4 Quick Hiring Fixes to Drive a 40% Boost in Business Outcomes
January 14, 2015
According to a recent report from Bersin by Deloitte, developing strong relationships between recruiters and hiring managers is by far the top driver of talent acquisition performance. This driver is 4x — I repeat — 4x more influential than 14 of the 16 performance drivers measured.
The problem, of course, is that — like sales and marketing — the relationship between hiring managers and recruiters can be a stormy one, and it’s by no means a guarantee that it will naturally develop into a productive, well-aligned partnership.
Case in point — a survey conducted by iCIMS indicated that “77% of hiring managers say that recruiters’ candidate screening is inadequate.” Meanwhile, “51% of recruiters say hiring managers should do a better job communicating what they are looking for a providing relatable examples.”
Sound familiar?
Unfortunately, faulty recruiter and hiring manager relationships are often the key culprit behind breakdowns in talent acquisition. With the ability to quickly and effectively hire top talent more critical than ever, those are breakdowns your company can’t afford. In contrast, high impact talent acquisition teams can improve business outcomes by 40% and talent acquisition performance outcomes by 160%. Who doesn’t want to boost their business by 40%? That’s plenty of motivation for getting recruiters and hiring managers working together more effectively, and the good news is there are several simple things you can do to make that happen.
4 Quick Fixes to Improve Recruiter/Hiring Manager Communication
How can you avoid miscommunication and improve your recruiting? It all starts with getting hiring managers and recruiters on the same page, gaining trust in each other, and developing stronger, more productive relationships.
Here are four simple steps outlined in the iCIMS report that can help make that happen:
1) Meet to discuss job requirements
You simply cannot recruit effectively or efficiently without ensuring that recruiters and hiring managers meet to discuss the position, requirements, and expectations for the role before kicking off the search.
2) Prepare screening questions and review them together
Hiring managers know the roles that you are hiring for better than anyone else. Recruiters should leverage the hiring manager’s expertise to come up with screening questions based on the skills and requirements needed for the position. This will save time in the long-run, because candidates who are passed forward in the hiring process will have been screened on specific questions supplied directly by the hiring manager.
3) Collaborate on ways to find the best candidates
Recruiters and hiring managers should put their heads together during the initial kick-off meeting to brainstorm ideas for where to find the best candidates, what keywords should appear in profiles/resumes, and what companies to target (or to stay away from) during the search. They should repeat the process as necessary during subsequent follow-up meetings while reviewing the search progress.
Recruiters and hiring managers should also review profiles at the beginning of the search, so they can make sure they’re on the same page in terms of what a good candidate actually looks like. Once there are candidates moving through the process, hiring managers need to focus on providing detailed feedback to help recruiters continuously tweak and adjust the search, if needed.
4) Meet weekly for status reports
Searches live and die by the ability of the recruiter and hiring manager to maintain a strong and clear communication channel. It is vital that both the hiring manager and recruiter are up-to-date regarding the status of the search and each candidate in the hiring process. Short weekly update meetings allow for this and significantly decrease the probability of bottlenecks in the process.
Build a Lean, Mean Hiring Machine
Photo by: Ted Eytan