Ten steps to building an effective talent pipeline

Talent Pipeline is a successful concept derived from marketing and sales. It is a collection of identified and qualified candidates who are interested and can be contacted if a vacancy is to be filled in a timely manner.
It's "relationship recruiting" at its best. Instead of looking for suitable candidates, talent pipelines allow you to build relationships with passive and qualified talents in the future.

In order to develop an effective talent pipeline, a company must move from "reactive" to "proactive" recruiting. When building the pipeline, you don't think about filling open roles straight away, but rather focus on most right-fit talents who your company would possibly hire in the future. There are many more benefits to building a strong pipeline, and you can read our recent blog about this concept.

Use these 10 steps to building an effective talent pipeline

Organizations need to define, attract, develop, and retain the right mix of critical talent to support and grow their business, especially now.

Organizations should create pipelines for critical roles to ensure that the right talent for those positions would exist when needed.

1. Determine Current and Future Needs - The identification and analysis of critical roles is the first step before beginning to build a pool of critical talent.
2. Assess the Talent Inventory - Characterize the necessary skills and competencies for success in those roles.
3. Determine the Mix for Filling Gaps - Factors for determining the mix typically include the state of the labor market, the strength of the internal development infrastructure (programs and resources), and the cultural importance of hiring from within for critical roles.
4. Define the Pool of Internal Candidates - A valuable step in developing internal candidates for critical positions is to assign them to a specific talent pool.
5. Assess and Develop the Pool and Track Development Progress, Track Promotion and Turnover Rates - Lower-than-expected promotion rates may indicate that development programs need to be revisited and refined. Similarly, higher-than-expected turnover rates should drive changes in how the organization approaches building pipelines for critical positions.
6. Define the Pool of Existing External Candidates - Bearing in mind needed skills, competencies, and talent profiles, one can mine information on past candidates in the organization’s candidate database to identify matches and assess the potential of external hires to fill critical roles.
7. Define and Execute Campaigns to Engage Candidates - Identify conferences, industry associations, and social networks that match the critical role profile. Also work with hiring managers and employees for relationship-building.
8. Assess and Refine Current Sourcing Strategies - Analyze sources that have been successful in the past to develop a targeted sourcing strategy for external candidates based on ideal-candidate profiles, needs, and historical trends
9. Implement and Monitor Sourcing Strategies - Seek out talent that can fill critical roles, and capture information about those people’s knowledge, skills, and experience in addition to contact information for ongoing communications
10. Track the Overall Size and Quality of Internal and External Pools - Use the talent pool database to track internal critical role candidates as well as external candidates.