4 Quick Wins Recruiters Can Start Now to Fuel the Candidate Pipeline

In an ideal world, talent acquisition teams have a robust candidate pipeline full of diversity and quality who are actively seeking a new opportunity, and not for just any role but your role.

While this is not a perfect world, you don’t need the perfect candidate pipeline to recruit successfully. Here are four tips to optimize your pipe and give you a leg up:

1. Constantly Recruit

Whether you’re at your desk scouring job boards or at a dinner party meeting new people, get to know everyone, find out what they do or want to do, and learn more about their passions. Just because you aren’t finding the right fit in the resumes coming across your desk doesn’t mean you won’t find him at a social event.

2. Diversify the Pipeline

Think of your talent pool like your finances. It’s best to diversify your investments into different accounts and stocks. Don’t limit your future opportunities by putting all your eggs in one basket.

Focus on candidates with different skills, culture fits, experiences, and educational backgrounds. This way, when you’re tasked with filling a role that requires different requirements, you’ll have plenty of strong prospects in your back pocket.

3. Keep an Eye on Internal Talent

A joke made popular by American writer, David Foster Wallace, goes something like this;

Two young fish swimming along see two older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” The young fish swim on for a bit until one of them looks over at the other and asks, “What is water?”

What this joke tells us is that we are often blind to what’s right in front of our eyes. Recruiters are surrounded by talent and should consider looking internally when filling roles. Not everyone would be an ideal candidate, but they are after all, talent. Work with managers in different departments and ask them for recommendations to stimulate internal mobility.

4. Build Connections with Your Candidates

Staying in touch with your candidates even if they aren’t provided an offer, will help reinforce those relationships and increase the likelihood that they would be open to considering future roles you’ll need to fill. From experience, I’ve had recruiters reach out to me just to check-in months and years after we first spoke to keep the relationship fresh. It maintains a positive candidate experience and grows both the job seeker’s and recruiter’s network.

Utilize your connections and if a candidate you have a great relationship with doesn’t quite fit a role, ask them if they know of anyone within their network who would be interested in the job you’re filling.

Candidate pipelines are your source of strong future employees. Practicing these tactics will flood your inbox with quality talent eager to fill your roles!