5 Reasons Why You Need to Build a Talent Pool and Hire Passively

August 16, 2023

Finding candidates who meet your qualifying criteria in terms of skills and experience is tough today. Especially when you’re scaling up and hiring in volumes for multiple roles, attracting and recruiting quality talent becomes a huge challenge for your teams. With less than 27% of the workforce actively looking for a job, the most optimal way through for recruiters is to take charge and consistently source passive candidates to build a talent pool.

Remember that it’s a candidate-driven market currently, and amidst the stiff competition – you need to be ahead of time. Acquiring quality talent is the key to growing and sustaining a business. Hence, recruiters have a crucial role to play in shaping an organization’s future.

Contrary to popular opinion, building a talent pool should not be a backup plan for your talent acquisition team. Every company – big or small is aggressively chasing growth, which means they do not only want to hire at scale but hire faster than ever too. So having a talent pool with quality candidates and engaging with them consistently is the road to redemption. Whether hiring requirements are urgent or not – keep looking for quality candidates for various roles and continue networking with them.

If you’re looking to build a talent pool and searching for ways to recruit passive candidates effectively, this is the best place for you to be right now. In this blog, we will discuss how can you get started with building a talent pool, sourcing passive candidates and hiring faster than ever through your passive candidate pool. Stick around for an insightful discussion.

What is a Talent Pool?

To put it simply, a talent pool is an internal database of talented, qualified and experienced candidates:

who might fit well into your team, and
have shown interest at some point to work at your organization

The contestants for your talent pool vary widely. Whether it’s the candidates who couldn’t clear the last round during your previous recruitment campaigns or the candidates that you sourced through LinkedIn and Twitter, it might also be someone who was qualified enough and reached out to you, but there wasn’t an opening at the time – your talent pool should have everyone’s details.

69% of recruiters are having difficulty filling open roles. If you have been in the talent acquisition space for more than a year, chances are high that you have already experienced candidates ghosting you after the offer or some candidates not showing up in the interviews after screening. Overall, recruitment has transformed and you need an established strategy to attract and engage candidates. Posting jobs on job boards and your company page is not going to work. You’ll always get applications - no doubt that, but a very few of those would be from quality candidates. Talent hunters are relentlessly chasing top candidates. Building an active talent pool or database of top candidates and engaging, and nurturing them is a necessity to put yourself in a good position when it comes to acquiring talent.

Why is Building a Talent Pool More Important Than Ever?

Let’s cut to the chase – you always want to hire better. In fact, 41% of surveyed recruiters said a single bad hire costs a whooping $25k. Secondly, passive candidate recruitment is not the same as conventional hiring. It’s a multi-step process and candidate engagement is the most critical aspect of it. Let’s have a look at the top reasons why building a talent pool is not a ‘nice-to-have’ but is a necessity:

#1 Difference Between Demand & Supply

The demand for quality talent is huge, no one would doubt it. However, the supply is pretty limited due to a large chunk (almost 3/4th) of candidates being passive job seekers. They are engaged in a job currently, and identifying, engaging and giving them an offer which cannot be refused – is not easy. Not to forget – you aren’t the only recruiter approaching them. So you need to be proactive with whatever you do to stay relevant for them. A candidate already in your talent pool with who you have been engaging for a long time is more likely to join you rather than others. Building a solid candidate pool is not a destination, it’s a journey and you need to be consistent at it for seeing positive results.

#2 Higher Skills & Experience

It takes a lot of time and effort to draw the attention of passive candidates. But it’s worth it because as compared to applicants, passively sourced candidates bring in 2x the skills and experience. 1 in every 72 Sourced candidates is hired compared to every 1 in 152 candidates who apply to open positions. Building a talent pool is in your control as a recruiter. So you can filter candidates based on their skills and experience. Additionally, candidates who stood out in previous recruitment campaigns but couldn’t get selected for some reason, have a higher probability of fulfilling role requirements successfully.

#3 Workforce Planning

The top talent acquisition experts of the world have one thing in common. They focus on long-term recruitment. What does that mean? They plan their recruitment for years to come and strategically source candidates who would probably stay with them for longer, promote themselves consistently and will help the organization reach new heights. Diversity in hiring and long-term recruitment are two powerful aspects of workforce planning. Building a diverse, experience-rich talent pool ensures you have got the people with the required skills at any point in time. Hence, you can also do succession planning in advance for leading your company's workforce in the right direction.

#4 Acts as Your Savior

The global attrition rate is at an all-time high – around 20%. Imagine every 1 out of 5 employees leaving your company – even the thought is scary, right?

You never know as a recruiter when some of your employees quit and you’re left clueless. Sourcing effective candidates takes time and you cannot rush it due to immediate requirements. But the company cannot function properly or grow sustainably in such a scenario. Having an established talent pool helps you immensely in the case of sudden and unexpected resignations – you don’t want to launch recruitment campaigns forcibly, and depend on your luck for finding and hiring a suitable candidate. Sourcing passive talent from the talent pool would act as your safety net to fall on while such situations arise.

#5 Reduce Cost & Time to Hire

A major concern for all recruitment teams is the cost of talent acquisition. The need of the hour for companies scaling up is acquiring the best talent at a minimum budget and as quickly as possible. Practically, building a talent pool doesn’t cost anything except the recruitment teams’ efforts and the outcome also compounds in the long run. One of the biggest advantages of having an established talent pool is the significant reduction in cost and time of hiring. Talent acquisition teams can optimize their utilization of the allotted budget, for example – instead of investing heavily in job board features, they can focus on recruitment marketing campaigns and employer brand building for attracting even the most qualified and experienced candidates and developing an even larger talent pool.

Common Reasons for Candidates Being Moved to the Talent Pool

Why do we add candidates to the talent pool and not recruit them instantly?

If you have this question in mind right now, it’s totally justified and expected. Remember that you don’t add any candidate randomly to your talent pool, but only those who seem to have the potential as professionals in their streams and who can fit very well in your team. So adding candidates to the talent pool database and not recruiting them instantly can have a variety of reasons, here are the most common ones:

You reached out to them, they are interested in your company but are not open to switching roles right now.

They reached out to you and there’s no relevant opening currently, but you’re sure they got the skills needed and there will be openings soon.

The candidate was an applicant who couldn’t clear some of the last rounds of interviews in your previous recruitment campaign but has good potential to join you.

You have plans of scaling up in the next two quarters and you're in search of qualified candidates in advance.

Someone you trust referred them, but you do not have the right openings currently.

You met someone at an event who is currently employed but you can offer them a better position at your company in the future

Why Should You Engage with Candidates in the Talent Pool? Top Benefits

Companies that focus on candidate engagement and improving experience have an upper edge when it comes to acquiring great talent. Engagement with candidates currently in your talent pool will not only keep them aware of you as an employer but can also trigger their motivation to work with you. Let’s dive into the top benefits of candidate engagement:

Grabs the interest level of candidates: Consistently sharing content like newsletters and nurture email sequences with your candidates draws their attention towards the openings and that’s what you need the most. Additionally, presenting your company culture, behind the scenes of building business fascinates them and significantly boosts their interest.

Reduces drop-offs: Effective candidate engagement with your talent pool also helps you cut down the drop-off rate, especially at the bottom of the recruitment funnel. As candidates are actively engaged with your recruitment team and they know a bit about the company too, they are least likely to ghost you once they enter the recruitment process. Quality interactions and frequent positive engagement build a relationship with your candidates that helps you and the organization in the long run.

Boosts your employer brand: Your employer brand is what the workforce thinks about you as an employer of choice. Engaging consistently with candidates helps you spread the word of mouth and hence grow your employer brand. It doesn’t matter if you are recruiting candidates or just nurturing the ones in your talent pool, they will share their experiences about your company within their personal networks. It also means that other potential candidates would hear about you and maybe they even get attracted to work with you. Just like a consumer-facing brand, an employer brand has a compounding effect too.

Makes you stand out among the pool of competition: Something you should never underestimate is the huge pool of competition over talent acquisition. Building a talent pool is just the beginning. You need to keep nurturing, interacting and persuading candidates in order to convince them for joining your workforce. When it comes to standing out among the competition – consistency and creativity help you in engaging candidates in a way never done before.

Keep in mind that candidate engagement is not a sprint, but a marathon. That doesn’t mean running slow would be fine, but you need to keep running in order to stay in the competition. Often recruiters withdraw candidate engagement efforts with their talent pool after some time, because they don’t see results. It’s a compounding journey – and no one is perfect in the initial period. Once you activate the systems and automate them to some extent – it’s highly rewarding.

Ace Your Talent Pool Engagement with Nurturebox

There’s a lot on the recruiters’ plate at any given time. Whether it’s sourcing candidates, outreaching, engagement, managing the recruitment pipeline, evaluation, the hiring process, onboarding and the list is truly endless. While you’re always looking to hire for multiple roles, building a quality talent pool is a big challenge in itself. Add up to that manually engaging with candidates consistently, it would probably become too overwhelming. But as you’re already here, there’s no need to worry about mundane candidate sourcing and engagement tasks.

Nurturebox helps you optimize your recruitment process by automating talent sourcing engagement activities. The tool activates maximum productivity for recruiters as they can focus on the human side of recruiting – interacting and assessing the candidates. With Nurturebox’s Chrome extension, it takes a few clicks to add identified candidates to your outreach & engagement campaigns. What’s equally crucial is that the tool handles your entire talent pool management tasks and gives you a complete overview of your sourcing pipeline. Passive candidate recruitment has never been easier than now with the comprehensive sourcing automation solution.

Amidst today’s noisy digital world, brands find it challenging to create meaningful connections with their customer base and target audience. Getting the target consumer’s attention and persuading them to buy from you gets even trickier. Hence, content marketing has become more crucial than ever for brands to attract, educate, and retain customers.

Content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts your audience’s decisions through education and persuasion.

Depending on your business goals and requirements, the role of Content Marketers you hire will vary. The primary responsibilities revolve around forming consistent brand messaging and deciding upon a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across various distribution channels.

From raising brand awareness to attracting a relevant audience to your website, boosting social media presence and engagement, generating leads, and building brand loyalty – content marketing drives all the growth efforts for your brand. When done effectively, it can help you:

Build positive brand awareness
Make your audience stick around for longer
Get better traction on social media
Gain more trust of your audience than ever
Generate qualified leads
Improve conversion rates
Boost business visibility with SEO
Position your brand as an authority
Cultivate loyal brand fans

While content marketing is a broad role with numerous areas of expertise involved, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your company’s current marketing goals and the related requirements. In this blog, we will dive deep into the step-by-step approach to hiring a Content Marketer.

What is The Role of a Content Marketer?

A Content Marketer must be deeply passionate about telling your brand’s story to the world. The objective is to educate and nurture the target audience to establish brand authority using thought-leadership and drive more people to buy from you.

As a candidate is expected to be a mediator between the brand and the target audience, they are primarily responsible for planning, creating, and sharing valuable content to grow their company’s awareness and engagement to bring more business.

To be more specific, the role of a Content Marketer requires a perfect blend of creativity and attention to detail in an individual. It’s a balancing role, as they need to ensure creating content that resonates and strengthens business relationships, using strategies that position your business as authentic and problem-solving.

Take a look at the core responsibilities of a Content Marketer that most businesses expect them to take over:

Research and Competitor Analysis: The first and foremost step to creating a content marketing strategy is effective initial research. It not only helps a Content Marketer understand the nuances of the industry through competitor analysis but also study and understand the target audience thoroughly. ‍
Building Content Marketing Plans: Once the competitor research and target audience analysis is done, a Content Marketer needs to work on the different plans for all the business objectives, targeted channels, segments of the audience, and the bigger marketing strategy. A content marketing plan typically consists of:
Specific goals along with a pre-decided timeline
Various channels to be targeted for content distribution
Types of content to be created
Budget for the entire staff, outsourced services, and paid promotion (Collabs and Ads)
Creating Editorial Calendar: Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Content Marketer. It is a centralized visual document that enables effective collaboration among the marketing team and helps Content Marketers ensure on-time production and delivery.‍
Content Creation: Once the strategy and calendar have been approved by relevant stakeholders, Content Marketers need to do the on-ground work. This task usually depends on the scale of your company and content marketing strategy. Suppose an organization already has a set of writers, then the Content Marketer doesn’t need to create content by themselves.‍
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Producing quality content that educates your target audience and resonates with them, isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content creation to make it search engine-friendly. While most companies need a dedicated SEO specialist for keyword research and planning, Content Marketers need to closely collaborate with them and should be well-versed in the basics of SEO.

While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with

Content editing and ensuring adherence to a certain style guide
Continous publishing and distributing content
Measuring and analyzing performance

How to Hire a Content Marketer: Step-By-Step?

Content marketing has become the key to driving growth for businesses. Unlike a few years ago, it’s not possible now to get away with a one-person team for content marketing. You need deeply trained individuals for specialist roles.

Let’s now dive into the step-by-step approach of hiring a Content Marketer. But before you even source your first candidate, you should have a clear expectation of the skillset and experience to look out for top content marketing candidates.

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Step 1: Create a Candidate Persona

Let’s sort out the priorities first, and decide the type of content marketing candidates you want to recruit. From exceptional research skills to storytelling, communication skills, relationship building, audience engagement, and more capabilities must be comprehensively considered. Identify and break down the skill requirements for Content Marketers:

What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates?
What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
Where do they look for a new job?
What are their career and life goals?

Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.

Step 2: Document the Role Requirements and Decide on Your Recruiting Process

Next step is determining your role requirements suiting primarily to organizational needs and business goals. A content marketing professional is expected to own the entire content strategy, creation, and distribution. But what about your business’s unique requirements?

You might need someone comfortable with frequently creating long-form content pieces like blogs, ebooks, or whitepapers, or creating engaging video content based on your industry trends.

Talk to various relevant stakeholders for seeking the complete detailed company requirements for the role.

Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.

As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.

Step 3: Prepare a Content Marketing Job Description

Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current content marketing goals and team, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.

Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:

Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Content Marketing Specialist or Content Marketing Manager.

Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.

Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully.

Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits.

About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?

Content Marketer Job Description Template

Role

The job of a Content Marketer is to perform competitor research, create user persona, and write plagiarism-free content for blog articles, social media, and the company website. They need to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques.

Responsibilities

Develop, write and deliver persuasive copy for the website, email marketing campaigns, sales collateral, videos, and blogs
Build and manage an editorial calendar; coordinate with other content crafters to ensure standards
Measure impact and perform analysis to improve KPIs
Include and optimize all content for SEO
Contribute to the localization of processes and content to ensure consistency across regions
Review and implement process changes to drive operational excellence

Requirements

Proven content marketing, copywriting, or SEO experience
Working knowledge of content management systems like WordPress
A well-maintained portfolio of published articles, blogs, copy, etc
Proven experience of working under pressure to deliver high quality output in a short span of time
Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications, Google Suite
Fluency in English or any other required language

Soft Skills

Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Excellent writing and editing skills
The ability to work in a fast-paced environment
The ability to handle multiple projects concurrently
Strong attention to detail and the ability to multi-task projects and deliverables

Step 4: Source Candidates

Once you have the tailored job description in hand, it’s now time to do the groundwork and source candidates. Create an attractive job post to promote your job across job boards and social channels.

Begin with what to expect from the role at your company?
Why should candidates apply for the position?
Highlight the growth opportunities
State the company vision and mission
Briefly describe the recruitment process

Prepare an impactful job post and also execute paid job ad campaigns if required. The next step would be promoting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring Content Marketers:

LinkedIn
Indeed
Instahyre
ZipRecruiter
Monster
GlassDoor
CareerBuilder

Not to forget - almost 3/4th of the workforce includes passive candidates, so you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on communities, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook to offer them suitable opportunities.

Step 5: Evaluate Candidates and Interview Shortlisted Ones

Once you have filtered candidates based on their experience and skills listed on their profile, it’s time to evaluate them deeply. Ask them to create a content strategy for your website, along with a value-adding content piece like a small blog. The topic of the article must fall within the scope of the strategy.

Interview the candidates whose profiles got shortlisted. Keep in mind the parameters covering skills, relevant experience, and personality traits of candidates.

Step 5: Make the Hire

Reach out to selected Content Marketers and communicate about the compensation.

Further, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward.

Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team.

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Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates
Introduce them to the entire team and the marketing teams they will be working with
Guide the new candidates about your company management tools and communication channels
Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.

Supercharge Your Hiring for Content Marketer with Nurturebox

Inbound candidate sourcing doesn’t work effectively anymore. Do you also find challenges in closing quality candidates through job posts even after spending on ads?

Don’t worry, passive candidate sourcing can be an optimal solution for hiring top content marketing candidates.

Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement platform which is powered by automation. Here’s how you can source product managers from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:

Install the Nurturebox Chrome plugin and sign up.
On your LinkedIn profile, start sourcing Content Marketers with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria
Add the qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click
Automate the candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.