Talent Pipelines in 2024: The Benefits, Challenges, and Opportunities
Talent pipelines aren’t new in the engineering recruitment landscape. For years, they’ve offered employers an opportunity to streamline and enhance the hiring process, fill talent gaps, and minimise business disruptions.
In 2024, however, the demand for effective talent pipelines is greater than ever.
Cultivating and building a strong talent pipeline allows engineering businesses to access talented candidates faster while strengthening your employer brand and improving the quality of the professionals you drive to your business.
Here’s what you need to know about the evolution of talent pipelines in 2024.
What Are Talent Pipelines?
Broadly, a talent pipeline is a pool of candidates ready to fill existing or future positions in your engineering organisation. These candidates can include existing employees, who may be able to move into more demanding positions with the right training and succession plans.
It can also include individuals who have shown interest in working with your business in the past, as well as “passive” candidates who are not currently searching for a new role but are open to exploring opportunities in the future.
Building a talent pipeline can be more complex than it seems and involves more than just collecting C.V.s from potential candidates. Business leaders must also proactively search for and source new talent consistently and engage with potential hires.
The talent pipelining process includes the following:
- Sourcing: Proactively seeking candidates through various environments and channels, from social media platforms like LinkedIn to job fairs, using search and recruitment companies and events.
- Attracting: Drawing candidates to your business with effective employer branding, compelling job descriptions, and an engaging employee value proposition.
- Engaging: Nurturing relationships with candidates through consistent communication, support, and insights into emerging opportunities.
- Evaluating: Examining each candidate’s potential to fill both current roles and potential positions that may emerge in the future.
- Hiring: Inspiring candidates with compelling job offers when opportunities become available, often with the help of a recruitment team.
The Role of Recruiters in Building Talent Pipelines
Building and maintaining comprehensive talent pipelines is often a time-consuming process. The right strategy requires finding diverse talent opportunities, demonstrating an exceptional employer brand, and nurturing long-lasting relationships.
In today’s skills-short landscape, where competition for professionals in the engineering industry is fierce and employee priorities are evolving, building a talent pipeline is harder than ever. 62% of H.R. professionals say their organisation’s talent pipeline isn’t robust enough.
Fortunately, recruiters can offer employers a crucial competitive edge. The right recruitment and staffing company can open the door to a wider talent pool, leveraging pre-existing relationships with talent in your industry and implementing innovative sourcing techniques.
Recruiters can help enhance your employer brand and proactively attract new candidates. They can assist with crafting engaging employee value propositions and writing compelling job descriptions.
Plus, recruiters can be essential in enhancing the candidate experience and nurturing potential talent with frequent communication and updates.
How To Build Your Talent Pipeline in 2024
Working with a engineering recruitment team is the best way to develop and optimise a robust talent pipeline in 2024. However, ensuring you have a strategy that delivers results and addresses the challenges and roadblocks today’s employers face is vital.
1. Identify Current and Potential Skill Gaps
The first step in developing a stronger engineering talent pipeline for 2024 is identifying your recruitment needs. Crucially, it’s not enough to focus on the skills and talents crucial to your business today but also the gaps you may need to fill in the future.
Make a list of essential staff members in your organisation and their characteristics. Ask yourself how you’ll deal with these team members leaving your company. Do you already have succession plans in place? If so, how will they impact your future recruitment strategy?
Next, consider the trends and innovations affecting your business and how they might affect the candidates you need to source. For instance, in 2024, many employers will search for candidates well-versed in generative A.I. and automation tools.
2. Recognise Current Recruitment Challenges
Recruitment in 2024 is growing more complex. Skill shortages remain a significant issue in every industry, creating high levels of competition for top talent. As of 2024, companies of all sizes continue to struggle to fill skill gaps. At the same time, increasing demand for things like flexible work and empathy in the workplace are leading to more discerning candidates with higher expectations.
These factors, combined with an increasing need for digital literacy in every role, higher salary/wage demands, and more, have a major impact on recruitment strategies. Understanding the challenges you may face in 2024 should help you craft a hiring plan that boosts your chances of reaching the right talent this year.
It could also be crucial to ensure you can source the right level of support from the recruitment/search partner you choose to work with.
3. Explore New Talent Sourcing Methods
Once you’ve identified the skills you need from your engineering talent and the challenges you’re likely to face, the next step is to explore various talent-sourcing methods available to you, including employee referrals.
Recruitment agencies will also be able to help you with this by offering access to in-depth market knowledge, market mapping services, and a professional network of passive candidates
that are not active on job boards and social media.
Often these types of candidates can be missed by internal talent teams.
4. Invest in Attracting and Engaging Candidates
Since finding candidates for your talent pipeline can be one of the biggest recruitment challenges you’ll face this year, finding ways to attract professionals to you is extremely important. This starts with creating an employer brand that drives awareness of your business’s unique benefits, from a focus on diversity and inclusion to development opportunities.
A Google search on “how important is employer branding to candidates” generates 76 million results, so a company’s reputation is certainly at the front of a candidate’s mind. For employers, this means it’s important to keep a close eye on the message you’re sending about your company culture and the work experience you can offer.
It’s also worth taking a closer look at your engineering job descriptions. Make sure they’re compelling, inclusive, and informative. Avoid any language that might show unconscious bias and draw attention to the reasons candidates should want to work with your business.
5. Commit to Building Stronger Relationships
A significant part of building strong talent pipelines in 2024 is building and maintaining relationships with the right candidates. You’ll need to ensure you have a strong connection with the talent you source to convince them to join your team at the right moment.
According to some reports, it can take up to 8 connections with a company for a person to form an opinion about them. This means you’ll need to regularly connect with your talent pipeline and share insights into your company culture and evolving organisation.
Technology can help with this. For instance, you can use A.I. and automation to craft personalised messages to send to your candidates weekly or monthly. Sharing value-added content that supports their role and future career development will be received while your engineering recruitment team can reach out proactively to help nurture relationships.
6. Leverage Technology with Care
Speaking of technology, artificial intelligence is beginning to play a more significant role in developing talent pipelines and the engineering recruitment strategy. Around 66% of recruiters use some form of A.I. technology to help enhance hiring processes.
However, while these tools can speed up processes, simplify tasks like writing job descriptions, and even assist with candidate screening, they have limitations. Bias and inaccuracies can emerge from an over-reliance on automated tools.
Business leaders must keep people in the loop within the recruitment process and watch for potential issues to avoid reputational damage. Don’t expect to transform recruitment into a fully automated strategy.
The Benefits of Building Stronger Talent Pipelines
Effective talent pipelines are more important than ever to today’s engineering employers. The right strategy can significantly improve the efficiency of your recruitment process, reducing the time it takes to fill positions and attract new candidates.
Having systems in place that allow you to hire the “ideal” candidate the first time increases retention rates and reduces the cost of poor hires.
A good talent pipeline improves the quality of your hires, enhances long-term workforce planning, and minimises possible risks.
All the best
Steve
At Coalesce we have been partnering with engineering businesses for over 27 years; if you would like our input into building a stronger talent pipeline for your business, call us on 07512 821708 or email us here.