Nurturing candidate leads is key to building an engaged talent pipeline. When candidates opt into your talent network—whether through your career site, recruiter outreach, or industry events—they expect valuable and relevant communication. The most effective candidate nurturing combines content marketing and email marketing automation, all rooted in a deep understanding of your target candidate personas.
How to attract more candidate leads into your talent network
Optimal placement can capture both passive and active candidates. Candidates engage with your employer brand and visit your career site through different mediums, so your talent network also should be promoted across different channels and on multiple pages of your career site. Inserting a talent network form in the front-end of the apply process provides an option for candidates to opt in if they don't complete the application. In addition, using calls-to-action elsewhere on your career site and content can capture a totally different audience: leads who haven't yet looked at your jobs.
Essential fields to include in your talent network form
Collecting the right data ensures you can tailor your outreach effectively. Instead of overwhelming candidates with long forms, start with:
- Name
- Email address
- Job family or industry of interest
After they opt in, gradually build on their preferences:
- Send preference emails to gather skillsets and content interests.
- Track engagement by monitoring email open rates and link clicks.
- Provide an option for candidates to receive personalized job alerts.
Who's doing it: Eaton's talent network form captures 1,000 contacts daily, all of which are segmented into 23 core disciplines to build better target pipelines of talent. Based on these core disciplines, the recruiting team can send more relevant messaging and job openings to find the best opportunity for the candidate and the best fit for the organization.
Best content strategies for engaging your talent network
Personalization will drive engagement. The more targeted you can get with the content, messaging and jobs you send talent network leads, the more seamless and valuable it will be for them. First, you have to understand your target personas, as well as what information they might be looking for. Create a candidate messaging plan for the candidate journey. Mapping target personas, the questions they might have in these stages and the best ways to relay that message (a content map or candidate messaging map) is key to your nurture plan.
Who's doing it: CDW uses dozens of customized workflows for each candidate persona to personalize their communication to their talent network. The company uses a combination of employee stories, Thank You messages and recruiter outreach through email as different automated touchpoints. They also utilize their Glassdoor rating (which is very high) both pre- and post-application to better convert leads, as well as maintain talent.
How automation can improve talent network engagement
Automation can help drive conversions to apply. One of the key benefits of a recruitment marketing platform is to help automate nurture. Using automated email reminders or triggers when a candidate takes a certain action can greatly increase conversions without recruiters having to lift a finger. A recruitment marketing platform can send automated emails to remind candidates to finish completing their applications, as well as automatically send targeted job alerts based on candidate's preferences when new job reqs are posted.
