Most of the best talent is already working —  LinkedIn Talent Trends found that out of 18,000 fully employed professionals, 80% consider themselves passive candidates, that is, they are not actively looking for other job options. However, that same LinkedIn survey also revealed an exciting opportunity to be seized: Only 15% of employed professionals were totally closed to the idea of leaving their current situation. That’s definitely good news, but one key hurdle remains: engagement. Those hidden-gem candidates aren’t going to find you through job boards or other traditional recruiting methods. You need to find ways to go that extra mile and attract and engage these passive big fish you want to land.

A new ebook by TalentObjects reveals four key pillars to creating a compelling and effective talent journey. Once the pillars are in place, the long-term impact on your company’s ability to attract and retain top talent can be game changing. Here’s a look at three of these pillars, and be sure to read the ebook for more insights.

1. Build Communities

A talent community is a content-rich, highly-social portal that enable passive candidates to discover, explore, and learn about your company organically. Communities include peer-to-peer interaction, which is key. Edelman Trust Barometer 2015 revealed that 70% of us trust the word of someone at our level over a higher-up. That trust will come through in community-based interactions with your employees acting as brand ambassadors.

Connecting with talent through community will:

• Save time: Provides access to resources, tips, insights, and paperwork to answer questions faster and help expedite the journey.

• Save money: Decrease the amount of tough questions coming into your HR department. Peers can answer candidates’ questions.

• Enhance the journey: Involve employees for ideation, feedback and testing of HR tools.

Harness the power of Salesforce online community software to create social, mobile, branded talent communities.

2. Be Mobile

Adopting mobile tools are crucial for creating an omnipresent talent journey for candidates, as well as giving hiring teams the ability to respond and engage instantly, from anywhere. Beyond being familiar and easy for individuals who are used to consumer apps to use, working in the always-on mobile environment can substantially cut down on a hiring manager’s biggest fear: losing a great candidate to a faster team.

The recruiting process can be mobile from end-to-end. This makes the journey fast, simple, and accessible anytime, from any device. It’s collaborative at every step. Great mobile applications for HR, such as TalentObjects, include:

• Job requisition creation and approval

• Application form creation

• Job Distribution

• Candidate selection workflow

• Candidate ranking

• Interview management / scheduling

• Candidate review and feedback using Salesforce Chatter

• Basic candidate record review

• Simple offer creation and approval process

• Digital signature for offer acceptance by candidates on-the-go

• Sharing of candidate records to enable collaborative hiring

3. Enable CRM (Candidate Relationship Management)

Candidates are customers. CRM allows you to create a profile of your candidates, including their contact info, an accurate record of their entire journey, and more. Having the right interaction with the right candidate at the right time leads to maximum engagement. Robust, customizable, and intelligent tracking and reporting has long been one of the most invaluable features of a CRM solution like Salesforce.

If you’re trying to develop a winning workforce, you need to have every tool at your disposal to stay as engaged, responsive, and proactive as possible. Because a good CRM allows your hiring team to access a single data source, you have one record of every touchpoint. You’re able to plan every interaction based on what has happened before, and stay relevant. A CRM is perfect for nurturing a candidate or employee relationship, and as a foundation for an end-to-end talent journey.

Talent is everything to your company, and competition for their attention is fierce. This is no time to rely on recruiting methods that aren’t up to your targets’ high standards.

Learn more about the talent journey in 4 Pillars of an Engaging Talent Journey by TalentObjects, and create a journey worth going on.