10 Ways to Build a Tech Talent Pool

According to the Global Skills Shortage Report, 43% of businesses struggle with hiring suitable candidates because of the high level of competition for the best employees, tech talent shortage, and growing expectations of top-skilled candidates. These aren’t all the challenges the modern labor market faces, but there is a battle-tested way to mitigate most of them. Building a talent pool in advance is an effective and low-cost tactic to gain a competitive edge, so in this article, we will discover ten ways to do it right. 

Do you need highly-qualified candidates right now? Bridge can help you reach out to them in a few days! 

Why having a talent pool is essential

So, why is the talent pool important and what are the benefits of talent pools? Below are the main reasons to strengthen your recruiting strategy with talent pool sourcing. 

• Overcome labor market challenges. Hiring tech talent has never been easy. In 2022, attracting qualified candidates is still difficult because of the Great Resignation and the consequences of the recent pandemic. While the latter made 44% of executives rethink their approaches to the workplace and workforce hiring, 41% of the global workforce now considers leaving their jobs. Maintaining a talent pool, in turn, is a way to go, building a smarter talent pipeline and leveraging the benefits of global hiring. 
• Always have qualified candidates at hand. In one of our recent articles, we discussed the problem of tech talent shortage. Long story short, the talent gap is projected to grow. Over 44% of well-known organizations expect a significant lack of skilled candidates in the next five years, and the competition for top talent will grow respectively. Having top-skilled candidates in your talent pool allows for creating a competitive advantage despite the tech talent gap. 
• Make better hiring decisions. Having a talent pool enables you to take your time for careful candidate analysis and pre-screening,  resulting in fewer interview sessions, but better hiring decisions. You can also set different criteria for a talent pool, take a good look at the candidates with diverse skills, competencies, and backgrounds, and build your pool keeping both short and long-term business goals in mind. 
• Reduce hiring costs and time to hire. You don’t need to run large-scale job advertising campaigns if you already have a large talent pool. Instead, you have to get back to potential candidates, filter the ones that fit your current job opening and proceed with interviewing them. 

How to build a talent pool – 10 tips and tactics

So, let’s proceed with the ways to build your talent pool. Below are ten simple, yet effective tactics to quickly gather a database of skilled candidates for current and future positions. 

Gather your previous applicants

Let’s get started with the easiest step possible. To start building your talent pool, get back to your previous applicants and gather their CVs in a single place. If you have never used a Human Resource Management (HRM) system, now is the right time to start, since it significantly facilitates talent pool management. HRM systems usually come as a software-as-a-service solution, so that you can choose the right subscription plan at the most reasonable price. 

Leverage proactive talent sourcing

Even if you don’t have open positions right now, sourcing technical candidates in advance will still be a wise decision. The matter is that most qualified candidates are passive job seekers, meaning that they don’t plan to change their workplace right now, but would be glad to discover and compare opportunities.

What Is Candidate Sourcing and Why It Needs to Be Part of Your Tech Talent Acquisition Strategy

With that being said, source technical candidates actively. Don’t hesitate to reach out to full-time employed specialists, especially if your primary goal is just to build a talent pool. 

Create a talent pool with a focus on students

Creating a talent pool with a focus on students is a top way to catch entry-level promising candidates before they enter the labor market for the first time. Hiring young-generation developers is one of the winning tactics for tech companies for several reasons. 

As stated by Pew Research, the representatives of Gen Z are more racially and ethnically diverse compared to Millennials. They are also the best-educated generation yet, and most importantly, they are digitally native. In addition, they are highly collaborative, self-reliant, and pragmatic. Together with strong engineering education, these traits of Gen Z entry-level specialists make them worthy candidates to consider. 

For example, Shopify intentionally builds a younger talent pool so that they can contribute to their product development in the most innovative way possible. 

Stay in touch with former employees

Your ex-employees also have the right to be part of your tech talent pool. Maybe one day they would like to get back to your company, anything can happen. However, to make this strategy work, you should have a strong employee brand and your ex-workers should still be loyal to your company. 

For example, McKinsey follows this strategy. In addition to the likelihood of attracting former employees back, they can also share your job opening with their network and attract no-cost referrals. More on this in the next section. 

Develop a referral program 

According to statistics, 50% of referrals will stay at their job for more than three years, so a referral program is a good option to expand your talent pool and close open positions quickly. Think about what you can offer your employees for a winning recommendation.

For example, Intel kills two birds with one stone, building its talent pool and embracing diversity in the workplace at once. It offers double referral bonuses to employees that refer to a female, minority, or veteran candidate. By the way, building your talent pool with no prejudices about age, gender, race, nationality, and other personal features is also a good way to find more prospective candidates and gain a competitive edge for the future. 

Hiring for Diversity: Why Tech Teams Need To Be More Diverse

Have a dedicated form on your website

As one more option to grow your tech talent pool, consider embedding a dedicated form on your website where the applicants can leave their contact data and upload their CVs. Setting up an applicant’s data transfer from your website to your HRM is the smartest approach that lets you build a talent pool almost automatically. 

This approach is more suitable for big companies with well-known employee brands, but startups can try it as well. For example, you can run a PPC ads campaign with global targeting to reach out to the widest number of candidates.

How to Hire the Right Employees for a Startup Faster and Smarter

Consider both experienced and entry-level candidates

To build a diverse and future-proof talent pool, consider both industry old-timers and newbies, as both of them have their strengths and weaknesses. While experienced developers can bring more value faster, there is also a higher probability that a competitor can headhunt them. Junior specialists, in turn, need training and mentorship for some time, but they are likely to be more loyal to the company that helped them grow. 

In addition, having candidates with different seniority levels and backgrounds is an opportunity to quickly adjust to changing hiring goals. 

Diversify hiring channels

Job boards and professional social media are just some of the platforms to reach out to prospective candidates and add them to your talent pool. As an option, you can agree on exchanging talent pools with your business partners, ask for specific candidates among your network and build new connections during tech events, conferences and hackathons. There are also dedicated platforms for hiring a diverse workforce, for example, veterans or minorities, so consider them as well. 

Use data-driven sourcing-as-a-service

The tactics we listed above are pretty effective, but imply a lot of human and manual work to be done. Now, let’s consider a data-driven and automated approach to talent pool building. We, at Bridge, have developed a dedicated talent sourcing engine that allows for finding the right candidates in a global talent pool and filtering them according to the necessary criteria. 

The combination of data analysis and automation power allows us to source the first candidates within a few days, while also being 60% cheaper than finding them manually. That’s why most of our customers subscribe to our sourcing-as-a-service on a monthly basis and grow their talent pools step-by-step. 

Build your talent pool five times faster with Bridge! Talk to our team now to find out more about data-driven sourcing-as-a-service! 

Conclusion

There are many ways to build a wide talent pool of highly-qualified candidates. Take on a creative approach to reach out to the necessary specialist globally and keep in mind that Bridge can help you build a thriving talent pool in several months. 

Drop us a line to reach out to the top-skilled candidates across three continents and leverage a data-driven approach to talent pool building!