Building and Seeding Talent Pools 4

You can estimate, initially, that you have to double the size of the candidate pool for each year you wish to cover. So, one position, two years out requires 400 people in the pool. Ten positions over the same time period requires 4,000.

It's easy to get scared by the numbers. They grow quickly. Very rapidly, it starts to be the case that you need to know all of the potential candidates in a particular specialty in a particular area.

That bears hard thinking.

Trade show companies, trade publishers, professional associations and other large scale users of direct marketing all understand that getting to the audience is the difference between winning and losing. They work tirelessly to identify and involve people who are a part of their target demographic.

The sourcing section of your operation is going to face that same task. It's one that begs for interesting partnerships with surprising players.

Your team will need to clearly understand where the candidates congregate, who they currently work for, where they are trained...The whole labor supply pipeline.

Building a Talent Pool begins with proactively defining the various sources. It is followed with a determined and persistent endeavor that collects those members into a single pool that gives them consistent and interesting value.

As you can see, we are getting closer and closer to treating potential candidates like employees. We will be maintaining solid relationships that transfer value from us to them. In effect, we will be buying options.