05/11/2016  //  By deanna kane  //  Talent Acquisition
[socialwrap][socialicon name=”linkedin”][socialicon name=”twitter”][/socialwrap]As a recruiter, your goal is to recruit the right candidates using a variety of sourcing techniques. According to the Society for Human Resources Management, a company with 1,000 employees spends $4,129 per hire. If your company is hiring a large volume of employees, the total cost-per-hire could be in the millions. To reduce these costs without reducing the quality of candidates, a talent community may be your solution. Below are seven ways to build an engaged talent community.

1. Start with current talent

Start building your talent community with candidates you have interacted with in the past. These candidates may have previously applied for jobs with your company and weren’t the best fit at the time, but could fit in well with your culture. Reach out and let them know you were impressed with their resume and want to add them to your talent community for future consideration. Provide a means for current employees to encourage referrals to continue to expand the talent community.

2. Make it easy to join

Do not force candidates to spend hours filling out application forms — allow them to easily join your community in under 60 seconds. Include a link to your talent community on the company careers page so people can join without applying for a job. Provide talent community links in recruiting emails, in sourcing outreach and work with your company’s web team to use basic SEO so the talent community can be found easily through a Google search.

3. Create relevant content

Create relevant content that keeps your company top-of-mind with candidates. Write or share articles that are industry relevant, or business-line specific. Cultivate a true community atmosphere, ask for their opinions and ideas on what kind of content is of interest and also suggest that talent community members share the content with their networks. Build an internal team that curates and shares content with specific recruiting targets.

4. Participate in outside conversations

Engage where your target candidates are already conversing. Seek out forums, online groups and social media discussions. Add your input to current discussions, start new conversations and offer your company’s authority as an industry expert. Share your talent community link throughout these discussions to encourage interested candidates to learn more about what your company can offer as an employer.

5. Actively recruit community members

Actively recruit talent community members so your pipeline does not go stale. Build an inclusive community that allows all people to join — from passive or active candidates, to alumni of your company. Identify where candidates are in their job search, so you can escalate them through your process if necessary, to avoid losing them to a competitor.

6. Build personas for different recruiting situations

Create personas to help those at different stages of the recruiting cycle. Build career stage specific communities like College Connect, and engage separate sub-groups: those leaving college, those who have left college and are transitioning into real life, and graduates who are early in their careers, but aren’t in their dream jobs quite yet. Use the talent community to help solve issues these individuals are facing.

7. Use a TRM (Talent Relationship Management) to manage the entire community

Invest in technology like Talent Relationship Management (TRM) to build your branded talent community. Manage all email or text campaigns in one place, and access candidate data on a single platform. Automate communication with your talent community so your candidates receive relevant information like open jobs, white papers related to industry trends and newsletters focused on your company achievements.

Are you looking for more ways to build a talent community? Learn how recruiting software can help you create an effective community that keeps your candidate pipeline active.