The average recruitment agency has a database with tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of candidates both active and passive, so why is the knee-jerk reaction still to place a job ad when a new job spec comes in?
Surely, it makes more sense for the database to be the first place recruiters look for candidates, rather than the last, you’ve spent so much time, money and effort building it… The reason most agencies don’t do this, however, is because they haven’t spoken to the candidates in their database for years and they have no idea of their status and/or availability…basically, it’s not current.
Ironically, you already know half the applicants that apply for the role, they’re in your database, what you don’t know is their availability, are they looking for a job, are they active or passive?
It’s no surprise that agencies already have many applicants’ details in their database if you consider how an agency builds up their talent pool of candidates in the first place: You place a job ad, receive applications for the role, hire one person, decline all the others. And then start the whole process again with the next job spec that comes in.
But what if you could reach out to all the candidates that were good, but – for whatever reason – did not end up getting the job and ask if they’re interested in the other roles that you have available?
You could reduce the cost of recruitment by as much as 50%, reduce time to hire by as much as 50% and pre-emptively pinpoint great candidates for other job specs (according to this research). Not to mention the fact that regular communication with candidates is great for enhancing the candidate experience and building brand awareness…
Goodbye recruitment graveyard, hello active talent pool
The idea of mining your talent pool is not new. The best recruiters have been doing it for years.
There are many hidden benefits:
- Through regular interaction with candidates, you build your brand and remain top of mind.
- Keeping in touch with candidates builds strong relationships with them and improves candidate experience.
- This enables you to identify which candidates are available quickly and accelerates time-to-hire.
What is new is the rate of change… The volumes of candidates in one sector, the scarcity in another. How quickly candidates take roles and/or how quickly they change details. It’s a lot of phone tag and manual detail updating to do if you’re a recruiter. That’s why we keep hearing about recruiter fatigue…
So why not automate the entire process? With the recruitment process automation tech available to agencies today, the ROI and business case is clear:
- Free your recruiters up to focus on high value tasks
- Ensure you’ve got an active and updated talent pool to dive into every time you get a new job spec
- Don’t pay twice (or multiple times) to collect the same candidate’s information through job ads
- Avoid having to place a job ad in the first place (check your talent pool first)
The longer your candidate database is left untouched, the more outdated and inactive it becomes. And the more you see diminishing returns when you do start actively reaching out. So, performing routine outreach to candidates to confirm whether they are still in the job market, update their availability and refresh their details is integral to effectively mining your database in future. The sooner you start, the better engagement rates and return on investment (regardless of whether you’re doing this manually or using automation). It also helps keep your talent pool warm and enables you to proactively reach out to candidates if you know you have an upcoming project which may be of interest to them.
