Recruitment Marketing teams know that today’s hiring challenges can’t be solved by job ads alone. Attracting and nurturing talent takes time—and intention. That’s why more employers are investing in building strong talent communities: audiences of interested candidates who have opted in to stay connected and learn more about working for your company. Whether you call it a talent community or a talent network, this strategy isn’t just about collecting email addresses or mobile numbers. It’s about delivering consistent value, creating meaningful engagement and building trust with people who could one day become your future teammates.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the strategies that leading employers are using to build and engage their talent communities more effectively. You’ll hear best practices from three Rally Award winners—Eaton, MetLife and TTEC—who are turning passive audiences into applicants and hires. Plus, we’ll share expert tips on list building, segmentation and welcome emails that help move talent from interest to action. Let’s dive in!
Strategies for Building a Talent Community
A successful talent community starts with intentional list building—and that means getting permission to stay in touch. Make sure candidates expressly opt in on your sign-up form and know what they’re signing up for.
Best practice: Let them know the value of joining (job alerts, hiring events, career tips) and how often they’ll hear from you. Setting expectations upfront builds trust and boosts engagement.
To grow your list, think like a marketer: Always Be List Building. Use every touchpoint on your careers site as an opportunity to invite someone in:
- Join – Add clear calls to action on your homepage and job descriptions to capture interest from passive candidates
- Register – Capture leads through event and webinar sign-ups
- Subscribe – Offer newsletters or job alerts for easy opt-in
- Learn – Use quizzes or career assessments as lead generation tools
- Contact – Ask for opt-in through your careers site chatbot
- Pop-ups – Use tools like OptinMonster to present join options to your careers site visitors
Each of these strategies helps you connect with people who are curious about your brand—even if they’re not ready to apply.
Leverage marketing best practices to always be building your talent community optin list.
💡 Pro Tip:
Can’t I just add everyone in my ATS to my talent community?
Nope. You need their permission. But you can send a re-engagement email inviting them to opt in and stay connected. A well-planned re-engagement campaign can help you revive dormant leads and grow your list the right way. Want to learn how? I teach the strategy step-by-step in my Email Marketing for Recruitment virtual course.
Segmenting Your Talent Community for Better Engagement
Building a talent community starts with capturing the right data so you can create personalized, relevant touch points. I’m talking about the marketing strategy of segmentation.
When candidates join your talent community, the information you gather through your sign-up form becomes the foundation for targeted, personalized messaging later. The more thoughtful you are about the fields you include, the more powerful your segmentation will be. Consider capturing:
- Job Family – Such as sales, nursing, cashier, etc.
- Role Type – Hourly, full-time, intern
- Location – Where they currently live or want to work, or interest in remote and hybrid
- Source – How they discovered you (social media, careers site, event, etc.)
- Behavior – When they last applied, opened an email or clicked a tracked link
- Characteristics – Experience level, past roles, veteran status, assessment scores, ATS stage
These details allow you to send tailored messages that speak directly to a candidate’s interests and intent. And it works—segmented emails get 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs.
Segmenting your talent community is a core Recruitment Marketing tactic that helps you stay relevant, improve engagement and ultimately drive more conversions of candidates to apply.
Make Your First Impression Count with a Welcome Email
Once someone joins your talent community, don’t wait to engage them. A Welcome email is one of the most effective email marketing messages you’ll ever send. In fact, Welcome emails are 86% more likely to be opened than other marketing emails.
This is your chance to introduce your employer brand, set expectations and encourage next steps. Think like a marketer: What value can you offer that makes someone want to stay engaged?
Consider including:
- A behind-the-scenes video that gives a feel for your culture
- A link to a blog post with helpful career advice
- An invitation to register for an upcoming event
- A career path quiz to help them explore opportunities
- A prompt to follow your company on LinkedIn or other social channels
Your Welcome email should be more than just a hello—it should inspire action. Offer content that adds value and helps move candidates forward in their journey with your brand.
A Welcome Email to your talent community is your moment to introduce your employer brand, set expectations and spark interest by offering value that keeps candidates engaged.
How Top Employers Build and Engage Talent Communities
A strong talent community doesn’t build itself—it takes intentional effort to attract the right people and keep them engaged over time. These 2024 Rally Award-winning employers demonstrate how to do just that, with approaches that go beyond collecting contacts and focus on creating real, ongoing value.
1. Eaton: Mobilizing Their Manufacturing Talent Community
Eaton, which won second place for Best Recruitment Marketing Campaign in the 2024 Rally Awards, took a proactive approach to building and engaging their manufacturing talent community by leveraging National Manufacturing Day as a campaign anchor. They deepened relationships with existing talent by sending targeted emails based on location—not just promoting job opportunities, but inviting candidates to in-person hiring events where they could meet employees and see the work environment for themselves.
To keep the energy high across channels, Eaton paired authentic employee visuals, testimonials and a LinkedIn Live event with consistent outreach to their talent community. Their messaging helped reshape perceptions of manufacturing careers and showcased real career paths within the company.
What they did to build and engage their talent community:
- Maintained a segmented talent community and reactivated them through targeted, relevant outreach
- Invited members to high-value experiences like on-site events
- Showcased real employees and career paths to build trust and spark interest
- Used a multi-channel approach to meet their community where they already were
2. MetLife: Scaling a Global Community with Local Relevance
MetLife, which earned first place for Best Launch of a Recruitment Marketing Strategy (Large Team) in the 2024 Rally Awards, focused on building a scalable infrastructure for talent engagement through their Talent Relationship Management (TRM) platform. They didn’t just centralize data across their 40 talent markets; they created localized entry points with translated career content, customized EVP messaging and email nurture journeys tailored to each region.
To keep the community engaged, they also launched an Employee Advocacy Program to amplify authentic voices, and ran targeted lead gen campaigns that brought in new talent to the pipeline—many of whom had never interacted with MetLife before.
What they did to build and engage their talent community:
- Created new regional Talent Community pages and nurture journeys through a TRM platform
- Equipped recruiters and partners with toolkits for consistent, localized outreach
- Ran lead gen campaigns to continuously grow their community with qualified contacts
- Used employee advocacy to increase authenticity and reach
3. TTEC: Building Belonging with Alumni
TTEC, which won first place for Best Talent E-Newsletter in the 2024 Rally Awards, turned their global alumni newsletter into a powerful strategy for building a re-engageable, re-hireable talent community. They built a unified communications platform that felt both global and personal, featuring regional content, job opportunities and stories that celebrated the journeys of their alumni.
To keep the connection warm, they included exclusive content like “After the Talent Show”—a candid segment with their COO (an alum himself). By spotlighting inspiring return stories and encouraging interaction, they made alumni feel seen and valued—not just as past employees, but as future contributors.
What they did to build and engage their talent community:
- Developed a dedicated alumni communications program with tailored, engaging content
- Localized newsletters to make content regionally relevant and personally meaningful
- Sparked interaction with exclusive segments and storytelling from company leaders
- Prompted action with clear CTAs like trending jobs and social community links
How to Build and Engage a Talent Community with a Winning Email Strategy
Building and engaging a strong talent community is one of the most powerful strategies in Recruitment Marketing today. The most effective employers are thinking like marketers—capturing permission-based leads, segmenting their audiences and delivering value at every step of the candidate journey. As we learned from Eaton, MetLife and TTEC, success comes from authentic storytelling, consistent communication and smart use of technology to personalize the experience.
Whether you’re just starting to build your list or ready to level up your email engagement, remember: every candidate interaction is a chance to build trust and grow interest in your employer brand.
Want to go deeper? Our Email Marketing for Recruitment virtual course will teach you how to create high-performing campaigns, re-engage cold leads and turn your talent community into your top source of hires.
