5 Simple Ways to Grow Candidates to Your Talent Network

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

If you’ve ever done any gardening, you understand that there’s much more to a plant producing flowers, fruit or vegetables than simply digging a hole in the ground and dropping in a handful of seeds. A good gardener recognizes that’s only the first step, and often the easiest. But when those first signs of growth come in, it’s clear that the work was worth the reward.

In the same way that a garden requires time, attention and a little nurturing, growing your talent network takes more than simply launching your community. It’s an ongoing effort to take candidates from passing by your career site to being invested in your talent network.

The benefit of having a talent network is the fully branded community of candidates that your company owns and manages. It puts you in control of engaging and building relationships with those candidates who choose to join your community. As you go about building and growing your network, it’s important to create an environment that welcomes them from the very beginning. Building this community starts with enticing candidates to join your community. Start with these five strategies and don’t be afraid to get creative.

Make social part of your strategy year round

You probably already know that social media provides a major opportunity for you to advertise job openings, but what you may not know is that there’s never a bad time to engage on social. Regardless of whether or not you have open positions, share your talent network via social media and invite and encourage others to join. This kind of proactive recruitment is how candidate pipelines are created.

Provide a visual

The majority of us are visual people, and social media has made people more accustomed to seeing rather than reading. Take advantage of this by creating a series of videos to talk about the benefits of joining your talent network and how it allows you and the job seeker to connect before the formal job opening ever happens.

Encourage your employees to share

Your employees can be your biggest brand ambassadors, so engage them in promoting your talent network among friends and peers. The majority of them are engaged in social networks, so you’re providing them a way to promote the company easily and quickly.

Share everywhere you can

Look around and think about your company’s HR and recruiting communications. From brochures to business cards to promo items, these are all places you can include your talent community’s link. Get the whole company in on it by adding it to all company signatures.

Host online events within your network

Make joining your talent network worth their while by hosting member-only events online. For instance, you could offer resume review or an ask-the-recruiter session. Get creative and help establish a reputation for being candidate focused in your community.

Read more about what a talent community can do for your company here.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

Change Quickly - How Organizations Can Quickly Hire Candidates

By Jessica Miller-Merrell


We live in a fast-paced world. We expect things to happen quickly and often don't have much patience when they don't. We send email, texts, meeting requests and more from one of our many mobile devices and expect to hear back quickly. We are wired to be able to make decisions on a moment's notice and we've gotten quite good at it. But there's one aspect of a hiring manager's job that seems to not want to follow suit: the recruiting process.

From start to finish, recruiting and hiring can take anywhere from just a couple days to more than 100! It's a big job to find a good candidate and start the interview and hiring process and the unfortunate aspect of that is that life goes on. That empty position is probably slowing down business and slowing down your days as you continue to search for the right candidate. So what's the solution? Filling the position before it even opens up.

We know that turnover is inevitable, so it only make sense. If you're constantly recruiting, there's less lag time when you're ready to pull the trigger and hire. It's the secret to success for any HR professional. The key is to seek out passive candidates - they will be your next employees! In 2011, a study by LinkedIn revealed that two-thirds of HR professionals place an emphasis on hiring passive talent and 82 percent use at least one method of staying continually engaged with that group.

The great thing about this is that it's not that difficult. There are so many simple things you can do daily to start building that pipeline of candidates. Check out these four tips to start building your arsenal of potential employees.

Become a networking rockstar - at all the right places
Whether you're a rockstar at recruiting or not, you've got to be doing it in the right places to be successful. Think about the best places for your industry. For instance, a high-tech company in Silicone Valley frequents wine festivals and tastings where many potential candidates often visit. Go to luncheons of professional organizations that are relevant to your business and make contacts there. To recruit the best new talent, don't just go to career fairs at colleges; reach out to professors who know who the top students are. Network everywhere you go - the grocery store, lunch with friends, fundraising events - they're all opportunities to fill that next job opening.

Tweet, post and connect
Social media has become such a valuable tool in the least few years. Use it to your advantage by connecting with potential candidates that you feel meet the criteria of someone you would hire. Looking at profiles now might mean you won't have to sift through resumes later. It can be as simple as commenting on a post, retweeting or adding that person as a connection. This isn't necessarily the time to reach out with a generic message about your website's careers page. Use this opportunity to build a personal connection. It'll be more memorable and will open the door to build a relationship. Think outside the box, too. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn aren't the only social sites where you can build connections.

Don't let a previously-rejected candidate fall through the cracks
Ok, we all know that some applicants who didn't make the cut will probably never be a good fit. But what about the ones who left you wishing you had two open positions so you could hire them also? Don't forget about them! There are several reasons they may have gotten looked over the first time - maybe their salary requirements were too high, they didn't have enough experience at the time or there was just a slightly more qualified applicant. Keep a conversation going with these candidates and reach out when you have a job opening you think they'd be great for.

Keep a record of potential candidates
As you start to build a pipeline of candidates, you'll probably run into the same problem that most do: it's difficult to keep track of them. This is actually the key to successfully building a pipeline. After all, what good is all that networking if you can't remember anything about that person? Keep a good record of all your potential candidates using a spreadsheet or software made just for this purpose. Note as much as you can so that when it's time to reach out about a job opening, you know their qualifications, motivations and important factors in making a decision. The more you know, the better.

Whether you use just one or all four of these tips, keep the conversation going. Continually engaging candidates is vital to finding the best fit in your talent acquisition search.

What are your secrets for successfully building a talent pipeline?


Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

Photo Credit.

The Great Candidate Quality vs. Quantity Debate Part Two

 

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

In Part One of this series we outlined the specifics behind the right times to pick quality over quantity and vice versa. If you’re a company that has had bad experiences with mass hiring and not necessarily picking the right candidates for the job, you’ll find these benefits to be very true. Hiring for quality has its perks and they’re good perks too!

Before we get into some of the top perks of hiring quality over quantity, here are some quick pointers on hiring quality employees.

Use Validation Testing. There’s nothing worse than a candidate coming in for an interview and saying their amazing at this and that, then not having a clue once they’re hired. Prevent this with using specific testing software that’ll see if the candidate really knows what they’re talking about. People lie on their resumes all the time. Prevent yourself from being lied to.

Use Referrals. The average time it takes to fill a job position using a referral is 29 days opposed to hiring someone off the street at 39 days. Use your employees to recruit their friends. We all know someone who knows someone who is good at whatever job position you need to be filled. Use your inter-office connections! Give incentives!  

Now that you know a couple ways to hire quality candidates, here are the benefits that you’ll reap from taking the extra step. The right employee can have an amazing impact on the success of your business. A quality person can do more with less. He can bring fresh ideas to the table. She can self-motivate and go above and beyond the job description.

Increased Productivity. This one seems to be a no-brainer. If you hire quality candidates and you treat them as such, they will be brand advocates and want to work hard for your company. Your success will be their success. According to the most recent Gallup calculations actively disengaged employees – those that are least productive – cost the American economy up to $350 billion per year in lost productivity. 

Decreased Turnover. Hiring a candidate that is not only right for the job, but fits into your company culture will result in decreased turnover.  If you’re hiring awful candidates not only will the high cost of training cripple your company, but also the loyalty within your office will suffer.

High Morale. You might wonder how this is derived as a benefit from hiring quality over quantity. Office dynamics play a huge role in the success of a company. If everyone is able to do their job right and even throw out game-changing ideas, your company will be on a metaphorical high all the way to the top of the Fortune 200/500.  After all, who doesn’t want to work for the leader in a particular industry? Put the proper people in place and they will take you there.

The pros and cons to hiring for quality over quantity could be listed out for decades and the debate over which to hire could span a lifetime. Based on what was learned from Part One, the coin could be tossed both ways. No matter, which way you go, know the benefits of hiring for quality.  What do you think? Quality or Quantity?

Photo Credit.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media.  She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs.