Is building talent pools a smart way to do tech recruiting?

Finding and hiring the right people is no walk in the park, especially in software and tech. So many pieces need to fall into place: from actual experience and skills to being a cultural fit – there’s quite a lot to cross off a list when assessing potential candidates.

With awareness of just how costly a bad hire in tech can be, HR professionals and CTOs as decision-makers, are especially careful about the way they recruit and select new team members.

Could talent pools be the answer?

Before we dive into (pun intended) this issue, let’s take a moment to describe and understand what talent pools actually are.

Understanding talent pools

Talent pools refer to the databases of potential job candidates. These candidates might have had some previous contact with your company or expressed their interest in joining your team or learning more about your culture. 

Talent pools include information about potential candidates such as their portfolios, skills, personality traits, and more.

This might be a good opportunity to shortly explain how talent pools differ from talent pipelines. Talent pipelines include candidates who are qualified for specific positions, while talent pools gather people that work in the same industry but are not necessarily tied to a particular role.

The sole purpose of talent pools is to have a rich base of filtered out candidates to reach when your business needs to fill in a new position. This way, you are not starting the recruitment process from scratch, which saves you time, energy, and financial resources. 

Building talent pools is directly tied to growing your community. As you nurture these relationships, you are not only connecting with people who matter and setting a healthy foundation for potential partnerships in the future, but you’re also solidifying your brand on the market.

Key things to know about creating your talent pool

For obvious reasons, talent pools are usually classified as a proactive recruitment technique. Instead of waiting for the moment when new hires will be needed, HR professionals open their eyes and ears every day to map potential candidates.

If you’re looking to build a talent pool, here are a few things you should bear in mind:

1. Focus on talent needs, not job descriptions

We’re not saying job descriptions are irrelevant, on the contrary. Job descriptions should guide the assessment process and serve as a starting point. For example, the candidate has to have a required level of knowledge of Java for certain projects, and that’s a must. However, job requirements can also be stale, generic, and limiting. What’s worse, they might prevent you from seeing an extraordinary engineering mind that can help you innovate – just because they haven’t ticked all the boxes.  

2. Consider your budget

Creating a talent pool requires you to allocate a fair amount of your company’s budget because it implies your HR actively working on hunting talent. Before you decide to do so, take your time to analyze your existing resources, priorities, other recruiting techniques, growth plans for the future, etc. For instance, it wouldn’t be wise for your HR to dedicate too much of your time to building a talent pool if that means your current employees would feel neglected. Be realistic about your priorities.

3. Make sure you have candidates’ consent

With GDPR, CCPA, and similar regulations, users have the full rightful control of their personal data. More specifically, they can demand to access their personal data records, request from companies to delete these records, or to transfer them to some other business organization. Data protection and privacy is no joke: make sure you have your candidates’ consent for storing their personal information. Don’t risk breaking the law with your talent pool.

But if talent pools are so great, why isn’t everybody using them?

Talent pools and shallow waters

Looking at the bigger picture and the global recruitment industry, it’s interesting to learn that about 7 in 10 companies struggle with a talent shortage, which is the worst recorded level ever. Becky Frankiewicz, president of Manpower Group North America that carried out the research, concluded how “skilled workers are calling the shots” and how “employees are now stakeholders in companies’ ecosystems”. 

One of the major challenges in tech recruiting lies in the specificity of the software development job market. Just take a look at the ratio between supply and demand: the demand for talented experts is continuously increasing while the workforce isn’t catching up. This has put developers in a favorable position where they can freely negotiate their terms or choose to hop from one project to the next.

This problem has been described as acute around the world. If there’s a lack of talent out there and tech recruiters don’t know how to approach and attract the very few, we can all agree that it’s not a very pleasant situation, business-wise.

The thing is, it’s technically not that hard to create a talent pool, especially if you stretch the definition of “talent” a bit. What’s hard is to design a talent pool that’s truly healthy and valuable for your company. What’s hard is to separate the wheat from the chaff and really acquire talent instead of mediocre candidates that look good on paper.

So, it’s not just about the availability of talent. Recognizing and uncovering talent is something that leaders still struggle with.

Are talent pools on-demand a thing?

Here’s a not-so-fun-fact: just because you have a talent pool doesn’t mean the candidates you target will be available for hire the moment you need them (nor that they’d be interested). Talent pools merely narrow your search.

When organizations go through the pressure of hiring someone new, key decision-makers might experience fear that the envisioned partnership might break because of a number of reasons such as misaligned expectations or a mismatch in terms of culture. Then what happens?

They might panic and prioritize speed over quality. The scary truth about talent being scarce might reinforce positive bias and see candidates through rose-colored glasses. This goes for both deciding to hire new people and qualifying them as talents worthy to be included in the talent pool.

Precisely because nurturing and managing talent isn’t easy, talent pools on-demand and different tech recruitment agencies are available to companies. The level of involvement of the company that’s looking to hire varies. 

At InterVenture, we have a unique approach to talent sourcing and talent management. We believe that talented people shouldn’t be brought down to their CVs. By getting to know them holistically, we have the opportunity to play a vital role in building cross-border engineering communities; communities where talented people and technology companies, regardless of their location, can grow their visions together, instead of just doing work.

Are you struggling to find the right software engineers for your team? Curious to hear more about how we work? Contact us today and let’s see if we could be a match.  Remember – it always seems impossible until it’s done.