You can more easily delegate tasks by understanding and tracking the skills and qualifications of employees and candidates. Human resources departments often maintain talent pools to store this information to improve hiring decisions and fulfill company duties.
Talent pooling is collecting and combining talent from various sources to create a pool of potential candidates for future needs. This article will define talent pooling and explain how to develop your own talent pool.
What is Meant by Talent Pooling?
Talent pooling is the identification and assessment of potential candidates for future job openings. This process involves understanding an individual’s skills and qualifications and how they might fill gaps in an organization.
Often, this information is organized into a database for easy reference. Rather than creating talent pipelines, talent pooling means that you have already identified individuals with the necessary qualifications for specific positions.
Human resources departments might maintain their talent pools, or recruiting agencies might manage them on behalf of other companies.
There are two main types of talent pools:
External Pools: An external pool is a group of qualified organizations not part of an organization. They might be candidates in a database who have already proven their qualifications or passed the initial screening process.
Internal Pools: Internal talent pools are groups of individuals who have the potential to take on more responsibilities and advance in their roles.
How to Develop a Talent Pool?
If you’re looking to develop a talent acquisition pool, here are some steps you can follow:
Know About Organizational Goals
To make sure you hire the appropriate people, it is imperative to match your talent pool with what your organization wants to achieve. For example, if one of your goals is upping sales, you will need to hire more salespeople.
An organization might also want to focus on specific skill sets they hope to improve. These skills could be soft skills, such as problem-solving or organizational skills, or more technical skills, like expertise with particular software.
Evaluate Existing Talent
Organizations can learn about the talents of their employees by conducting interviews or surveys. This gives management an idea of what each person is good at and where they could potentially be placed in different job roles.
By pinpointing the skills of each employee and department, you can discover which areas need more attention. You might want to maintain a record of this information in a database to ensure everyone’s talents are being used efficiently across teams or departments.
Create a Training Plan
Onboarding is tailored according to whether the pool is internal or external. For internal pools, this means providing opportunities for growth and skill development through mentorship programs, peer reviews, or management coaching.
As for external pools, candidates must meet company-specific requirements- like submitting easy paperwork – before they can join.
Manage a Talent Pool
Keeping your talent pools engaged and up-to-date is essential, whether internal or external.
This might mean staying in contact with candidates about open positions and opportunities for external pools. Internal talent pools require you to periodically check in with employees to see how they’re progressing in their development.
Talent pooling can be a handy tool for any organization, big or small. By taking the time to understand what it is and how to develop a talent pool, you can ensure you have a group of highly qualified individuals to draw from when you need them.
Do you have any experience with talent pooling? Let us know in the comments!