There’s no guarantee your employees are going to stick around forever. In some cases – such as your low-performing workers – this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But having a star employee hand in their two-week notice can be a bit shocking. If you’re not prepared, it can also leave you scrambling to quickly find a replacement. So, it’s in your best interest to maintain a pool of potential candidates at all times in order to avoid stagnation throughout your company.
Let’s take a look at three main ways maintaining a candidate pool can benefit your business and keep it growing.
Cost Effectiveness
Hiring and onboarding new employees can be a logistical nightmare.
You have to advertise the open position in various formats; wade through hundreds of resumes and cover letters; schedule interviews with the handful of qualified applicants you find; actually conduct these interviews, as well as secondary interviews).
Even after you make a new hire, you’ll need to spend more time training them and getting them up to speed. And you have to do all of this while ensuring the rest of your company’s operations are running as smoothly as possible.
By maintaining a steady talent pool, you’ll already have a decent idea of who you want to hire for your newly-opened position, so you can at least skip the first few parts of the hiring process. In turn, this will lead to less time spent searching for prime candidates, meaning less downtime for your company overall. And, you’ll be better able to allocate resources throughout the time it takes you to make this new hire.
Keep In Contact With Talent
It’s almost a cliche at this point:
“We don’t have any positions open, but we’ll keep your resume on file!”
But do these companies really keep a stash of resumes on file?
If they don’t: they should.
This isn’t to say you should just keep every resume that comes through your inbox. But, even if you really don’t have any positions open at the current moment, you should make a habit of setting aside the resumes of those who you consider prime candidates – and keeping in touch with them as time goes on.
Contract and freelance work is quickly becoming more and more prevalent. At the very least, you might decide to contact those who have handed in a resume to see if they’d be interested in working on a project-by-project basis should the need arise. That way, you can give them some experience with your company – while at the same time assessing whether or not they’d make a good full-time employee should the need arise.
Stay Forward-Thinking
Along with this last point, maintaining a candidate pool should be part of a bigger initiative within your company:
Looking to the future.
While it’s all well and good that your current employees are equipped and able to complete the tasks your company needs them to complete at the current moment, there may soon come a time in which these abilities are considered old-hat.
Of course, you should focus on training and preparing your current employees for these moments first and foremost. However, if some of them aren’t up to the challenges set by new industry standards, you can look to your pool of potential candidates to find the individual who is – and who can help take your company to the next level.
Are you looking to bring new talent to your organization?
The Panther Group can help.
Our hands-on approach and single point of contact ensure that each employer and job seeker is treated as our most important customer. This approach, combined with our specific industry knowledge, creates the right fit the first time. Contact us today to learn more.