When it comes to finding your next employee it generally pays to be prepared. More often than not, the need for a new hire crops up when it’s least expected i.e. when a key employee decides to leave with a few weeks notice. However, a little foresight can make the difference between a long hard slog and a relatively quick, quality hire.

Building up your talent pool with unsolicited applications is probably one of the easiest and most effective way to do this. At least when the need for a new hire rises, you should already have some pretty decent prospective applicants for the role.

Unsolicited Applications, More Quality Applicants.

Offering unsolicited applications on your career site for example, will encourage candidates who can’t find a suitable role to submit their details for any upcoming vacancies. Not only will it allow you to collect more potential hires but generally speaking, the people who specifically visit your website job section do so because they have the relevant interests and/or skills to suit your company.

The result? More candidates and a higher chance of receiving applicants who match your business. The upshot of this is a handy boost to your employer branding, after all, you’re giving job seekers the opportunity to immediately get their name on your books.

Of course there are other ways that candidates can submit unsolicited applications, by post or email for example. However it’s not necessarily the most effective or safe method of collecting and storing candidate information.

First of all, we all know how quickly paper applications get lost or misliad. Collecting unsolicited applications via email is a better option, but once they begin building up it does make it hard to find what you’re looking for when the need arises.

Ideally, as with softgarden, you’d use an application software system that sorts and stores any incoming unsolicited applications in a database. This way you can easily search for candidates according to job title, skills, experience and the like.

softgarden and Unsolicited Applications

If you are using (or are planning) to use softgarden recruitment software it’s an ideal opportunity to introduce unsolicited applications to your career site. With their permission, candidates who submit their applications are immediately entered to your talent pool.

From here you can easily search for candidates when the need arises and your applicants can update or remove their profile whenever they want. It means that you’re less likely to end up with a virtual pile of outdated resumes, plus it’s also a safer way to store sensitive details.

With all of your candidate information in a secure database, and allocated softgarden users, you can be sure that nothing falls into the wrong hands or gets mislaid.

See how softgarden can help you build an effective talent pool by signing up for our free 14 day trial. No obligation, no credit card required.

Image Reference – Flickr eggraphics311