Hiring managers know that talent management involves much more than simply having an applicant tracking system in place. Organizations that wish to have a strong talent pipeline must craft effective strategies for attracting top talent in an increasingly competitive market. Attracting top talent comes down to how your organization handles a few essential concepts. Strategy One: Find and highlight your differentiating characteristics. When you consider the talent-starved environment in which you are competing, it makes sense that to attract the very best candidates, you will need to set your organization apart of all others. What is it that makes your firm unique? What defining qualities does your firm possess that a candidate cannot find elsewhere? The answers to these questions will help you to frame your recruiting efforts in the right way to attract your ideal candidates. For instance, if your company culture centers around a positive work/life balance, that message should be loud and clear in all your recruiting materials and candidate communications. Every interaction you have with your top candidates should reflect exactly who and what you are as a company. eBook: How to Attract Top Talent Using Inbound Recruiting – Find out how to harness the power of an inbound recruiting strategy in order to attract, hire, and retain top talent. Strategy Two: Respect the time of your candidates. Truly talented candidates know that they do not have to settle for a poor work experience. They know their skill sets are in demand. Do not lose out on top talent by wasting the time of busy candidates. SelectInternational.com provides these tips for showing respect for candidates’ time: Provide candidates with a way to self-select out of the hiring process. Simulations, videos, or assessments with content that mirror the work that the candidates will do on the job are a great way to provide candidates with a glimpse into the day-to-day work at their prospective company and help them decide whether they wish to stay in the running for a position with your company. Out of respect for the candidates, coordinate interviewer schedules to eliminate multiple interview visits, if possible. After all, in most cases, the most qualified people for your position already have a job. Making it difficult for them to interview without taking multiple days off from their current job sends a very bad message indeed. Shorten your time to hire. Top candidates have little to no interest in waiting around while your organization meanders through a sea of red tape in the hiring process. Streamline your talent management processes as much as possible. Strategy Three: Concentrate on building relationships. It is not unusual to maintain constant communication with a candidate you feel is qualified for a position you have to fill right away. For this type of candidate, you do not hesitate to stay in contact. But what about other candidates who may not be the perfect fit for the position you are trying to fill at this moment? Savvy hiring managers will not drop the ball in communications with these candidates either. Here is the simple truth. If you are building a talent pipeline, you have to look further than the position directly in front of you. This means that you have to build a relationship with candidates who will fill a future need for your organization. Maintaining good communication with candidates who have great potential will help you build a deep bench of talent from which you may draw at a future opportune time. A robust talent management software solution can help you build your talent pipeline. Such a solution should give you a global view of your candidates with strong applicant tracking functionality. It should also enable consistent communication with candidates and real-time collaboration with others involved in the hiring process. ThriveTRM does this and much more. Contact us today to schedule a demo and see for yourself what we can do to help your find and attract top talent in your field.