Hi Amit,

Glad it helps. Pools do have an expiry date, and average default is six months. However, it can be “valid” for however long the hiring manager wants to keep it valid. Usually, at the end of six months, HR will ask if they should extend it or not. Rarely would they go past 18 months / 24 months. Usually by then, anyone on the list would have other options.

As for ranking, there is no ranking…everyone is equally qualified. Hence the term “pool”.

You can message the director of the group and reiterate your continued interest, but honestly, they know you’re in the pool. If there are other areas you are interested in, and are close to the original area, you can email them and say “Interested, etc and btw, I’m in an existing pool.” In short, you can advertise yourself around, not the Director.

As for your last question, in theory yes for other positions, absolutely, but depends totally on how broadly that pool was targeted. When they start the process, they have to say who it will be open to, but they almost always say “May be used to staff other positions” or something similar. In my dept, our org structure is division / directorate / branch / dept. Generally we can share our pools easily within the branch; if we want to share with the rest of the dept, much harder. Particularly if it said anywhere in the pool “knowledge of area x” where the X was say a sector. If so, than another sector would want you to have THEIR expertise, and it doesn’t match. However, even if they don’t open it to other areas, if you are in a pool, someone can basically appoint you based on you qualifying in *some* pool somewhere. That used to be rare but much more common now. So suppose you make PE 3 at dept 1 and the pool looks like mostly that dept. Then you’re talking to someone at another dept and they want to hire you. They can use the rationale that you’re deemed qualified in that other pool, that is close enough to their needs, to appoint you without competition to their PE3 position.

So making a pool is huge, and you should market that in any communication you have in future. However, I would refrain from saying “I’m in a pool, hire me” type comms (some people do that). You still have to say “I’m qualified, here are my qualifications, etc” to get them interested; being in a pool is helpful/great *if* they want to hire you, but doesn’t sell you by itself. More like a two step message — “Im amazing, here are my details” and “Now that you love me, I’m also in a pool i.e. easy to hire”.

Does that help?

Paul