How to Build a Talent Pipeline Machine

Posted by Jonathan Kidder on May 14, 2020January 29, 2023

Hiring may be slowing down for most companies, but that doesn’t mean a recruiter’s work should come to a halt. In fact, now is the perfect opportunity to begin building a future talent pipeline. During this down time you can be meeting with stake holders and hiring managers to start game planning a talent pipeline strategy for your future needs. Here are three ways to do it.

1. Start Planning

Planning should be the first thing to check off your list when you go about building a talent pipeline. Here’s what you need to account for:

Employer Branding: You need a good reputation to give your company a head start with engaging passive candidates. For starters, your career pages should be useful and attractive.

Candidate Experience: The hiring process should be enticing, educational, and enjoyable for every candidate. Now may be a good time to reach out to past candidates and get feedback about how the candidate experience could improve.

Employee Investment: It should be clear that your company invests in its employees. Ask them to share positive experiences and this will speak to your employer brand.

Seek Buy-In: Your stakeholders should buy-in to your talent pipeline idea, which means presenting it to executives and clarifying what you need to get it going. All employees should be encouraged to refer people to open roles, too.

Talent Mapping: Create a list of competitors in your location that you can target for leads. I created a post about market intelligence (here).

After you’ve done these things, you should now look at the details. For instance, what roles specifically do you need to build a talent pipeline for? For instance, sales roles need a talent pipeline because they typically have a high turnover rate. These pipelines are also beneficial for roles with very specific skill-sets.

2. Search for Passive Candidates

A talent pipeline is all about passive candidates, or people who may be interested in a role at your company in the future. Here are some great techniques for seeking out passive candidates.

Run Boolean searches. I have a massive list of strings (here).
Utilize social media recruiting strategies
Find candidates in person, like at events and seminars
Make use of sourcing tools
Look within your Application Tracking System (ATS)
Get referrals from those you know and current employees

Using a number of these strategies will get you the best and fastest results, you just need to start with the techniques you find will have the best payoff for your efforts.

3. Source Your Candidates

You don’t have positions open right this second, and that makes sourcing hard. So, here are some tips for the sourcing part of the process.

Honesty is the best policy: Don’t lead a candidate into thinking that you have a job to hand them if you don’t. Let them know you’re likely going to be hiring in the near future and you’re interested in them.

Respect everyone’s time: Candidates should drive the communication. Ask them how they’d like to communicate and what they’re currently working on.

Show interest: You should be genuinely interested in what these people have to say. Focus on their career aspirations and do some research before you talk so you can have a real discussion about their skills.

Let candidates lead: The candidate should get to say how they want to stay in touch and if they’d like to check-in with you again. Invite them to schedule another time to talk, but let them determine how they connect with you.

Template Examples: I’ve created a list of Recruiter templates that will help get your process started (here).

Tool Recommendations

1. Airtable: Check out Airtable for building out an active database of leads.

2. ZAPinfo: Is a great tool for scraping leads and importing them into a CSV format.

3. SeekOut: I’ve been a huge fan of there data analytics search tools. You can really drill down on the type of candidates that you want to target.

Bonus: I’ve written about my favorite automation tools (here).

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Jonathan Kidder

With more than 12 years of recruitment experience, Jonathan has helped startups and small businesses find the talent they need. He runs the blog WizardSourcer, which explores the latest trends in talent sourcing, provides reviews of recruitment tools, and features interviews with prominent figures in the industry.