Dive Into New Talent Pools with These 3 Expert Tips

A stagnant talent pool is every hiring pros’ worst nightmare. That’s why the fastest growing companies are making their talent pipelines a priority this year.

In fact, 67 percent of fast-growing companies listed finding new talent pipelines as their highest priority in our 2018 Growth Hiring Trends in the United States report. This heightened focus is in response to the great gap in finding qualified talent. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said their biggest obstacle is a lack of qualified candidates in their talent pools.

To overcome this challenge, hiring pros must jump outside the box. Here’s what the experts are doing to crack open new and improved talent pools:

1. Mentor motivated learners

We focus on individuals from non-traditional education/workforce backgrounds because we believe everyone can be a talented programmer with the right resources. Actually, 99 percent of our students don’t have an IT/Computer Science degree and 54 percent of our apprentices were previously unemployed.

We believe companies must rethink their hiring practices and value skills over credentials in order to minimize the talent gap, especially as we move toward a more automated future. Companies like Express Scripts, Boeing, and MasterCard have hired our students and know firsthand that programmers don’t need a Stanford degree and a Silicon Valley address to be successful.

We also encourage mentorship throughout the apprenticeship process because we believe it not only helps to nurture the junior talent pipeline, it also benefits more senior employees, boosting morale and making them feel involved and invested in the company’s future.

Leah Freeman, Public Relations Manager at LaunchCode

2. Broaden your horizons

In competitive talent environments, such as the one we are in (unemployment rate is now at 4.1 percent), growing companies need to continue to build and maintain a high-quality pipeline of candidates. As the quality of pipelines drops, companies are forced to either slow down hiring or lower their bar — neither of which are great options for the long-term success of a company.

Internal referrals are a big tool, as well as a no-frills, low-risk recruitment solution that can augment your existing pipeline. It’s important to think about average cost per hire and not maximum cost per hire when building a diverse talent pipeline strategy.

There will be certain channels that are free (inbound) and some that may cost more (agency or internal referral bonuses) but, overall, one should assess their costs holistically spread across all channels.

We had to leverage Craigslist back in 2014 for a customer who needed to hire a few hundred people. It was a hidden channel because not many companies were advertising jobs on Craigslist. We had tremendous success sourcing approximately 40 to 50 percent of candidates from Craigslist.

Jordan Wan, Founder & CEO of CloserIQ

Here is a list of 13 ways how you can build your talent pool.

3. Go unconventional

In 2016, I started playing with chatbots as a way to connect candidates to employers quicker, with higher engagements versus ATS career sites.

With Facebook Messenger, we built one of the first job search chatbots, GoBe the Chatbot. Messaging is one of the best ways to acquire and connect with candidates. They respond quickly and, with automation, chatbots and messaging allow recruiters to automate tasks like pre-screening and interview scheduling.

Jonathan Duarte, Founder at GoHire.com

How do you get creative when it comes to cracking open new talent pipelines? Let us know!