The Ultimate Guide To Building An Engaging Talent Community in 2024

Recruiters spend a lot of time building a strong talent pool with qualified candidates. But this strategy of passive hiring has one significant drawback. Talent pool means one-way communication, implying that the recruiters communicate and engage with candidates at their convenience. On the other hand, candidates might only get a reply or an update if they are fit for the job. 

A talent community is another passive sourcing strategy that covers up all the loopholes of the talent pool and acts as a two-way communication channel between recruiters and candidates. Candidates have more freedom to discuss the company and their respective fields openly. There is more belonging and a better environment for collaboration.

But what is a talent community? In today’s blog, we will discuss what a talent community is, and how to build one to reap maximum benefits.  

What Does the Talent Community Mean?  

A talent community is a sourcing strategy to tap qualified talent and nurture them till a vacancy opens. Recruiters provide candidates with a platform to network and get valuable information while engaging with them as a form of passive recruitment. 

But how does it help?

Recruiters communicate about company values and culture while building a self-feeding talent pool to attract top talent. They tap qualified talent through multiple channels like social media, newsletters, candidate portals, etc., to keep them engaged and interested in the company. 

What is the Purpose of the Talent Community?

Recruiters spend a lot of time managing the hiring process and engaging with passive candidates. They have a lot of tasks like- forecasting needs, creating JDs, drafting SOPs and documents, providing an amiable work environment, etc. So, why will they spend extra time on building a talent community? 

• Save Cost Per Hire- The community includes interested candidates who wish to work with your organization and have an idea of company culture. This provides recruiters with pre-vetted qualified candidates, saving their marketing and other hiring costs. They will spend less on posting job ads and finding candidates from their network easily. 

• Reduce Time To Hire- A talent community is a place for job seekers to find job opportunities. The community members are engaged and willing to work with the company, saving recruiters time to match candidates with the open roles. Moreover, the vacancy will be filled quickly, reducing the impact on business revenue. 

• Improve Quality of Hire- The community offers qualified candidates who are fit for the job and familiar with company culture.  This ensures that the candidates understand the company values and role better. Moreover, they are genuinely interested in the organization, improving the quality of hire. 

• Increase Job Offer Acceptance Rate (OAR)- Recruiters often need more qualified candidates when they choose another company and reject the offer letter. This leads to resource wastage and ruins the hiring efforts. With community, recruiters can share company values and job perks while building a strong rapport with candidates. This increases the OAR, leading to minimal waste and hiring the desired candidate.

• Offer Better Candidate Experience- The community allows recruiters to connect with candidates, leading to open communication and transparency. This ensures that candidates receive clear feedback and there is two-way communication. 

•  Attract Passive Candidates- Recruiters can spend their time on something other than sourcing and engaging with passive candidates. With a talent community, they are building a self-feeding talent pool with qualified candidates. Talent communities will offer valuable resources and networking opportunities, automatically enticing top candidates to join the community. 

• Diversify Talent Pool- The talent community enables recruiters to tap a larger pool of candidates, including underrepresented candidates. This is because the members don’t go through a screening process or aren’t interviewed, mitigating the chances of bias. Hence, the recruiters get a group of qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds.

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How Do You Build a Talent Community? 

Recruiters believe that bringing all the passive candidates into a single group to share company updates and vacancies can serve as a talent community. This leaves hundreds of companies with an email list of people who aren't the top talent in the industry and serves no purpose. 

Recruiters need to spend more time nurturing their community members and treat the community as a community pool. They need to plan their activities and use them to share company information and provide a networking platform. Hence, they often end up with a group of unqualified candidates who are not the perfect fit for the company. 

Here is a 3-step process to create a valuable talent community that serves its members and your organization. 

Step 1: Choose a Platform

The first step is planning and understanding the business capacity. Recruiters shall analyze the resources available to them. This involves estimating the budget, forecasting business hiring needs, researching available CRMs and their suitability, and much more. This information allows recruiters to pick a platform that integrates seamlessly with their existing tech stack and brings together valuable community members.

The recruiter estimates the business hiring needs and their budget to invest in a dedicated CRM (candidate relationship management). A CRM helps the recruiters to manage the community efficiently by using automation for messages and following-up. 

They will spend time engaging but need a platform that blends well with the remaining HR tools. It becomes the core hub for bringing potential and old qualified candidates to one place. 

Some of the best platforms are Discord, Slack, Facebook Groups, Reddit, etc. Some of these provide valuable features in the paid version, making running and managing the community easier. 

Step 2: Create a Candidate Network 

Once you decide on the platform, you must invite the desired target audience to join your community. However, now we have two questions to address:

• Who is our target audience? Who do we want to join the community?
• Where do we find these people?

Recruiters often skip this step and create a big pool of unqualified members who neither add value nor serve any purpose. They remain in the community to keep an eye on the vacancies but need to be the right fit for the role. 

How Do You Create a Candidate Network?

First step: Identifying the right audience! 

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Recruiters shall analyze business needs to forecast and map out the hiring requirements. This will give a starting point to choose the sourcing channels for the community members. Recruiters can set criteria and invite/ reach out to qualified candidates only. 

For example, if the company is projecting future needs for more tech specialists, recruiters will spend more time capturing that audience. They wouldn’t want to bring in a pool of people from marketing or accounting. 

Generally, each talent pool has people from various departments with varying experience. The recruiters have minimal control over the audience they reach. However, with a dedicated strategy, they will have a better chance to attract the industry’s top talents. They can create a community of:

• Passive Candidates 
• Referrals (Candidates referred by employees or other networks who might be a better fit for future roles)
• Qualified Candidates (The ones who are fit for the job, but the company doesn’t have a vacancy)
• Previously Interviewed Candidates (These performed well in the assessment process but didn’t receive the offer letter. Alternatively, this includes candidates who are fit for a different role, not the one they applied for)

Choosing the target audience gives clarity over the sourcing channels. For instance, recruiters who are looking for experienced candidates will have success through referral or networking platforms instead of career fairs. So, here are 9 sourcing platforms that will help you to find the best candidates to nurture the community. 

1. Contact Forms (Career Pages)- This includes a form to submit emails with relevant details to add candidates to your email list and entice them to join the community. You can send job alerts and be assured that these candidates are well-suited since they have gone through JD on the website. They have a high-level understanding of company expectations and are interested in working in the organization.

2. Candidate Portals- This includes job boards or portals like Naukri.com or Indeed, where recruiters can find candidates by posting job vacancies. You can screen the applications and invite qualified candidates to be part of the community.

3. Employee Referral- This includes tapping the employee network to reach qualified candidates from a similar background (as the current employee). They will be qualified and willing to work since an employee is the biggest ambassador of the employer brand. 

4. University Career Fairs- This includes on-campus recruitment or fairs to meet new talent for the company. This will be apt if the company hires people for entry-level jobs. Recruiters can network and invite them to join the community to update them about job opportunities.

5. Social Media- This includes sourcing passive candidates who are interested in switching jobs or passively looking for new job opportunities. Recruiters can leverage channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to find qualified candidates to entice them to become community members.

6. Talent and Career Fairs- Talent and career fairs are great opportunities to network on a large scale and book bulk interviews. This will help you find qualified candidates who can be enticed to join the community and update them on job opportunities.

7. Past Employees- This includes alumni network and boomerang employees who would join the company again. Recruiters can ask past employees to be part of the community to hire them again later or tap through their referrals. These employees fit well for another job role to match their skill set.

8. Old Candidates- This includes candidates in the grey area who interviewed but were not the right fit at that time. This means they might be apt for another role and make the cut in case of more open positions. 

9. Email Subscription- This includes job seekers interested in the company or want to work with them. They get a glimpse of company culture and value via the community and networking opportunities to meet like-minded people. Moreover, they get valuable resources to advance their career. You could add the subscription pop-up on the company website or via social media content. 

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Step 3: Segment Members 

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Before the recruiters jump ahead on filling vacancies through the diverse pool of candidates created, they must spend some time segmenting the members to make their job easier. Finding the right candidate from a community of hundreds of thousands of members will be hard. Hence, it is important to choose some basis to define and segment the members. 

Segmenting gives recruiters three benefits. First, they can better understand and cater to the needs and desires of the community members. This is critical to strengthen the employer brand and optimize the hiring process. Second, the content and message can be personalized to align with the members’ needs, leading to a better candidate experience. Third, it will be easy and quick for recruiters to match and find the right candidates, removing all the hassle. 

But what basis can be used to segment the audience?

1. Occupation- The members can be segregated into different categories based on their industry and occupation. All the marketers and marketing-related professionals are in one category, while all the tech specialists have a separate space. 

2. Experience- The experience shall influence your content and messaging drastically. Experienced professionals need to be fed with basic industry knowledge and insights. They need more high-level up-to-date knowledge to advance their career. Moreover, it will help recruiters find or get referrals from the community quickly and easily. 

3. Geographical Background- The members shall get a separate space based on their geographical location. This will help them find like-minded people easily and make it easy for recruiters to offer relevant updates and insights.

In addition to these three, recruiters can segment members based on prior history with the company or other bases based upon the business needs. But what matters is to provide relevant information and a pleasant experience to strengthen the employer brand and leverage the value of community. This requires the recruiters to engage and provide value to the members actively. 

Among thousands or millions of communities, the most critical part is to engage with the members and not convert the community into a group of inactive members. 

How to Keep the Community Engaged?

Recruiters need help to invest time in a talent community. However, it is critical to understand that just like a talent pool, they must dedicate themselves to this community to nurture each member and get real value from the community. 

Recruiters have to focus on their messaging and how they cater to each member’s desires. Hence, they must spend extra time curating valuable content, communicating value, and using automation to engage with members efficiently. It isn’t possible to communicate with hundreds of members on your own without any assistance. Hence, there are 3 core areas to tap into to build an engaging community:

• Content 
• Strengthen Employer Brand 
• Using CMS (Candidate Management System)

After all, recruiters must rely on something other than job vacancies to attract candidates. Moreover, it is impossible to have vacancies at all times.

Content 

Recruiters must offer valuable resources to the members to engage them and encourage them to stay active in the community. If the members don’t get any value, they leave the community or stop checking for updates. Hence, it is critical to provide curated content that helps the members. This could be in various formats and cover multiple arenas. 

• Industry Trends & Updates- You can share news & latest industry trends depending on your target audience. This is where the segmenting helps to share relevant updates. For instance, sharing about emerging marketing tools will not interest tech specialists or accountants. 

• Organization News includes news about new products or services, company successes, strategic partnerships, etc. This will help the members get an overview of the organization and its performance. 

• Career Tips- You can spend time networking with industry experts to share tips for the members. This could include strategies, tips, or hacks for perfect resumes, passing job interviews, salary negotiation, accepting job offers, dealing with managers, etc. You can pick multiple formats and platforms to share this, such as blogs, social media posts, etc. Additionally, professional development articles turn out to be of real value when attracting top-quality professionals. 

• Employee Testimonial- This includes a 1-min staff interview, a company tour, a pull quote, and other employee-related content. This aims to give a glimpse of the working culture and company values. Recruiters can share positive changes for employees using videos, quotes, social media posts, etc.

• Company Events- You can announce upcoming career fairs & networking events relevant to each segment. This will entice members to check the group, regularly looking forward to such events. You can also share insights and reports based on these events as a unique curated resource. 

Employer Brand Strengthening

There are millions of communities out there. How will you make yours stand out? By building a strong employer brand. When the candidates know about your company and are genuinely interested, they will join the community willingly to stay updated. 

It will help recruiters to stand out in the crowded labor market. Here are 3 ways to strengthen your employer brand.

• Dedicated Email Marketing Campaign- Recruiters shall use email marketing to share valuable resources, company updates, job openings, etc. This will capture top talents and improve company rapport. As they join the community, they will get a glimpse of company culture as you engage with them. All of this and a personalized experience based on segmentation will strengthen the employer brand. This will boost the familiarity and likeness towards the organization.

• Social Media- Recruiters can opt for a dedicated “careers” page to share workplace information and job postings. This can further be used to showcase the work environment and work culture. The industry’s top talented candidates aren’t solely driven by the money but enticed by a healthy work culture too. This will help recruiters to attract and keep them engaged in the community. 

• Leverage Current Employees- The current employees are the biggest employer brand ambassador. Hence, it is beneficial if the employees engage & share valuable content to build a good rapport. Moreover, this will create a healthy relationship between the current employees and community members, leading to a stronger employer brand. This will keep members engaged in the community!

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Talent Management Software

Is it possible for a person to manage and moderate a community of thousands of members? It is advisable to opt for talent management software. It is tedious to manage a spreadsheet and emails via the existing tech stack as it is unsuitable for community management. Hence, recruiters must invest in a good talent management tool to enhance efficiency and extract maximum value from the community. 

But is it crucial to get a CRM (candidate relationship management) tool for community building?

A dedicated tool helps to separate the community from the traditional talent pool. You do not want to mix these because if the members feel the community is not adding value, they will leave and switch the community. This will also affect the employer's brand. Also, it is easier in the community to sort and match potential candidates if segmentation is done correctly. Moreover, a CRM comes with reporting and analytics features. This helps to track sources of candidate networks and optimize the sourcing strategy. 

The best way to choose a tool is by opting for a platform/ software that integrates with your current tech stack & eases the sourcing process. It should not be a hassle to add another tool. Instead, make sourcing candidates easy!

Become 10xRecruiter By Leveraging Talent Communities!

Talent communities can replace traditional talent pools and make finding the desired candidate easier for recruiters. With periodic reviews and active engagement, recruiters can build a self-feeding talent community to hire effortlessly. They can refer back to the community in case of vacancies with an assurance of finding qualified and interested candidates. 

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