If the EWS fairy could grant you one hiring wish, what would it be? To make qualified, pre-screened candidates magically appear before your eyes, ready to fill vital vacancies the moment they arise?

Your wish is our command, with no magic wand required. If you can reset your recruiting mindset from whack-a-mole vacancy plugging to proactive planning and relationship building, the benefits of talent pipelining are yours to reap for years to come.

There’s a reason why more and more top global employers are adopting a talent pipelining strategy for their mission-critical roles. Actually there are several reasons and we’ll get onto them shortly. But first of all, let’s be completely clear what we’re talking about.

What is talent pipelining?

The principle of talent pipelines is simple. If you know where your company’s key talent gaps are, it’s a good idea to plan in advance how you fill them, rather than merely responding as and when they arise.

First you identify and reach out to quality passive candidates in your chosen market. You’re not contacting them about a specific job, but forging a relationship, bringing them into your world and immersing them in your uniquely compelling company story.

The aim is to create a talent pool overflowing with these passive but interested candidates. You keep in contact regularly, establishing culture fit, updating them on your plans and staying in touch with theirs. Then, when the right opportunity comes along, your dream candidates are warmed up and ready to dive in – making the process smoother and cleaner for everyone involved.

What are the benefits?

So now, back to the reasons why talent pipelining done well is the path to recruiting nirvana. There are four main virtues.

1. Talent pipelining cuts time to hire

Your talent pipeline is a fast track to relevant, pre-screened warm leads for your most important roles. If it takes some time and resources to set up in the first place, the outlay is more than made up for by your ability to move fast when it matters most to your organisation. If you need any help, we’re here to get things up and running.

2. Talent pipelining cuts cost per hire

You stand to save significant amounts of money in two ways. First, this is a direct sourcing initiative with massive potential to reduce your reliance on expensive agencies. Second, by selecting from a familiar, pre-engaged talent pool, you reduce the chances of making bad hires and incurring all the damaging costs that come with them.

3. Talent pipelining improves candidate quality

When you’re the one making the approach, you’re the one controlling the quality of candidates in your pipeline. The effect is compounded by the argument that passive candidates are better candidates. You’re talking to people not actively looking to move on from their current job, which shows commitment, loyalty and integrity. And when the time does come to make a decision on your future opportunity, they’re more likely to say yes or no for the right reasons.

4. Talent pipelining makes recruitment a strategic driver

The best talent teams are interested in so much more than bums on seats. Strategic talent planning lets you future-proof your organisation by making smart preparations to overcome hiring challenges in the years ahead. Talent pipelining is the centrepiece of any robust talent strategy, as many of our clients will tell you…

We’ve been working with a Tier 1 bank for several years to continually build market knowledge and connections for future vacancies. Today, a significant proportion of the successful approaches we make are to candidates mapped up to three years ago.

We’ve helped another client, a global tech corporation, to build flourishing talent pipelines across sales, account management and systems engineering, throughout EMEA and LatAm. The ability to stockpile talent for hard-to-fill roles in challenging markets is clearly another big plus for talent pipelining.

Planning through turmoil

Crucially, if ever there was a time to start building your talent pipeline, this is it.

We live in an age of global uncertainty that shows no imminent sign of stabilising. For some the response is to cling on and hope to ride out the storm. Others see the opportunity to put in place systems and strategies to prepare for the future business landscape, whatever it looks like.

A well-stocked and nourished talent pool lets organisations plan for their potential hiring needs in any number of possible futures.

Another way of putting it: the only future you really need worry about is the one in which you never get round to developing your talent pipeline.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post Talent Pipelining 101: What You Need to Know and Why You Need to Know it Now appeared first on EWS.

To recap: for every individual prowling the job boards for their next position, there are 3 people happily getting on with their current job. Yet 85% of these so-called passive candidates are open to hearing about new opportunities.

So purely as a numbers game, reaching out to passive candidates makes a lot of sense. But there are more strategic reasons to focus your talent resources on engaging and recruiting them as well.

In a nutshell, passive candidates enrich your pool of available talent and often make better hires. Here’s why:

They have integrity

An active jobseeker is seeking a way out or step up. Who’s to say your role is the one they’re going to settle in? Passive candidates, meanwhile, are focused first and foremost on the job they’re in. If it takes a lot to prise them from it, that’s a great indicator of their loyalty (not a quality you’d necessarily associate with candidates who treat every new job as a springboard).

Their motivations are transparent

Job applications are a breeding ground for evasion, exaggeration and embellishment. It’s human nature. If we want to be the standout applicant, we’ll do what it takes to stand out… maybe inflating a little leadership experience here or puffing up major project involvement there. But with passive candidates, you’re making the approach, so there’s really no need for them to go overboard trying to impress you. Your relationship is forged in mutual trust and respect. Chances are that’s how it will continue after they join.

They’ll choose you for the right reasons

If your passive candidate is content in their current job, they’ll make a dispassionate decision about whether yours is a good long-term move. If your active jobseeker is desperate to get away from a job they dislike, you’re basically the next passing ship. They may be keen to jump on board; doesn’t mean they’re interested in the destination.

You aren’t in a bun fight for them

What happens when you find out your preferred applicant has offers from 2 competitors? You end up in a bidding war that could see you pay over the odds to secure their talents. Whereas if you’re the only suitor, yours is the only offer they’re negotiating on. So you’re more likely to get a loyal, honest, considerate, top-quality hire for less!

They won’t forget you in a hurry

You have no guarantees that any passive talent you approach will say yes right away. And while that’s an issue for your current vacancy, it’s no bad thing for your long-term talent planning. Any candidate you successfully engage now will remember you in the future. Building those relationships is the secret of any successful talent pipeline (something else we know a bit about).

Using this logic, more and more companies globally are directly sourcing and nurturing the candidates they want to hire, rather than hoping good people stumble across their vacancy online. And they’re reaping the benefits in the quality of their subsequent hires.

The next question is how you switch those wonderful passive candidates on to your role. Luckily, we provided the answers in a previous post. Read it here.

The post Why Sourcing Passive Candidates Is Smarter Than Settling For Active Job Seekers appeared first on EWS.

LinkedIn puts typical response rates to InMail around 20-25%, which sounds like a decent benchmark. But is hearing from (not converting) 1 in 5 really good enough?

To us, the idea of honing your longlist of 50 prospects, in the cold knowledge that you won’t hear a word from 40 of them, is demoralising. We aim for deeper candidate engagement and we think you should too. That’s why we’re sharing our top 7 tips for maximising response from passive candidates.

1. Tailor your method to candidates’ behaviour.

Call, email or InMail? Your first big decision may be your most important. But in our experience, there is no one magic method for successfully engaging passive candidates. Your choice is dictated by the cultural and working habits of your target audience, e.g.

• In India, we find it can be tricky to get past reception but people typically respond well to email/InMail.
• Bankers tend to be too busy to respond to InMail but may well be at their desk to take a brief phone call.
• In the UK Auto industry, people are rarely at their desks, so no one is even picking up the phones.

Use what you know about the role and the people you’re targeting to determine your method of approach.

2. Time your approach to perfection.

If you are emailing, avoid work hours. Hit inboxes when candidates have time to take in your offer. Research puts 6-7am and 8pm as the best times of day to be received, read and responded to.

3. Don’t be a recruiter. Be a networker.

‘Cold-calling recruitment consultant’ is not top of many people’s list of dream phone calls. If you’re phoning, subvert expectations up front by stressing that this isn’t a recruitment call; you’re following up a referral with an exploratory call. If their contacts are your contacts, you’re well connected and worth knowing.

4. Make every word count.

Don’t overload your approach with preamble – you’re just giving a candidate more time to prepare their ‘no’. While you won’t get a ‘yes’ on the first call, you can get a ‘hmm, interesting’. And ‘hmm, interesting’ is an itch that has to be scratched. So find the itching powder in your role. Distil its key selling point into an offer they can’t refuse. And only ever provide enough information to tantalise them into responding. Know when to stop.

5. Always be polite and personable.

It’s hard to connect with a cautious stranger, so get to know someone before you contact them. Use LinkedIn profile details like age, career history, places they’ve lived etc. to get a sense of the person behind the passive candidate. Knowing who you’re talking to, and taking an interest in what they say, makes a big difference. Politeness costs nothing, but it pays dividends.

6. Follow up, follow up, follow up.

Persistence pays too… up to a point. That point is usually* a clear and definite ‘no’. Until you get that no, the opportunity is still alive. And never forget that it isn’t just your opportunity. We recently dealt with a C-suite prospect who only agreed to a further talk incredibly reluctantly, but ended up taking a career-defining role. It took a big push from us to get him where he wanted to be.

(*Why usually? Because in Hong Kong banking, an initial ‘no’ isn’t always final. Cold calls are treated with suspicion, but a candidate often warms to you by the second or third call. Yet again culture is key… and knowledge is power!)

7. Be bold and make a date.

Your initial approach has one purpose only: to secure another opportunity to talk. If you’ve pitched it right and got your ‘hmm, interesting’, simply propose a time to discuss things further. Never end an email with a limp ‘Let me know if you’re interested’. Nail things down with ‘Can I call you at 7pm tomorrow to talk in more detail?’

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

The post 7 Simple Ways to Improve Passive Candidate Response Rates appeared first on EWS.