11 Essential Steps To Build a Talent Pipeline in 2025

People are critical to your organization’s success; the strategies you choose to identify and engage qualified workers can be the difference between exponential growth and stagnation. Given today’s competitive hiring market and evolving in-demand skills, solely focusing your recruitment efforts on roles that are currently open no longer works.

Forward-thinking companies prioritize looking beyond existing open roles and skills gaps to build talent pipelines that address future hiring needs. A proactive talent pipeline can help organizations more effectively adapt to business, market, and in-demand skills shifts. 

If your team has an immediate need to fill critical skills gaps, grow your talent pool, or build a talent pipeline, consider partnering with an independent talent acquisition and recruiting specialist on Upwork. Through Project Catalog™, access fixed-priced projects and one-on-one consultations that align with your specific talent pipeline needs and get started right away. Search available talent acquisition and recruiting projects now.

What is a talent pipeline? 

Your talent pipeline is your pool of potential candidates who are qualified to fill relevant positions when the right opportunity arises. With the right talent-pipeline strategy in place, your organization can avoid starting the recruitment process from scratch each time you need to fill a new role or address a skills gap.

A comprehensive talent pipeline often includes a mix of both existing team members who may be promoted or transitioned to take on new roles, as well as external candidates with the right skills and experience to meet evolving business needs. 

Benefits of building a talent pipeline include:

• Reduced time-to-hire and hiring costs
• Stronger candidate engagement and relationship-building
• Better quality of hires
• Enhanced succession planning and strategic workforce planning
• Team member engagement and retention
• Improved business agility
• A competitive advantage over businesses without a talent pipeline 

Upwork can help simplify the process of building your talent pipeline. Through Talent Marketplace™, engage independent professionals for your talent pipeline with more than 10,000 skills across specialties, including sales and marketing, artificial intelligence, design, accounting, and more. Additionally, with Business Plus you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork and shortlist top freelancers based on your specific needs. 

Build a talent pipeline in 11 steps

While building a long-term talent pipeline may seem daunting, following a list of proactive steps can help you get started. 

Steps include:

1. Define your talent needs
2. Set and track measurable goals
3. Develop an appealing employer brand
4. Engage with potential talent
5. Include a mix of internal and external candidates 
6. Implement a referral program
7. Create internship and trainee programs
8. Support a memorable candidate experience
9. Maintain consistent communication
10. Use a candidate relationship management system
11. Evaluate and update your strategy

1. Define your talent needs

Understanding your overall talent needs can help ensure you build a talent pipeline with workers who can support your strategic business goals. 

As in-demand skills continue to evolve, defining both your short- and long-term talent needs is essential to adapting to shifting business priorities. This includes expanding your talent pool beyond full-time, in-house workers to include freelance talent and address critical skills gaps.

According to Upwork’s 2025 In-Demand Skills report, 29% of C-suite executives surveyed indicated that freelancers are highly essential to their business operations and that they couldn’t get by without all of their freelancers. Additionally, 51% said conducting their business would be difficult without freelancer support.

As you define your talent needs, consider the following questions: 

• What are the short- and long-term business objectives?
• Which roles or soft and hard skills are needed to achieve key business outcomes?
• How may your talent needs evolve as your organization grows, adds new offerings, or incorporates new technology? 
• What do the job market and competition look like for positions you need to fill?  
• Where do workers with the skills you need look for open roles? 
• Are remote workers or freelance professionals a fit for certain roles? 
• Do you have effective succession planning in place to backfill roles when team members leave or transition internally? 
• Does your team conduct regular talent reviews to measure workers’ skills and potential, as well as skills gaps across the organization?
• How does the business currently track or measure the talent pipeline? 
• What’s currently working with your recruiting, talent acquisition, and talent pipelining strategy and what can be improved?

2. Set and track measurable goals

In addition to defining your needs, setting and tracking goals can help drive accountability and ensure your team is managing the talent pipeline strategy effectively. As you set goals, consider using the SMART framework—a framework with goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. 

Examples of SMART goals for your talent pipelining strategy may include:

• Identify and test three new nurturing touchpoints—such as a newsletter or open job alert—to build and strengthen passive candidate relationships over the next six months 
• Increase employee referrals by 25% in the next quarter by developing a formal referral program with relevant incentives 
• Create succession plans for all critical positions by the end of the year, with at least two potential successors identified for each role 
• Implement a candidate relationship management solution to decrease time to hire by at least one week in the next 90 days 

3. Develop an appealing employer brand

Your employer brand is the perception prospective candidates and other individuals outside your organization have about what working with your team is like. An appealing employer brand can help you attract motivated workers for your open positions and build a pipeline of passive candidates eager to join your team when the right opportunity is available. 

Despite the importance of a strong employer brand, HR.com and HR Research Institute’s State of Employer Branding 2025 research found that only 28% of HR professionals surveyed reported having a comprehensive and consistently implemented employer branding strategy. Additionally, 40% of respondents lack a formal employer branding strategy. 

Here are some best practices to develop an engaging employer brand:

• Clearly define your organization’s mission, vision, and core values and promote this information on your careers page and across recruitment materials 
• Write a concise employee value proposition (EVP), which outlines what your organization has to offer workers
• Outline potential career paths on your company website 
• Highlight team member success stories and testimonials on your careers page and social media channels
• Share other engaging content on your social media channels, such as office tour videos, Q&As with members of your leadership team, details about your company culture, and recaps of team events
• Encourage existing workers to leave reviews on Glassdoor and similar employee review sites
• Apply for local and industry-specific best place to work awards

4. Engage with potential talent

An essential step in building an effective talent pipeline is identifying, reaching, and engaging with potential talent. 

The following tips can help you reach and engage with both passive and active talent as you grow your talent pipeline: 

• Leverage talent sourcing tools to identify and send personalized communication to qualified talent
• Promote your open positions and employer brand on social media networks including LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
• Consider cold calling potential candidates whose skills and experience match your needs
• Interact with prospective candidates on LinkedIn or other professional networks
• Host virtual or in-person career fairs, networking events, or office tours
• Create a talent community for interested job seekers and add an option to join the community on your careers page if a role isn’t immediately available
• Develop alumni groups for former team members on LinkedIn or another platform and encourage individuals to return if the right opportunity is available
• Search for and engage qualified talent on a work marketplace like Upwork

5. Include a mix of internal and external candidates 

While many talent pipelining efforts focus on engaging external candidates, identifying opportunities for existing team members to develop skills and take on new roles is equally important—if not more so.

Including current workers in your talent pipeline strategy can help you quickly fill skills gaps and drive engagement and retention. According to a survey of 1,554 candidates conducted by iHire, 15% of respondents who quit their jobs in 2024 did so due to a lack of advancement opportunities. 

Here are some ways to develop and advance internal candidates as you build a talent pipeline:

• Creating a skills inventory to understand the skills on your existing team and identify opportunities for development
• Developing a succession planning strategy that includes a list of potential internal candidates for each critical role
• Sharing new open positions with existing team members before publicly promoting job posts
• Offering talent development opportunities and resources, such as access to online learning platforms, talent assessments, mentorship programs, knowledge-sharing sessions, and professional development events
• Regularly meeting with existing team members to discuss their career goals

6. Implement a referral program

While sourcing tools and networking can help you identify and attract workers for your talent pipeline, one of your best sources of talent may be referrals from your existing team members. Referrals are often among the most qualified candidates because current individuals on your team want to work with others who will help drive positive business outcomes.

Other benefits of referrals include cost savings compared to traditional job boards and reduced hiring time, as referred individuals can bypass initial candidate screening steps. 

Consider implementing a formal employee referral program to ensure the process is efficient and user-friendly for current team members. Steps you can take to create and launch a referral program include:

• Developing a simple process and channel for team members to submit referrals
• Communicating your referral program across the organization, such as on the company intranet, through email communications, and during team and company meetings 
• Including a field on job applications for candidates to indicate whether they were referred by an existing worker
• Defining standardized incentives, such as referral bonuses, gift cards, and other rewards
• Including additional incentives for leadership or hard-to-fill positions 
• Offering non-monetary recognition, including shoutouts in team meetings and thank-you notes
• Leveraging a referral software solution to centralize referral details and track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to the success of your program 

7. Create internship and trainee programs

While building a talent pipeline for leadership roles and other more senior-level positions is important, engaging early career professionals can help your team develop eager, motivated workers to grow into future leaders at your organization. Many companies offer internship, apprenticeship, or trainee opportunities to college students, recent graduates, and other individuals in the early stages of their career journey or in the process of a career transition. 

Internships are short-term, professional learning experiences, often completed during a semester or over the summer. During this time, individuals gain real-world work experience and build professional connections in exchange for resume experience or course credit. Some companies also offer interns a stipend or hourly rate. 

Offering internships is mutually beneficial to both workers and organizations. These opportunities enable workers and employers to collaborate during a trial period and determine whether a long-term relationship may be the right fit. Depending on your specific budget and talent needs, you can transition high-performing interns into full-time, entry-level positions. 

Engaging interns for long-term roles can help save time and resources spent on hiring and decrease the learning curve, as interns will already have experience working with your organization. If your team doesn’t have immediate hiring needs, you can add interns’ contact information to your broader talent community or pipeline and consider them for future talent needs. 

8. Support a memorable candidate experience

The candidate experience can make or break the first impression prospective team members have about working for your organization. A memorable, positive candidate experience will excite top talent about joining your team, while a negative recruitment or hiring process may turn workers away.

CareerPlug surveyed individuals who applied to a job in the previous year. According to the results, 66% of respondents said that a positive experience impacted their decision to accept an offer from a current or recent employer. Additionally, 26% of respondents declined job offers in 2024 due to a poor experience. 

Some ways to support a memorable and engaging candidate experience include: 

• Creating a user-friendly job application to keep talent engaged and increase application completion rates 
• Including a step-by-step overview of the hiring process and expected timeline on your careers page and in job descriptions
• Offering flexible options for interview scheduling
• Training team members to conduct effective, engaging, and respectful interviews
• Streamlining the total number of interviews to be respectful of individuals’ time  
• Holding recruiters, hiring managers, and others involved in the interview process accountable for starting and ending interviews on time
• Reaching out to prospective workers with advanced notice if interviews or other recruitment process steps need to be rescheduled 
• Allowing time at the end of interviews for candidates to ask questions
• Updating candidates on potential next steps and timing following each step of the process
• Supporting an engaging experience for all talent—including closing the loop and sharing feedback with individuals who don’t receive an offer
• Asking candidates for feedback at the conclusion of the hiring process to drive improvements over time

9. Maintain consistent communication

An important part of supporting a memorable, engaging candidate experience is maintaining consistent communication. Some job seekers apply to open roles or complete several steps in the hiring process, only to wait weeks for follow-up communication—or never receive a response. In fact, the CareerPlug survey cited above found that 23% of individuals surveyed believe responsiveness is the most important factor in the hiring process.  

Maintaining consistent communication can help your organization support a positive experience for current candidates, drive engagement among individuals in your talent pipeline, and build a reputation as an employer of choice to attract qualified workers for your talent pipeline. 

Consider the following tips to drive consistent communication:

• Including a list of frequently asked questions and answers about the hiring process on your careers page
• Sending automated emails to candidates as soon as you receive applications highlighting next steps
• Administering automated talent assessments to quickly move forward with the hiring process
• Following an agile recruiting process, which breaks hiring stages into sprints and ensures the process moves forward efficiently 
• Drafting templated emails to follow up with candidates after each recruitment step
• Adding an AI-powered recruitment assistant or chatbot to your careers page to answer common candidate questions
• Following up with all candidates with respectful communication, even if they aren’t moving forward
• Distributing email newsletters and similar communications to individuals in your talent pipeline featuring company updates such as job openings, workplace awards, and team member success stories 
• Reaching out to members of your talent network or community when new opportunities that align with your skills become available 

By hiring freelancers on Upwork, you can streamline the process of communicating with candidates. Through Upwork Messages, you can send direct messages, conduct video and voice calls, quickly access project details, streamline meeting scheduling, and record videos or share screenshots—all in one message room for each connection on the platform.

10. Use a candidate relationship management system

Traditionally, many steps in the recruitment and hiring process were completed manually, which requires significant time and resources and can lead to candidate disengagement. This approach can also present challenges with building a talent pipeline, as hiring teams have to manually search through email or paper applications to identify quality candidates for current and future roles. 

In recent years, recruitment technology has advanced significantly and many solutions are available to streamline hiring. One solution is a candidate relationship management (CRM) system, which helps organizations streamline all stages of the hiring process, including identifying, attracting, engaging, nurturing, evaluating, and hiring candidates.

With a CRM system, critical information about prospective team members is centralized in a user-friendly database, enabling teams to improve recruitment effectiveness, nurture long-term relationships with candidates, drive candidate engagement, and build talent pipelines. 

A few examples of candidate relationship management systems include:

• Beamery. An AI-powered talent lifecycle platform, Beamery empowers organizations to attract, retain, develop, and transition talent. The platform includes capabilities to build talent pipelines of engaged candidates by attracting individuals across the company careers page, events, campus recruiting, and other channels. Organizations can then drive candidate engagement with personalized campaigns and messaging across email, WhatsApp, and text messaging.
• Fetcher. As a sourcing automation solution, Fetcher makes the candidate sourcing and outreach process more efficient for both recruiters and talent acquisition leaders. The solution offers email communication features that combine automation and personalization to drive candidate engagement. Integrated recruitment analytics also offer insight into talent pipeline data, such as candidate engagement, qualifications, and diversity metrics. 
• Gem. This talent engagement and candidate management software enables organizations to cultivate strong relationships and improve hiring. Gem helps talent acquisition teams improve talent sourcing and candidate outreach, along with providing insights to improve over time. The software solution also includes features to build talent communities and nurture relationships to more easily re-engage qualified individuals when the time is right.  

Keep in mind, while leveraging a CRM system can help drive hiring efficiencies and candidate engagement, building personal relationships with candidates and ensuring a member of your team makes final hiring decisions is critical. The right technology frees up time typically spent on manual, routine tasks so recruiting and talent acquisition teams can focus on forging connections with talent and making data-driven hiring decisions. 

11. Evaluate and update your strategy

Building a talent pipeline is an ongoing process and identifying areas for improvement over time can help you improve the outcomes of your strategy—especially as business needs continue to change. 

Here are some tactics to update and improve your talent pipeline strategy:

• Refreshing your job descriptions to engage more target candidates
• Testing and evaluating new candidate sourcing tools or channels
• Refining your hiring process to reduce overall time-to-hire
• Incorporating AI into your hiring process to drive efficiencies
• Streamlining candidate assessments and evaluations
• Increasing the number of touchpoints with passive candidates in your pipeline 
• Distributing surveys to candidates and existing team members to collect feedback on the candidate experience 

As you identify ways to improve your talent pipeline efforts, Uma™, Upwork’s Mindful AI can help you drive efficiencies throughout the hiring process. Job Post Generator creates AI-generated job posts in seconds—all you need to share is a sentence or two about what you’re looking for with your open job or project. And with candidate evaluations, Uma reviews proposals and shares a comparison of top candidates, showing how their skills and experience align with your job post.

Build a talent pipeline with Upwork

Taking a proactive approach to building a talent pipeline can help you identify and attract qualified individuals for immediate hiring needs and quickly fill future skills gaps—especially as business priorities and in-demand skills continue to evolve.  

For additional support building a talent pipeline, consider searching for qualified professionals on Talent Marketplace, accessing the top 1% of talent on Upwork through Business Plus, or engaging a skilled independent recruiting specialist on Upwork. Independent recruitment professionals have diverse backgrounds and experience and can share their expertise on how to effectively build a pipeline of talent with the skills you need to support strategic business objectives. 

Upwork’s end-to-end full-time hiring solution also offers the option to initiate contract-to-hire working relationships. This solution can help your team quickly fill skill gaps, access qualified professionals for a trial period, and decide whether to transition to a full-time engagement.

Upwork offers a range of solutions to support your talent pipeline goals. Get started—log in to your account or create an account today. 

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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyze and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.