Re-Thinking the Candidate Talent Community Concept

By Posted in - Talent Management on July 31st, 2014 0 Comments

The Candidate Talent Community Concept

Recruiters have long recognized that past candidates are a potential talent source for future job openings. The candidate community concept consists of maintaining information and contact details of past candidates and using some mechanism for quickly reviewing the credentials of past candidates against the requirements for future openings. The candidate bench would a first stop in the sourcing process for new positions.

Current Practices

The candidate bench that is typically maintained by organizations today has very limited interactions with the potential employer and no interactions at all with each other. Being part of an employer’s candidate bench has very little value beyond an occasional notification of a new job opening. There is absolutely no attempt on the part of the employer to further nurture or develop the candidate bench. There is really nothing to differentiate the employer’s hiring brand and very little reason to assume the candidate is actively engaged or educated concerning the employer.

The employer typically uses the capabilities of their applicant tracking system to store resume and contact data and provides some type of semantic search capability for evaluating the resume content. The talent community is little more than a database of past candidates.

An Alternative Approach

The type of talent community of the future will be radically different from what is referred to as a talent community or bench today. In fact, the term talent community may need to be replaced with something more modern to differentiate this alternative approach from traditional talent communities. Perhaps something like a Talent Colony or a Talent Collective to draw attention to the key distinctions of the alternative approach.

Key Distinctions:

Peer Interactions – In order to be a community, there must be interactions among its members. An alternative approach would allow and encourage candidate community members to be able to connect with each other, start discussions, and share useful resources and content for development. Members can either identify themselves or participate anonymously in the community.

Level of Nurturing Provided for Career Development – An employer that is interested in maintaining and growing a motivated, quality candidate pool needs to invest in their careers. An alternative approach would provide rich developmental content and support to ensure candidates engage in continual learning relevant to their careers.

Quality of Candidate Information Stored – In an alternative approach, candidate information would be greatly expanded beyond contact details and resume. The alternative approach would create a comprehensive talent profile. This profile would include assessment information, career preferences and interests, key experiences, and relevant background data. Candidates would be able to access and update their profile as they acquire more experience and skills. Recruiters would have an in-depth understanding of each candidate in the community.

Level of Information Shared – Employers would be actively engaged in the talent community. They would provide regular updates and insights into the company and its operations. As a result, candidates would be well informed on the culture, successes, and challenges of the organization and feel engaged.

Scientific Matching Process – Recruiters would be able to match candidates in the community to future job openings using a scientific process that compares each candidate’s talent profile to the open job requirement profile and computes the percentage of fit. Details would be provided on the specific requirements matched or not matched as well the size of gaps that exist.

OMNIview plans to be a leader provider of this type of alternative approach. Contact us to learn more about how we plan to improve the quality and value of candidate talent communities.

Patrick Hauenstein, Ph.D.

About Patrick Hauenstein, Ph.D.

Patrick Hauenstein is the President and Chief Science Officer for OMNIview. During his free time Pat likes to cook. He is particularly fond of traditional southern cuisine. Pat is also an animal lover ...
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