Talent communities. Nothing is more misinterpreted when it comes to implementation than those two words.
The word community suggests a group of like-minded individuals with shared interests. They cooperate together to share their experience and help each other learn from those experiences to help the community grow.
A talent community then is a group of people that share an interest in your company and expect to engage with like-minded associates to help them decide if they wish to be part of your organization.
What most companies call talent communities are actually talent networks.
A talent network is the opt-in database that sends job alerts to candidates who sign up with an email address. There is no engagement and often times the emails are not relevant to a candidate’s interest.
What most of you have is a network, not a community. And what you are missing in your network is any sort of engagement beyond that opt-in.
But there is a way to get more out of that simple opt-in.
You can glean important pre-screening information about these passive candidates – that’s what the majority of these folks who are signing up to your talent network are – by adding some interactive features that go beyond the opt-in function and turn that into something truly fantastic and engaging.
By increasing the footprint of these individuals looking at your jobs, a footprint from which important data can be collected and assessed, you will have a better idea of the candidates looking at your jobs.
So what are we talking about here?
Well, for one, transform your opt-in form into an account creation form. Have the account lead to a password-protected dashboard that lets the candidate add and store personal information, as much or as little as is preferred, and manage the job information they seek.
Second, enable free movement around your career site and job search through the account, just like a visitor would without an account.
Third, give some incentive for creating the account by letting the candidate save entire strings of job search results, for later browsing when it’s convenient. Even better, let a candidate save job searches of particular facilities of interest.
Fourth, when it comes time to have these opportunities delivered to an email address, provide the candidate with several options to control the type of job classes that individual prefers to know about, as well as provide a way to set the frequency in which those notifications are delivered.
Fifth, provide sharing options that include social sharing and emailing jobs to friends and colleagues.
And finally, attract even more candidates by making your new interactive suite accessible from any device – desktop, tablet or mobile. The fact that your new and improved talent network is built with responsive design will do wonders to increase reach with your recruiting.
If you keep up with mobile stats these days you will know how many folks are using their phones and tablets more and more in their job searches.
So it boils down to making the experience the best possible for passive candidates, hell, active candidates, too. Anyone that comes to your career site and looks for a job should get a thrill out of your talent network when they see how much they can do with it.
If any of these features give you renewed hope for your recruiting strategy, contact us and we will help you get started in providing an attractive interactive suite for your talent network. We provide everything I mentioned above.
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