Online talent communities are now being utilised by a large number of those in the recruitment world. Having existed even since the offline days, these potential pools of talents are currently being driven further by social recruitment.
Each talent pool can now also be built on a global scale with a new-school way of thinking and broken down with an old-school approach by creating different groups such as skill sets, location, seniority or any other common traits.
What’s the point?
With the various online channels now available it can be extremely time consuming to work on building up each to maximise their potential. So you need to make sure that you set goals and targets for each of the communities you initiate so you can measure the actual benefits that they bring. This could be done by assessing the number of followers, fans or connections that you are able to convert into active candidates, or placements for the simplest metric.
Some of the advantages include:
- Demonstrating a reduction in your paid advertising spend
- Faster resource mobilisation for projects
- Decreasing your cost per hire
- Shortening the time to recruit
- Increasing market awareness amongst a group of link minded individuals eager to share information
So what do these communities look like?
Essentially a talent community is a group of people sharing the same interests, skill sets, experience or locality.
Each community could consist of:
- Your own internal staff force - Those looking to push their way up the career ladder
- Alumni staff - Past employees that may want to work with you again
- Registered applicants - Those willing to register and associate themselves with your brand but may not be actively looking for a job
- Unsuccessful applicants - Candidates who weren’t right for a role but may be suitable for one in the future
Interacting and engaging effectively
As long as there is a common theme and purpose to the community group your information shared should be of great interest to all involved and provide the opportunity for the group to spread the word to others and share or refer it among their personal networks. All of which extends your reach, so essentially they’re doing your job for you.
Similarly by being active across various social recruitment channels this gives you more scope to build up a larger network of talent. We can no longer dictate, channel or expect our candidates to engage with us on our chosen methods so to ensure we are reaching all the potential superstars out there we need to be tapping into where they are active online. Your ideal candidates may spend more time on Facebook than they do on Twitter for example.
Rating the quality of your talent communities
Unfortunately time is always a limitation, so it’s also worth trying to focus and maximise your time spent communicating with the most important candidates. Try to encourage them to participate by asking for their thoughts on subjects relevant to your industry. Essentially you’re treating them the same online as you would in a room full of people. As a result, they will ‘feel the love’ for your brand which will encourage them to register interest in working for you or even better applying for a live role.
Similarly remember that success breeds success so these new potential superstars are likely to have surrounded themselves with other successful talent. Once you have then engaged you might also be able to pick out who they’re friends with, who they’re connected to and the companies they follow....and yet build up your talent community even further.
If you want more tips on how to find right-fit candidates, download our eBook all about sourcing candidates:
