Top 10 Benefits of Proper Talent Pool Segmentation

Talent pool segmentation: A key to improving your hiring process

Many HR professionals invest a lot of time and effort in building their talent pool. Unfortunately, many of them don’t properly segment their talent pool. This is because they don’t fully understand all the benefits of a proper talent pool segmentation. 

In this blog post, I will explain why talent pool segmentation is crucial for maintaining an effective talent pool, which will enable you to improve all the most important recruiting metrics, such as time, cost and quality of hire. 

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What does it mean to properly segment your talent pool?

It means to divide the candidates from your talent pool into different groups in a way that enables you to improve your recruiting efforts.

How to properly segment your talent pool?

There is no unified best talent pool segmentation practice that fits all companies. You can segment your talent pool based on many criteria, such as:
Education level,

• Experience level
• Preferred job position
• Location
• Language
• Etc.

Which talent pool criteria will work best varies depending on the size, location, target audience and the hiring needs and goals of your company.

To learn more about the proper talent pool segmentation, check out our detailed, step by step guide on how to segment your talent pool.  

Main benefits of talent pool segmentation

The talent pool is only useful when it serves as a repository of engaged candidates who are eager to work for your company. In order to ensure a high engagement of candidates in your talent pool, you need to precisely target their interests and needs - and you can’t do that unless you segment your talent pool into smaller groups. 

A targeted, personalized approach achieved by proper talent pool segmentation has many benefits.
Here is the list of the top 10 benefits of a proper talent pool segmentation:

Benefit #1: Engaging passive candidates

In today’s job market, an overwhelming majority of job candidates are passive job seekers. Passive candidates are already employed so they don’t participate in an active job search. However, they would be willing to accept a better job offer. 

According to LinkedIn, 73% of your potential job candidates are passive job seekers.

These passive job seekers need to be convinced that getting a job at your company would be a step up for them. If you manage to get these passive job seekers to join your talent pool, you will be able to build relationships with them, foster candidate engagement and keep your company on the top of their mind until the moment they are ready to change jobs. 

By segmenting your talent pool and creating a distinctive group for your passive job candidates, you can send them a more relevant content, focused on presenting your employer brand and your employee value proposition. 

Benefit #2: Better candidate targeting

A proper talent pool segmentation is the key to enhanced candidate targeting. When you divide your candidates into different groups based on certain talent pool segmentation criteria, you can target your candidates more precisely. 

Without precise candidate targeting, you won’t able to deliver the right message to the right candidates at the exact right moment.
For example, if you have segmented your talent pool well, you can send an information about your open internship position at your marketing department solely to current and recent marketing students in your talent pool. That way, you won’t bother other candidates in your talent pool who aren’t interested in your entry-level positions or those who are interested in other departments, 

Benefit #3: Better email personalization

A proper talent pool segmentation enables you to increase the personalization of the emails you send to the candidates in your talent pool. Talent pool segmentation by different criteria will help you learn more about your candidates and their different characteristics. You can then use this knowledge to customize your emails and deliver only highly personalized emails to your candidates. 

For example, you can send an email to your candidate which contains his/her name, refers to the college that this candidate graduated from, candidate’s professional interest, specific skills, etc.

Benefit #4: Better use of recruitment content

By segmenting your talent pool and creating distinctive candidates’ groups, you will be able to achieve better candidate targeting and deliver more personalized emails which contain only highly relevant recruitment content.

For example, if you segment your talent pool the hiring stage that the candidates from your talent pool are currently in, you use this information to create and deliver recruitment content specifically designed for every step of your candidate journey. 

Benefit #5: Better candidate engagement

By segmenting your talent pool based on relevant criteria, you will be able to target the candidates form your talent pool more precisely and communicate with them in a more personalized way. By knowing your candidates' interests and needs, you will be able to send them only highly relevant content.  

If your candidates receive interesting and relevant content from your company which answers their most prominent questions and addresses their biggest concerns, they will gradually become more invested in your company. By keeping your communication with candidates relevant and up to date, you will foster long-term relationships and improve your candidate engagement. 

Benefit #6: Better candidate experience

The proper talent pool segmentation also improves the candidate experience. An effective talent pool segmentation allows companies to provide tailored content to targeted candidate groups.

For example, candidates in a software developers talent pool group will be sent content related to the newest technologies used at your company and content related to your company being featured on the best paying employers list. On the other hand, a student talent pool group will be sent content about your company’s campus recruiting activities and a video featuring your newest interns sharing their experience with your company. This kind of personalized candidate experience improves candidate engagement and boosts your employer brand.

Benefit #7: Higher acceptance rate

Proper talent pool segmentation will also result in higher acceptance of your job offers. By dividing the candidates from your talent pool into different groups, you will be able to communicate different aspects of your employee value proposition that appeal most to each group. 

For example, if you want to hire professionals who are parents, you can highlight your child care services and work-life balance. On the other hand, if you want to hire fresh graduates, you can emphasize your career development opportunities and fun company culture. 

By customizing your approach to candidates and offering them what they desire, you will ensure a higher acceptance rate. Additionally, candidates who are more engaged and who have a great candidate experience will be more eager to accept your job offer. 

Benefit #8: Lower time to hire

Just having a database with potential job candidates won’t necessarily lower your time to hire. However, having a properly segmented and managed talent pool will ensure that the candidates in your database are engaged and eager to work for your company. That way, when you have a new job opening, you will be able to choose between qualified, interested candidates from your talent pool.

This will significantly lower your time to hire because you will be able to skip the whole process of advertising your open job position through different channels and waiting for great candidates to apply. Instead, you will already have a pool of great candidates you can choose from! If you focus on your silver medalists, you can even save time on testing and interviewing candidates, since you already did that previously. As a result, your time to hire will significantly decrease. 

Benefit #9: Lower cost per hire

Having a properly segmented and well-managed talent pool saves your money in two different ways. 

First of all, it reduces time to hire. If you have a strong talent pool, your HR team can skip many stages of the hiring process. In other words, they will be able to find and hire great candidates in a significantly less number of working hours. It means that you will save a lot of money only on your HR professionals wages.

The second way in which properly segmented talent pool will lower your cost per hire is by saving the money you would otherwise spend advertising your open job positions. Imagine the budget savings you could achieve if you didn’t have to spend money to advertise each and every of your open job positions through multiple channels and venues, such as on different job boards, LinkedIn, Facebook, career fairs, campus events, etc. This dream becomes a reality if you properly segment and maintain your talent pool! 

Benefit #10: Better quality of new hires

Nobody wants to hire B-players, much less C-players. Lower quality hires happen because of four main reasons: not enough qualified applicants, not enough time to find talent, not enough time to check if the best candidate is indeed a perfect fit and because the best candidates reject your job offer so you have to settle with the second best. 

A proper talent pool segmentation helps you avoid all four mentioned scenarios by ensuring a steady flow of qualified job candidates, lowering your time to hire and improving your acceptance rate. 

How can TalentLyft help you reap all the benefits of talent pool segmentation? 

With TalentLyft, talent pool segmentation is quick and easy - you can do it in just a few clicks! TalentLyft is a modern all-in-one recruiting software which has a whole range of advanced features for building, segmenting and managing talent pools. TalentLyft also offers additional features which enable you to engage and nurture candidates in your talent pool in a fast and easy way!

To learn how using all-in-in recruitment software such as TalentLyft can help you build and maintain a more effective talent pool, schedule a free personalized demo with our experts. We will be happy to answer all your questions and offer helpful guidelines for creating and improving your talent pool. 🙂