Not only is it a challenge to find people for your talent pipeline, but it’s hard to keep that pipeline filled with an exceptional pool of candidates ready to fill positions for your company or organization. So how do you get one of the talent-filled pipelines and how do you sustain that pipeline? Let’s dig a little further.

Develop a Strategy

In order to create a talent pipeline, you’ll need to assess your needs and goals for your organization. Figure out what the company’s current and future talent needs will look like. This is a good time to determine what roles are critical to your company, what your ideal staff will look like, where there are existing gaps in skills, knowledge and experience, and what your company will need in order to be effective and successful.. From there you can base your talent pipeline off of these needed characteristics and skills.

Assess Internal Talent

Before you start searching for candidates outside of the company, it’s important to examine your current staff to determine if there is anyone who would be a good fit for the roles you’re looking to fill. Hiring internally comes with many benefits, since people are familiar with the company and the culture, and there’s established trust. In order to recruit internally, you’ll need to evaluate the turnover rate for the company. If employees aren’t engaged and staying with the company, you’ll find it harder to maintain an internal talent pipeline.

Finding the External Talent

The thought of building an external talent pool can seem like a daunting task but with the right tools it can be a smoother process than one would think. Like most things in life, it’s all about developing those networks and establishing relationships in order to help build that talent pipeline. Here are several suggestions for places to source external candidates:

• Use tools like LinkedIn to find qualified candidates and reach out to people to start making those connections.

• Work with a firm, like Skywalk Group, to help find the talent and maintain those relationships. An RPO like Skywalk Group, can help identify and nurture candidates that are good fits for the role, have the skill sets for the job, and fit the company culture.

• Stay in contact with candidates that made it to the final rounds of interviews who met the requirements, but may not have been your #1 choice for the job. These people have already been through the screening process and could still be interested in your company if the right opportunity came along. Remember to leave them with a great impression of the company, and follow-up with them from time to time to stay in contact.

• Referrals can be another way to find great candidates. This is a great opportunity for employees to use their connections to help continually source candidates for your talent pipeline.

• Attend industry events and tradeshows to build networks and get in touch with perspective candidates. If you’re going to these events with recruiting in mind, make sure you and your team are equipped to sell the company with an effective pitch.

Maintaining the Talent Pipeline

So you have the strategy to create and source the talent pipeline but how to do you maintain and sustain the pipeline? The first step is to measure the effectiveness of your pipeline. Are you attracting the right candidates for the right roles, do they fit into the current and future role(s) of the company, are they right for your company culture,, are you making the right connections through LinkedIn, your employer branding, your referral program, and events you’re attending? Evaluating your pipeline and its effectiveness allows you to reassess and make adjustments that work best for your organization.

Skywalk Group can help with developing an ongoing talent pipeline strategy, executing, and assisting with the onboarding and training process. Contact us for your hiring needs today.