The business of recruitment equates to a 400 BILLION dollar industry. In hiring solutions alone, 2013 revenues were up 136% over the previous year and companies reported an average spend of $3300/hire, up 6% over the previous year according to Bersin data. It's safe to say that organizations pour a lot of time and resources into talent attraction and acquisition. But what do we do with that talent once we've attracted them?

We talk about "ready-made talent pools" we can tap into regularly, but forget that the best source for sticky candidates are the talent are the ones we've already engaged. A common problem is that Talent Acquisition suffers from a "out of sight, out of mind" syndrome: 69% of HR professionals report they don't re-engage with job candidates that weren't offered a role because they've moved on to the most current applicants. In fact, only 38% of HR professionals who responded to a 2014 Careerbuilder study reported regularly re-engaging candidates at least every six months; yet only 28% reported it was due to a lack of time to do so.

Candidate Communication is Critical

This is in sharp contrast to stated desires of candidates, 42% of whom have reported a desire to continue to receive email communication from prospective employers about upcoming new roles and happenings. Another great method to really build candidate advocacy and keep your talent pool engaged is to schedule intermittent times to send "check-in" emails for the "silver," "bronze," and "honorable mention" medalists on your recruiting list. Candidate who seemingly fit your org and role requirements, came close in the process but ultimately didn't get an offer this time will likely continue to be a good fit for similar future openings. Help them keep you top of mind and invested in the relationship they've built with your company throughout the first interview process by sending intermittent messages asking how their career's going every few months. This doesn't have to be in-depth and it actually can be automated; but it does three great things:

1) Just reaching out differentiates you from 62% of your future competition for that candidate, who won't even bother with them until they have an immediate need for them.

2) It can alert your recruiting and business teams to changes and developments in the marketplace; giving a distinct competitive advantage. When people are unhappy, they tend to talk - while positive news and social media updates may spread faster than negative ones; candidates are often quick to justify reasons for potentially wanting to make a change by giving up the goods on instability/bad business happenings in the workplace.

3) It builds a bank of "warm fuzzies" with your prospective candidate, increasing the positive nature of your relationship. This could lead to not only a strengthened potential of acquiring them for employment later down the road, but also other referrals for employment and depending on the type of company, an increased individual business relationship or consumer brand affiliation. People like to do business and refer companies that treat those associated with the employer brand well. Notice I didn't just say employees - a bad candidate experience is bad for bottom-line business. Nearly 20% of candidates are existing customers of the companies they apply for and 49% report having an existing relationship with companies they apply to. Taking the time to send a two or three sentence note can have big brand loyalty returns.

Multi-Channel Marketing

Finally, keep your talent pool fresh by thinking like a marketer: marketing pros know the best way to gain a customer is through a method known as multichannel marketing. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like: it's a way of leveraging emerging technology to provide customers with more than one way to complete a sales transaction (such as through a retail store, a web page, social media networks, or even through their smartphones). It's an extremely effective marketing strategy that will eventually become the norm, but for now offers a distinct advantage for businesses willing to put in the effort: customers engaged in multichannel marketing purchase about 30 percent more.

Here's some examples of multichannel marketing in action: Did you know JC Penney was the first department store to sell online? It was and now, they also display their catalog through Facebook, allowing fans to shop and make purchases without ever leaving Facebook's website. U.K. clothing retailer ASOS is another great example: not only can customers browse and buy, they can also comment on items and share their finds with friends. American Airlines not only allows customers to make reservations and even use their plane tickets via mobile, their app allows AAdvantage members to rack up miles by connecting them to partner hotels, transportation providers, and dining locations as well.

Now think about those multichannel marketing examples in the context of jobs and recruitment. We have the technology possible to create fairly seamless interaction between candidates and recruitment with job widgets and ATS search functionality on FB, LinkedIn and Mobile Apply; as well as to connect them with business leaders to learn more about what it's like to work for us via culture marketing video hangouts, promoted on those same social websites. And all of that is easy for your talent pool and social fans to share with their connections (and often easy to engage in comments/conversation via those same updates). This really just scratches the surface of multichannel marketing for recruitment and requires messaging & data coordination in addition to a well-defined touchpoint attribution system; but as the world becomes increasingly interconnected, this will ultimately become the norm for talent attraction rather than the exceptional competitive advantage it is today.