
What do you do with past candidates that you tried to recruit but you couldn't get? To be honest, most people forget about them because they were not interested in your opportunity. I can't tell you how many times I've told people that recruiting is all about building a unique network of people that will ultimately help you find more recruits. This is why pipelining candidates is such an important element to add to your recruitment function.
So what is pipelining candidates? What it means is going back to past candidates in your candidate pool that you have on file, and continually marketing the career opportunity. Many companies have an unwritten rule where they require their recruiters to try and recruit at least two candidates back into their process to convert them over to the career opportunity. Obviously you would not want to go after poor fit candidates again, and this is why you also need to leverage technology to identify them in your pipeline.
We recommend you start with at least two important pieces of technology when recruiting to properly pipeline candidates. First, we recommend using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to house all your candidate and records of your interactions with them. The ATS not only keeps track of the candidates, but it makes it easy to contact them and remarket the career opportunities to these past prospects. The second tool you will need is a good pre-hire assessment that evaluates the potential quality of the candidate. We've always recommended using the POP assessment from Self Management Group because they can benchmark directly to what top performers look like at your company.
The bottom line is don't forget about those top prospects you couldn't land last year because they could end up being a new recruit for you this year. Regardless, it is just good marketing for your brand!
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