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Many organizations are faced with the problem of how to create a pool of talent from which to 1) ___ (to choose a small number of things, or to choose by making careful decisions) candidates. Jobs requiring specialist skills and knowledge can often take several months and considerable costs to fill, yet often 2) ___ (acceptable or right for someone or something) candidates have slipped through the organizations net because there wasn’t a vacancy at that particular time.
Creating ‘talent pools’ or databases of good 3) ___ (person who formally requests something, especially a job) is one way organizations have tried to keep potential 4) ___ (a person who is competing to get a job or elected position) interested but in many cases this has been no more than keeping CVs on file which are never referred to or seen again. Nestlé, the large 5) ___ (relating to the whole world) food and beverage manufacturer, has taken a more radical approach to managing talent by creating ‘talent puddles’. Whilst these are similar to talent pools, Nestlé’s approach has focused on creating a talent bank in specific areas of the business where there is a shortage of 6) ___ (having the abilities needed to do an activity or job well) applicants. Talent puddles focus on ‘talent gaps’ – specific jobs and difficult-to fill roles – by creating a small puddle of talent that can be readily brought into the business, thus reducing the costs and speeding up the recruitment process.
The initiative began with the 7) ___ (an amount of something that is available for use) chain function which now contains 120 shortlisted candidates and has placed eight people but has since been extended to other 8) ___ (a particular part of a place, piece of land, or country) of the business. This approach to resourcing has also changed the recruiters’ role. A significant portion of their time is now spent calling people and sifting through CVs from the talent puddle. When people apply, recruiters look at the quality of the applications and assess what level/grade they are operating at, ranking and recording them accordingly.
Candidates are met and interviewed by the 9) ___ (the process of finding people to work for a company or become a new member of an organization) team and line

managers before being placed in the talent puddle. One could argue that in effect the organization has created its own internal recruitment agency and there is no doubt that this approach has significantly reduced the company’s reliance on recruitment agencies over the past five years. However, just like recruitment agencies, one could also question how you keep 120 highly skilled 10) ___ (possible when the necessary conditions exist) candidates interested if you don’t have an actual vacancy.