In a perfect world, great candidates would just fall into our laps. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to find and place quality talent. You don’t always have to have the perfect candidate in mind when a job order comes in — ideally, you should have several.
Building and maintaining an internal database of candidates ensures that top-notch talent is readily available, when it comes time to fill a new position. Having an ongoing source for talent is necessary, considering recruiters and staffing professionals made nearly 30 percent (PDF) of their total hires using candidates from their internal databases, according to LinkedIn’s U.S. Recruiting Trends Report.
Rather than waiting to recruit until you need someone, always be on the lookout for potential candidates to fill your talent pool. With video interviewing, the process of creating and expanding your talent pool is a breeze:
Bring the talent to you
With word of mouth being such a critical tool for attracting (or repelling) talent, it’s essential to create an experience that candidates will want to talk about.
You catch more flies with honey, than vinegar — or, in this case, you get more candidates when the experience is positive. In fact, a recent study by CareerBuilder found that 64 percent of candidates will tell their friends about a good experience, and 50 percent will tell their friends about bad experience.
Implementing innovative tools like video interviews into the hiring process can help create a convenient experience for candidates; one in which they can choose where and when to interview. And a convenient candidate experience is a positive one.
Tap into the global talent pool
One of the biggest advantages of implementing video interviewing into your recruiting process is the ability to connect with long-distance talent. One-way and two-way video interviews can help break down the geographic barriers that prevent you from tapping into a valuable source for talent.
Video interviews provide a way for you to connect visually with candidates you might not otherwise see so early on in the hiring process. For instance, replacing the traditional phone screen, for one-way video interviews, enables you to evaluate long-distance talent much in the same way that you would in an in-person interview.
Additionally, it gives international candidates an opportunity to participate in the interview process without having to spend a small fortune to travel to you for an in-person interview — once again, bringing the talent to you.
Build a digital library of interviews
Video interviews create the perfect tool for building and maintaining a talent pool. The nature of the video interview provides an ideal platform for creating a digital library of interviews, that you can pull from whenever a new position becomes available.
While one candidate may not be the right fit for a particular job, they could potentially be just the right fit for a future job opening. Not to mention, one-way video interviews establish candidate consistency by ensuring that they all answer the same questions in the same amount of time. This standardization makes it easier for you to compare candidates and find the best fit.
Having a solid talent pool can help you identify potential external candidates before a position even needs to be filled. To make the most out of your talent pool, regularly connect with talent and update their information, as well as continually expand your talent pool to include new, diverse talent.
