What is a Talent Pool?
A talent pool is a database that companies build of qualified job candidates that they can use to fill talent gaps over time.
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Understanding Talent Pools
One valuable strategic workforce planning tool that teams often underutilize is a talent pool. This is a database that employers build of qualified job candidates. Candidates are usually previous (qualified) applicants, former employees, and referrals brought in by current employees.
When effectively engaged and nurtured, a talent pool can serve as a company’s short-list for filling new positions or talent gaps since the candidates are pre-vetted and have shown interest in the company in the past. Other examples of who can make up a talent pool include industry contacts, freelancers and contractors, interns, and even internal talent that can be leveraged elsewhere.
A talent pool is a database of qualified candidates that employers can use to quickly fill talent gaps. This pool can include people like previous applicants, former employees, referrals, industry contacts, contractors, internal talent, and more.
Benefits of Talent Pools
There are many advantages to building an internal database of qualified candidates. Talent pools help organizations reduce time to hire and cost per hire by acting as a vetted list of prospects to consider for future positions. They’re also often a source of more engaged candidates since they’ve already interacted with your company.
Businesses can nurture relationships with prospects in talent pools over time. You can even organize candidates into different groups based on qualifications or backgrounds and create talent pipelines for multiple positions.
Building a talent pool reduces time and cost per hire by providing a pre-vetted list of engaged candidates for future positions.
Best Practices for Small Businesses
To create a database of potential future hires based on previous interest, review previous applicants to find those who looked promising but didn’t make the final cut. In fact, make it a best practice to take note of impressive applicants throughout the recruitment process as potential additions to your pool.
Another best practice for small businesses looking to build talent pools is maintaining solid relationships with departing employees. Former employees can be excellent sources of talent—whether they consider rejoining your organization or referring someone else to do so. Finally, cast a wide net across recruitment sources to diversify your talent pool.
To build talent pools, small businesses should consider tracking promising previous applicants, maintaining relationships with departing employees, and diversifying their recruitment sources.
Creating a talent pool can help small businesses save time and money. It lists qualified candidates for future job openings, meaning companies can spend less time and resources searching for new employees. Instead, they can easily access a pool of potential candidates to quickly fill positions. Best practices include:
- Keeping track of promising applicants.
- Maintaining cordial relationships with departing employees.
- Diversifying recruitment sources to ensure a robust and diverse talent pool.
About the author
Casey Pontrelli
Casey Pontrelli is a multi-talented professional with a background in content creation, branding, and social media marketing. Whether writing for a newspaper, eCommerce website, B2B startup, or a marketing agency, she has taken her strong background in journalism and turned her focus to SEO and content marketing. She’s written about everything from boutiques to cars to small businesses, and enjoys most when she knows her writing has had an impact. When she’s not writing up a storm or creating attention-grabbing social media posts, Casey enjoys hanging out with her partner and three cats, Eddy, Larry, and Marcus, going on long walks in the Green Belt, and, predictably, reading.
