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Recruiters hear the term “talent pipeline” all the time. But what does it actually mean?
To put it simply, a talent pipeline is a pathway between job seekers and employers. Organizations build a talent pipeline to create a supply of candidates it can access any time.
Talent pipelining is a type of proactive recruiting. It requires effort, strategy and maintenance. When it operates successfully, it provides organizations with a steady flow of high-quality applicants.
In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of talent pipelines. We’ll also discuss how to build, maintain and measure a talent pipeline so you can tap into the benefits of this powerful recruiting strategy.
As we stated earlier, a talent pipeline is a pathway between applicants and employers. Talent pipelines provide recruiters direct access to candidates who are already familiar with their organization.
To better understand what talent pipelines are, it’s helpful to learn what they aren’t. A talent pipeline, for example, is not the same thing as a talent pool. A talent pool is a collection of candidates who may or may not be familiar with an organization. Depending on how a talent pool is developed and organized, the candidates it contains may or may not offer skills relevant to the organization that needs to make a hire.
A talent pipeline is more targeted than a talent pool. It supplies organizations with candidates who are acquainted with an employer and who offer relevant skills. Recruiters sometimes develop talent pipelines not just for their organization at large but also for specific departments and even singular roles.
A publishing company, for example, may maintain pipelines for editing roles. Because these roles span many different departments — from science fiction to children’s literature — the company’s recruiters might create pipelines for the editing roles in each department.
As recruiters interact with potential editing candidates on the market, they gauge their interests and experience and add them to the appropriate pipeline. Once potential candidates are placed into the right pipeline, they need to be engaged over time so they’re primed to apply when a new role opens.
Talent functions in other sectors and industries operate similarly, with recruiters finding and engaging potential candidates, placing them in the appropriate pipeline and engaging them until an opportunity arises.
It’s worth noting that talent pipelines don’t just create a flow of talent from outside the organization. They can also direct talent from within an organization. Recruiters can create extremely effective talent pipelines with internal candidates, funneling successful employees to new opportunities.
A strong talent pipeline affords recruiters quick access to quality candidates. This proactive strategy offers several important benefits:
Talent pipelines provide employers tangible ROI. This result is consistent even among internal pipelines. According to a 2023 report from Josh Bersin, companies with internal pipelines saw stronger company culture, higher employee retention and improved cost-savings.
Talent pipelines also improved time-to-hire rates — in some cases by 12 days.
A talent pipeline may seem like a high-maintenance tool. With the right strategy and implementation, however, recruiters can minimize their effort and maximize the results.
Here are five easy steps to help you build an effective talent pipeline.
Begin by brainstorming the strongest candidate imaginable. This candidate should offer the skills — both hard and soft — that the role in question requires. Spend a little time considering the background the ideal applicant offers. Does this role require a specific degree, certificate or certification? Those details provide the foundation of the profile.
Next, consider where you might find the ideal candidate. If the position is entry-level, consider reaching out to universities, training centers and other sources of fresh talent. If you’re filling a more advanced position, professional societies may prove a more fruitful connection. Going beyond the typical source channels — social media and job boards, for instance — will help you find talent your competitors may have missed.
Now it’s time to get to know your candidates. It’s important to keep your messaging personalized during these early communications. Strategic recruiters save time by drafting a single introductory message they send out to multitudes of potential candidates, but they’ll inject these greetings with personal details that make job seekers feel seen.
A candidate relationship management (CRM) system allows recruiters to delegate some of the work required by candidate engagement to automation and AI. The right system will automatically engage candidates in an organization’s database, using behavior-based automation to prioritize the most qualified talent. It will save recruiters time by automating candidate communications — a feature that also offers job seekers a fast-paced candidate experience.
Once recruiters have built a candidate pipeline, the bulk of their work is done. Still, it’s important that recruiters revisit pipelines to refine their list of candidates. Job seekers who accepted a job with the company, who moved on to other opportunities, or who lost interest should be removed from the list. If they remain in the pipeline, recruiters will no longer have a useful database of primed candidates.
Recruiters are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and other developing technologies to create and maintain talent pipelines. Predictive analytics also provide recruiters intel on the roles they’ll most likely need to fill and when they’ll need to fill them.
With AI-powered candidate sourcing and matching tools, for instance, recruiters can compile a shortlist of qualified candidates. These lists are prioritized using automated engagement scoring. This technique makes sure recruiters reach out to the candidates who offer the most relevant skills and who are most likely to take action and make a job change.
Once candidates are in the pipeline, automation can give recruiters a serious advantage in engaging and nurturing potential employees. Recruiters can create, for instance, behavior-based campaigns that captivate candidates with content based on their current interests and hoped-for achievements. This strategy drives replies and responses, while improving the employee experience at the same time.
When it comes to measuring the success of your talent pipeline, there are many metrics to choose from. These KPIs will provide a strong indication as to how smoothly a pipeline operates:
Over time, it will be important to continuously evaluate, tweak and improve your pipelines. When measuring the overall success of a pipeline, it’s important to keep the goal of a pipeline in mind. Does a pipeline deliver quality talent when it’s needed? Does it ensure that candidates with applicable skills are available when a role opens up? Does it eliminate the wait and search for talent that’s sorely needed?
The answer to these questions will reveal just how well a pipeline is operating.
In nearly every scenario, recruiters can build a pipeline using the basic principles we described above. But recruiters should feel free to modify their approach to talent pipelining according to their industry, organization and goals.
While it’s important to factor in the particulars of your industry into your talent pipeline design, it’s also important to remember that many roles look similar across different industries. Take IT, for instance. Appealing to IT candidates will look the same, whether you’re in manufacturing or food services.
It’s also important to take company size and stage into account. Companies should create as many pipelines as necessary. If an organization is expanding in a new market or country or adding new roles, they should build pipelines accordingly.
When you’re building a pipeline for a specific role, it’s important to consider whether the role is high volume, niche or somewhere in the middle. When setting up a pipeline for nurses, for example, it helps to feed the pipeline from a large talent pool. Creating a pipeline for pediatric intensive care unit nurses requires a different approach. These workers are highly skilled — and in high demand. Theirs will be a smaller pool that demands more engagement and more nurturing.
Talent pipelining is an extremely effective recruiting strategy. But talent pipelines aren’t always easy to implement or maintain. That said, it’s not impossible to overcome common challenges in talent pipeline management. And with the right tools, those problems are easy to avoid.
One of the most common issues in talent pipelining is maintaining candidate engagement. Thankfully, recruiters can lean on generative AI to carry on candidate communications with relative ease. This content can be tailored to reflect an organization’s employer brand, creating a better candidate experience for applicants. Recruiters can also use analytics to personalize this content, ensuring it reflects a candidates’ interests and ambitions.
Recruiters also sometimes encounter issues balancing quality and quantity in a candidate pipeline. Here, it’s important to prioritize skills-based hiring. By searching for candidates who offer the right blend of skills — and not necessarily adhering to route requirements like a high number of years of experience — recruiters can effectively ensure that they supply their pipelines with quality candidates in ample numbers.
Lastly, it’s common for recruiters to struggle to align pipeline strategy with overall business goals. But a well-defined, effective pipeline can position recruiters to provide the talent businesses need to reach their goals.
The next time you hear recruiting pros discussing talent pipelines, you’ll know exactly what they’re talking about. Talent pipelining is a proactive recruiting strategy that allows recruiters to identify quality talent before they need it. When the need arises, recruiters tap into the pipeline and deliver their organization’s next hire in record time.
To discover how iCIMS can supercharge your talent pipelines, book a demo today.