Talent pipelines consist of potential employees who are interested in working at a given employer, but are not ready to apply.
Talent communities, typically part of an employer's career site are reached directly from various sources including social media, search engine result pages (SERPS), and job boards that forward potential candidates to employers' career sites to apply for jobs.
She'll now get updates from the company that are relevant to her - interview tips, career paths of similar professionals, information on events that Acme is holding, etc.
She has an increased chance of applying to this company because of the relationship she's built by consuming this content since joining the talent community.
The talent community gives HR teams access to applicants that have researched their company and are thinking long term about their careers, which may infer a higher quality candidate.
Moreover, having a warm pipeline of talent means that corporate recruiters don't have to spend time reaching out cold through various resume databases, networking sites like LinkedIn or hoping the right person will apply through a job posting.
However, while sales tools like Salesforce have been around for decades, CRMs for talent management are relatively new for corporate HR teams.
The idea of a Talent Pipeline is an abstract notion of having warm relationships with relevant groups of potential applicants.
First, the majority of companies never engage with their talent community members given the lack of marketing DNA within the HR function.
It becomes overwhelming for most companies to write relevant emails to each segment within their talent community on a regular (weekly or monthly) basis.
Last, companies do not proactively engage with the most relevant people who may be a good fit for an open role and are much more prone to take a passive strategy.