These days, finding the right candidate is about who you know. While your job ad may generate resumes, the best candidates are often the passive, hidden talent, that only an active candidate pipeline can uncover. What is a candidate pipeline, how can you build one, and how can it benefit your business?
What is a Candidate Pipeline?
Reactive recruiting is the old “post and pray” method. That’s where companies would write an ad, place it on a job board, sit back, and wait for resumes to come in. Sure, it’s a good idea to have a few passive lines in the water when you’re fishing. But if you don’t also work to build a funnel of potential candidates for down the road, your hiring process these days will drag on for longer than is necessary or beneficial for your company.
A candidate pipeline is an active network of potential candidates that may be available to your company in the long term. This is a proactive process that requires your recruiters to constantly communicate with both passive and active candidates. Even if they don’t have an open requisition to hire for, your teams should be networking to build a full pipeline of candidates for when they are ready to hire again. What are the best ways for recruiters to build these resources?
Best Ways to Build a Candidate Funnel
Start with a positive employer brand that your hiring and marketing teams can share out into the marketplace. This will help build goodwill in the markets that you serve. It will help attract a better caliber of candidates into the funnel, as well. Teach your recruiting teams to “sell” the benefits of working at your company. Talk about company culture, not just the job description. This may require a revamp of your career site and a parallel marketing track designed not only to sell products but also to attract candidates.
Think strategically about the kinds of roles you’ll be more likely to hire for in the future. Then start to build new relationships with the types of candidates you’ll be looking for later on. This will help you avoid wasting time with unqualified candidates. However, keep in mind that every candidate you speak with, even if they aren’t qualified now, may continue to develop their skills for the future. Every candidate, as long as they have the skills you need, could matter to you later on.
Work on this process every day. Sourcing great candidates take time and organization. To do this you need a best-in-class applicant tracking system (ATS) that can help you organize the hundreds of calls you make each week. Exelare has the tool you need to streamline your candidate pipelines. Here’s how we can help.
How Can Exelare Help with your Candidate Pipeline?
Exelare gives your team a way to identify and stay in touch with a proactive pool of candidates. We offer resume harvesting from more than 200 resume boards, websites, and social media sites. Then we have the tool that can organize and automate your meaningful conversations with top potential candidates over the long haul. Exelare’s easy-to-use but sophisticated software is built around the idea of marketing your business to candidates to build a robust, active candidate pipeline. We give our clients a competitive advantage in the recruiting game. Find out hour our software can help you maintain a larger candidate pipeline to build your business. Ready for a demo?
