Become a Recruiting Pro by Understanding Hiring Managers Better

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Hiring managers and recruiters come from two very different worlds. The former runs a team and looks for candidates when the necessity arises. The latter’s entire day revolves around looking for great candidates and turning them into star employees. Yet they share one common goal: Finding perfect candidates.

On the one hand, the recruiter is tasked with ensuring candidates are engaged and have a good experience throughout the recruitment process. Candidate experience management has become a necessity in today’s world. Word of mouth on digital media can make or break businesses and their recruitment efforts.

On the other hand, a recruiter works with multiple hiring managers and can often have trouble navigating their varied expectations. Here are some ideas to help recruiters better understand their hiring managers and, in the process, give them what they need: the best candidates on the market.

Empathize

All understanding begins with empathy. Coming from two different worlds, hiring managers and recruiters can have very different problems, challenges, pains, emotions, and accomplishments. It’s important that you put yourself in your hiring manager’s shoes to understand how your work impacts their goals.

  1. Why are they pressing for quality?
  2. Is their expected time to fill realistic?
  3. What drives their motivation?
  4. How willing are they to be involved in the hiring process?

Stick to Reality

Hiring managers can have unrealistic expectations for quality of hire, time to hire, source, etc. Hiring managers are often farther away from the candidate market than you are, so it becomes your job to keep them grounded in reality by communicating facts. For example, you may need to share with them common times to fill for other teams, the experiences of other companies, industry standards, etc.

To show hiring managers the work that goes into hiring a candidate, give them access to your recruitment reports and what happens in the process. Then, invite them to give you feedback. This brings more transparency and trust to the relationship.

  1. Communicate your constraints.
  2. Understand their deal breakers.
  3. Present external research.
  4. Be open to feedback.

Introduce Hiring Managers to Better Ways of Doing Things

Just because your hiring managers are willing to be involved in the hiring process, that doesn’t mean they’re the best at it. They are going to need help. Interview scorecards and collaborative feedback forms from software like Freshteam help greatly in bringing structure to your interactions with hiring managers.

  1. Show them how they can leverage their networks.
  2. Help them make better interview plans.
  3. Confront any bias you spot during the interview process.
  4. Pass any wisdom you gain from one hiring manager to another.
  5. Teach them how to sell a job.
  6. Show them how they can make their candidates comfortable.

Show Appreciation

Nobody wants to do a thankless job. Nobody. You can get hiring managers involved, expose them to reality, and motivate them to be engaged. Still, the only thing that will sustain their involvement is knowing that their efforts are seen, heard, and appreciated. There are a million ways to do that. Here are a few:

  1. Send out an email when you achieve something together.
  2. Write them an attractive LinkedIn recommendation.
  3. Make hiring contributions a part of performance evaluations.
  4. Prioritize hiring managers that invest themselves in the process.
  5. Tell them what they do well so they can keep doing it.

10 Questions That Will Help You Truly Understand Your Hiring Manager’s Job Requisition

  1. What is the purpose of the role you are hiring for?
  2. Is this a new position, or are you looking for a replacement?
  3. What problems do you plan to solve by hiring a candidate for this role?
  4. What will be the key performance indicators for this role?
  5. What do you expect from your new hire in the first 60 days?
  6. When will you or your team be available for interviews?
  7. How do you plan to interview the candidates? Will there be any assignments or presentations involved?
  8. What’s the biggest problem for your team right now, and are any other teams impacted by it?
  9. How will the new hire impact your biggest problem?
  10. Will the new hire have any training to start with?

We hope this piece keeps your thoughtfulness on and leads to brighter days at work.

Freshteam by Freshworks is smart HR software that enables recruiters to remotely attract, hire, and onboard great talent while ensuring smooth interactions between recruiters and hiring managers. Freshteam helps hiring teams collaborate and make the best hiring decisions together, even when people are working out of their homes. If you are interested, you can check it out for free right here.

This article by Freshteam is built on the original article  that first appeared on the Freshteam blog.

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By Freshteam