Employee Selection
Learn what a talent pool is, why it matters, and how to build one. Discover strategies for diversity and how Wonderlic Select can help streamline hiring.
When you’re recruiting for a position, it can seem like there’s an ocean of talent available. And there is. But that ocean includes applicants who aren’t qualified, within your budget, or aren’t otherwise suitable.
Sifting through that kind of volume takes time you don’t have: While the average time to fill an open role fell from 48 days in 2023 to 41 days in 2024, according to SHRM, that’s still well over a month to fill one role.
A talent pool, or sometimes referred to as "digital bench", prevents you from drowning amid the open, turbulent waters of recruitment. Candidates who are, to some degree, known to the organization make up most, if not all, of your talent pool, which means you can spend appreciably less time screening. This alone gives you a major head start in the race for securing the top talent.
The benefits of a talent pool extend far beyond reduced time-to-hire and higher-quality hires. In this post, we’ll look at why establishing a talent pool is so important, how to build and manage one (including the best HR technology for talent pools), and why talent pools are especially useful for skills-based hiring.
What is a Talent Pool?
A talent pool is a database of prequalified candidates amassed over time that recruiters can draw upon to streamline new requisitions. That’s a baseline talent pool definition. These candidates might have already filled out an application, been interviewed, or been recommended. Your talent pool can include:
- Previous applicants and candidates, particularly those who were among the finalists for other jobs
- Former employees who left on good terms
- Current and former freelancers, contingency workers, and interns
- Internal talent, especially those who have expressed interest in advancement, upskilling, or lateral moves
- People who reached out via your owned channels, such as website career pages and social media accounts
- Networking contacts
- People referred by current employees
Think of your talent pool as a bank account. You can add potential employees to it for a rainy day, then, when that rainy day arrives and you have to fill a job opening, you already have prequalified candidates at hand for consideration.
Talent Pool vs. Talent Pipeline
Some people use talent pool and talent pipeline interchangeably. Actually, a talent pool helps feed a talent pipeline: It provides a shortlist of possible candidates to be screened more closely for a particular position. Just like talent pools, talent pipelines can include internal and external candidates.
Say one of your company’s distribution centers is expanding from two shifts a day to three. You need to hire an entire shift’s worth of team members. Your talent pool might include scores of candidates with DC experience. A quick review could reveal a smaller number who expressed willingness to work overnights or in that particular location. Those who meet these or other requirements would then be put into the talent pipeline for further consideration upstream.
How Does a Talent Pool Work?
Before you can reap the benefits of a talent pool, you have to build one. That means storing relevant information about potential candidates in an applicant tracking system (ATS) or other database, like a CRM (candidate relationship management) solution.
Received applications from job seekers who have a solid background but aren’t right for any current openings? Put them in the database. Have assessment reports indicating certain front-line employees are ripe for management? Into the talent pool they go.
Then, when a job opening arises, and once you’ve determined which skills and qualities are most important, you can screen the candidates in your talent pool for these attributes. Just as important, you can see if any of those candidates have the potential to fill a role even if they seem to lack direct experience.
Perhaps an applicant who had been a runner-up for a sales management post scored exceptionally high in persistence, initiative, and other qualities on their pre-hire assessment. When an opening for an enterprise sales position opens up, you might want to put that applicant in the pipeline even if their experience is primarily in consumer sales. Without a talent pool — and candidate assessment tools — you may have never found, let alone considered, this applicant.
Once you’ve selected top contenders from your talent pool, you can reach out to them directly — no need to bring a third-party recruiter into the situation. That saves you money as well as time. Segmenting your database by skills, location, or other categories also increases efficiency.
The Benefits of Building a Talent Pool
You might think your organization isn’t large enough or hasn’t had enough job openings to warrant building and managing a talent pool. But that may be because you’re not aware of a talent pool’s full range of benefits:
Reduced Time-to-Hire and Recruitment Costs
A talent pool of prequalified candidates at your fingertips can reduce time-to-hire. In the time it takes to craft and place an ad or contract with an outside recruiter (then wait for applicants and screen resumes), you can be forwarding a shortlist of candidates to the appropriate department heads.
And when it comes to filling positions, time is money: SHRM estimates that a position left unfilled for 42 days costs a company an average of $4,129. For sales roles and other revenue-generating positions, the cost can be more than twice that. Beyond that expense, talent pools can help you avoid recruitment agency fees, which typically cost 20%-25% of a position’s annual salary, as well as advertising expenses.
A More Diverse Talent Pipeline
Diverse workforces perform 12% better on average than less diverse ones, according to Gartner, and their employees are 20% more likely to stay with the organization. Preemptively fostering relations with and seeking out future candidates from HBCU (Historically Black College and University) job fairs, organizations for disabled employees, and job boards catering to other underrepresented sectors enables you to maintain a diverse talent pool.
A talent pool also gives you access to “passive job seekers,” those who are already employed and aren’t actively job hunting but will consider an interesting offer. They make up an estimated 70% of the workforce, and while they aren’t scanning job boards, they could be in your talent pool if they’ve previously expressed interest in your organization.
A More Proactive Recruitment Strategy
Nearly 75% of organizations have adopted skills-based hiring, in which candidates’ job titles, degrees, and previous positions are less important than their skills and aptitudes. There’s a good reason for this: One study found that a skills-based approach to hiring can add 20 times more workers to a talent pool than a traditional approach.
Say a junior marketer from your three-person marketing team leaves. The first impulse might be to look for another junior marketer, dozens of whom are in your talent pool. But digging a bit deeper into the department’s social-first strategy and the strengths of the remaining team members reveals that it could benefit more from a social media specialist.
You can then filter out candidates who might have the junior marketer title but little social media experience in favor of those who, regardless of title, possess the necessary knowledge and aptitudes. Hiring assessment tools such as Wonderlic Select help you evaluate candidates’ potential in ways a resume or interview can’t, making them invaluable for skills-based hiring and talent pool management alike.
Improved Candidate Engagement Over Time
A healthy talent pool requires consistent candidate nurturing. Don’t let the prospective candidates grow cold and disenchanted with your organization. Email them quarterly updates about your company so that they feel in the loop. Send them birthday wishes. Invite them to webinars or store openings. Maintaining a relationship this way will reinforce positive feelings toward your company. What’s more, if you do hire the candidate, they’ll already have a sense of your corporate culture, making onboarding easier and faster. Remember, time is money!
How to Build a Talent Pool
Looking for some strategies for building a talent pool? The more intentionally you build your talent pool, the more effective it will be. The following steps and tactics will help.
Identify the Skills and Roles Your Organization Needs
What skills are vital to the continuing success of your business? Are you frequently having to fill certain types of roles? Are there gaps in your current workforce’s library of skills, given industry changes and corporate goals? Workforce planning software can help you anticipate the type of candidates you want to prioritize when filling your talent pool. Likewise, employee assessment tools, such as Wonderlic Develop, make it easy to understand the skills and potential of your existing workforce.
Source Candidates from Multiple Channels
Don’t limit yourself to just your website’s careers page, job fairs, or an employee referral program. University job boards and alumni programs, industry events, and former employees and contractors are other good sources. Keep those channels open even when you think your talent pool is large enough; you can’t have too much of a good thing. Also, don’t forget runner-up candidates for previously open jobs, and of course, your current employees, freelancers, and interns.
Build a Database
Use an ATS, a CRM, or other database platform — really, any talent pool software or platform — to store candidate records. Include separate fields for location, education, experience, skills, and any other criteria you would use to search for applicants. You could also organize your database by location, skill set, or other subcategories. Be sure your software and processes are compliant with all applicable data privacy rules and that only authorized team members can access the data, as you should do for any recruitment software for tech and non-tech companies alike.
Seek Out Underrepresented Candidates
Why pan for gold in the same rivers as the other miners when there are numerous untapped creeks nearby? According to SHRM, 61% of organizations have no initiatives for recruiting people with disabilities, previously incarcerated workers, older workers, and other overlooked groups. Inclusive recruitment practices, such as using gender-neutral language in postings and partnering with organizations that offer job assistance to those in underrepresented groups, can give you an advantage in discovering top talent from these ranks. So can using candidate evaluation software such as Wonderlic Select, which minimizes bias and supports fair, skills-based hiring.
How to Manage a Talent Pool
Just like a swimming tool, a talent pool needs maintenance to keep it running smoothly.
Nurture Candidates Over Time
If you just throw candidates into the pool and leave them to tread water until you need them, they may forget why they were even interested in your organization in the first place. A communication plan, such as sending quarterly e-newsletters tailored by department or skill set, should be part of your overall talent pool management strategy.
Keep it Clean
Periodically remove outdated candidates. Reach out to them before you do, though, to see if they’re still interested in receiving communications about your company: If nothing else, it’s another touchpoint to strengthen your nurture strategy.
Segment Your Talent Pool
Organize the database by candidate location and/or skills. This makes finding the optimal candidates even easier and quicker. It also helps you determine if you need to be more proactive in finding certain categories of applicants.
Leverage Technology
An ATS for organizing and storing candidate information, automated resume and application screening programs, and pre-employment testing software and predictive hiring assessments like Wonderlic Select are among the most useful technologies that simplify talent pool management while enhancing effectiveness.
The Future of Talent Pools
Although talent pools are not a new concept, AI and automation are making them part and parcel of a more viable and vital long-term workforce strategy. By identifying correlations not obvious to humans, AI models can identify candidates who, despite their resumes, might have the skills and aptitudes suitable for certain roles. AI tools can also quickly and continually search more job boards and screen applications more quickly than people can. In addition, routine repetitive tasks, such as scheduling appointments and sending emails, can now be automated, freeing up recruiters’ time for other tasks.
Adding candidate assessment tools such as Wonderlic Select to your talent pool management strategy further streamlines the recruitment process. Its science-backed, fair appraisals of candidates’ potential add valuable insights that help you shape your workforce, now and into the future.
Building a Talent Pool with Wonderlic Select
Beyond providing you with names and resumes to give you a jump-start in filling open roles, an effective talent pool ensures you have the right insights to make confident hiring decisions. That’s where Wonderlic Select can help.
Streamline Candidate Evaluation
One of the biggest challenges in maintaining a strong talent pool is knowing which candidates are truly the best fit for your organization. Wonderlic Select simplifies this process with science-backed predictive hiring assessments that measure cognitive ability, motivation, and personality. By identifying high-potential candidates early, you can shorten time-to-hire and reduce costly mismatches.
Support Diverse, Bias-Resistant Hiring
Wonderlic Select focuses on objective, job-relevant insights. The result: a fairer, more inclusive selection process that ensures your talent pool reflects the full spectrum of skills and perspectives available.
Prepare for Future Roles with Confidence
There's an ocean of talent out there. Talent pools are distilled collections of the most qualified candidates. These pools can help fill critical skill gaps and ensure your organization is ready for new opportunities today and tomorrow. Wonderlic Select’s predictive insights enable you to confidently nurture those candidates, turning your talent pool into a long-term strategic advantage.
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