How to Build a Strong Tech Talent Pipeline for Long-Term Hiring Needs

How to Build a Strong Tech Talent Pipeline for Long-Term Hiring Needs

Even though technology is essential for business development and growth, it’s nothing without qualified tech talent who can implement it. That’s why the competition for experienced and skilled software engineers is so fierce. 86% of CIOs surveyed by Gartner face increased competition for qualified candidates.

What if we tell you that you can reduce the negative outcomes of tech talent shortage by building a tech talent pipeline? An effective talent pipeline can provide your company with a large pool of engaged candidates ready to consider or at least review your offer.

Find insights on successful talent pipeline strategy adoption in our blog post.

What Is a Talent Pipeline?

A talent pipeline is a pool of qualified candidates who know about your company and would be interested in applying if you open a new position. It’s an end-to-end talent lifecycle with many stages, from identifying potential candidates to building and nurturing relationships with the passive ones. The talent pipeline also covers your organization’s internal talent lifecycle management efforts, like career pathing, goal setting, succession planning, learning and development, or employee referral programs.

Therefore, talent pipeline management is a strategic approach to finding, attracting, nurturing, and growing future top performers for your company before you actually need them.

Why Do You Need a Talent Pipeline in Tech?

Software and data engineers are among the top 10 jobs of 2024, with over 532 jobs per 1 million total openings in the US. This is a relatively high number of open positions, signifying a tense competition for experienced specialists. As if it wasn’t enough, the talent shortage in the US and Western Europe is aggravated by the need to constantly compete with FAANG companies, their fancy offices, and inflated salaries. Consequently, tech companies that want to attract top talents need strong talent acquisition strategies and reliable talent pipelines.

Besides giving a competitive advantage, a tech talent pipeline benefits IT companies in many other ways, including:

  • Optimized hiring cycle due to shorter time to hire
  • Increased quality of candidates since you engage more motivated specialists with relevant skills
  • Improved business continuity thanks to a stable flow of qualified talents
  • Flexibility in the rapidly changing market
  • Reduced candidate sourcing and hiring costs 

A sustainable tech talent pipeline is another pillar of your business stability and continuous growth. It allows you to fill in the positions much faster and land more experienced candidates, boosting the overall efficiency of your business operations.

8 Professional Tips for Successful Tech Talent Pipeline Development

As a tech recruitment & staffing agency, Sunvery has an extensive internal talent pool and helps other companies set up the talent pipeline process. The insights we share below should help you build a sustainable talent pipeline that meets your long-term business goals.

#1. Identify your short- and long-term hiring needs

To build an effective tech talent pipeline, you must know what you want to achieve with it. Therefore, you need to ask all stakeholders, including C-level management, project managers, and recruitment team members, to evaluate what skip gaps the company has now and what to expect in the future. For example, you may find out that the company plans to niche down to fintech, and, therefore, your candidate pipeline strategy must focus on people with relevant industry experience.

#2. Develop a candidate profile

Before sourcing and building connections with candidates, determine who you need. It will guide your efforts and prevent you from building a tech talent pipeline that is too big, unordered, and includes only a small share of quality candidates.

As a rule, a candidate profile includes:

  • Mandatory soft and hard skills
  • Good-to-have skills
  • Work experience
  • Education
  • Personal traits
  • Long-term goals
  • Red flags

#3. Visualize and measure the recruitment funnel

A recruitment funnel is a concise visualization of the main stages a candidate goes through while turning from a random person into a hired specialist. Recruitment funnel visualization will help you better understand the structure of your tech talent pipeline and see what happens at each stage. You may find out that too many candidates leave after submitting an application or don’t pass the tech interview, which means your hiring strategy needs improvement.

#4. Adopt KPIs for data-driven recruitment

To evaluate the effectiveness of your talent sourcing, nurturing, and hiring efforts, you must measure KPIs. Track the number of candidates at each stage of the pipeline and some other common indicators such as:

  • Time to the first interview
  • Average time to hire
  • Cost per hire
  • Quality of hire
  • Offer acceptance rate
  • Source of hire

Learn more about recruitment KPIs and find instructions on how to calculate and track them in our recent article.

#5. Engage in proactive sourcing

Too often, companies start building a talent base when the need to hire new people becomes acute. Don’t be one of them. Encourage your recruitment team to build connections on professional platforms like LinkedIn and participate in events, conferences, and tradeshows. When the time comes, and you need to hire someone, these connections may become your perfect hire.

#6. Set up talent pipeline maintenance 

Your talent base may become outdated as your business grows and the needs change. Besides, candidates often switch positions, gain new certifications, or leave the tech field to find happiness elsewhere. To avoid disturbing unqualified candidates and maintain the reliability of your talent pipeline, you must regularly update it with new information and delete/flag the no longer relevant records.

#7. Have a succession planning strategy

Succession planning is an essential part of internal long-term workforce planning by HR and recruitment teams. It allows you to grow future leaders within your organization through mentoring, development programs, personal goal setting, and other approaches. A succession planning strategy is particularly valuable when filling managerial positions since you can hire someone who knows your company and facilitate onboarding.

long -term hiring

#8. Stay in touch with passive candidates

Manage your social media to gather an engaged target audience and communicate with all candidates, even those who show little or no interest in your open vacancies. They may leave comments when you post corporate news, industry updates, or expert opinions, which will boost your profile and, most importantly, build a long-lasting connection with potential hires.

As a result, the next time your company posts a new vacancy, these passive candidates can become active ones or recommend a friend as they will have positive associations with your brand image.

When building a modern talent team, businesses and their recruitment departments must adopt long-term strategies. They must create and sustain a continuous tech talent pipeline that matches their long-term goals and generates quality candidates. Candidate profiling, KPI tracking, proactive sourcing, and other pipeline development best practices are only a few of the tips to follow. Consider professional consulting to maximize the output from your tech talent pipeline or build one. 

Sunvery for Talent Pipeline Management and Recruitment

Sunvery is a tech recruitment & staffing agency that provides a broad range of hiring services, including talent pipeline management. We can help you enhance your existing recruitment approaches, making them more efficient and measurable.

If you don’t want to invest in building a comprehensive recruitment strategy in-house, you can outsource your staffing needs to our experienced specialists. We will use our internal resources to ensure quick and efficient hiring for you. Get the first candidates in two days and hire in 25 days on average, choosing from several top pre-vetted candidates. 

Contact us for recruitment consulting and learn more about how our agency can optimize your hiring efforts and costs.