Talent Communities typically refer to nurturing candidates through emails and other online means until these candidates are ready to move down the hiring funnel and apply for jobs.

We thought it’d be cool to take these online interactions and move them offline.  So, we put together an event around career pivots for all the people who were in the talent communities of a few of our Boston based customers.

The event was fairly straightforward.  In the first hour the attendees could meet 1:1 with a recruiter to ask questions about resumes, interviews, etc in a safe space.  Then, we did a panel where three career switchers shared their stories, did another 45 mins of networking, and called it a night.

Here are a few takeaways we learned from this event:

• Talent Community members are definitely interested in meeting offline.  It wasn’t long before our 100 RSVP slots were filled and we were putting people on the waitlist.
• There are some gem candidates in the talent communities.  We had product managers, engineers, sales people and everything in between come out last night.
• It’s always great to put a face to the name.  A record in a database is one thing, meeting someone in person is so much more personal.
• Putting together an event like this is fairly simple, especially if you have an event space.  Plus, the cost is very minimal to get snacks and beer for 100 people.
• Talent communities are a great way to capture the info of candidates who aren’t ready to apply, but clearly want to engage with your employer brand.
• Just because someone doesn’t apply into the ATS, doesn’t mean they aren’t ready to talk to a recruiter about future roles.

Here’s some footage of the event in this week’s “Non-Whiteboard Wednesday”

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