave the business for all manner of different reasons. 

Often the best candidate to replace a worker moving on from their current position is an existing employee with broad knowledge of the company and the deliverables necessary to fulfilling the duties and responsibilities of that position. 

As such, it is important that you include your current workforce in your talent pool.

When it comes to external talent identification, you should remain proactive by utilizing a wide range of resources such as LinkedIn, online & offline networking events, job sites, and ensure you are regularly updating the careers page on your website. 

Jobspage makes it easy to create a careers page for your company and publish available vacancies. You can fill your pages out with your own company branding, and include all available job openings in your company, so candidates can easily explore what you have on offer.

Check out a live demo of a Jobspage career page.

Step 3: Engage and nurture pipeline candidates

Building a successful talent pool is a little more complex than simply collecting a series of names and attributes of potential candidates.

Whilst creating a robust database of potential candidates is certainly a major part of it, it is equally vital to engage regularly with your prospects to demonstrate that your business continues to value them as potential candidates. 

By ensuring that your candidates have a positive experience throughout the hiring process, it can make your company feel like an appealing place to work, and can even affect how candidates review your hiring processes on sites like Glassdoor. 

By establishing and maintaining a positive relationship with your talent pool, you increase your chances of successfully recruiting them when the right position opens up. 

Step 4: Create and Organize a Talent Database

Step 3 notwithstanding, it is obviously imperative that you create a centralized database to retain all the key information around your talent pool.

As discussed earlier, existing employees should automatically be included as part of your talent database. 

For external prospects, you must continually seek to add candidate information gleaned from all of your recruitment activities. 

This includes collecting resumes, cover letters, and data from online applications. 

Additionally, you must utilizea broad range of other resources such as LinkedIn and CV Library that have tens of millions of resumes readily accessible to your business. 

Step 4: Assess your talent pool

One of the most fundamental steps of managing your talent pipeline is to continually assess how the candidates meet the current and future requirements of your business. 

By regularly reviewing your potential talent pool, you’re able to efficiently identify viable candidates. This process also helps to determine if there are any areas of expertise your talent pool is currently lacking that you should seek to address as a matter of urgency. 

Doing this will not only inform your talent sourcing strategy and priorities but can also work to inform other in-house activities, such as providing additional training or mentorship to your existing employees. 

Some questions to consider when conducting assessments of your talent pipeline include

  • Is the candidate a good fit for your culture?
  • Will their past experiences be applicable to a potential position at your company?
  • What challenges might they face, and are they equipped to overcome those challenges?
  • What new skills will they be able to develop at your company?
  • Can your company fulfill their personal goals and needs?
  • Does the makeup of your talent pool align with your company’s diversity initiatives?

Step 6: Track the Right Metrics and Get Feedback 

It’s important that you have access to key metrics, data points and the feedback of your hiring or recruitment managers so you are able to make informed decisions about potential candidates. 

With Jobspage you have the ability to manage applications and candidate profiles collaboratively to make sure you are systematically identifying the top talent available to fill your open positions.

Streamline your hiring processes and improve the efficiency of your recruitment department by signing up for Jobspage today, totally free of charge.

Conclusion

Building a talent pipeline is key to optimizing your hiring processes and ensuring your business can accommodate its future needs around recruitment. 

By using recruitment software like Jobspage, you can significantly improve the productivity of your HR and recruitment departments by streamlining the hiring process, gaining valuable candidate insights, and managing all of your job postings and company updates in one central application. 

Try Jobspage for free today and discover how it can help you in building a talent pipeline that will serve you well into the future. 

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