7 Effective Strategies to Make Your Hiring Manager Your Ally
Despite popular belief, hiring for a business is not easy, whether it’s a startup or an established industry leader. One of the most challenging tasks on your talent acquisition agenda when trying to scale your enterprise is conducting an effective interview process and filling out different job openings at your company.
As a recruiting professional, you must help your hiring team members add value; otherwise, your potential candidates will not think of your company as a valuable organization. And to ensure that everybody does their job in the best way possible, you must make allies with your hiring manager.
Before getting right on to the effective strategies , it is vital to learn the differences between the roles of recruiters and hiring managers.
What Does a Hiring Manager Do?
In most cases, hiring managers are the deciding authorities. They look at the candidates brought to them by the recruiter.
Hiring managers work closely with recruiters to design the criteria for hiring candidates. The hiring managers then interview candidates from a pool of people. After that, they select the most suitable employee; all the while, it is essential to keep hiring manager expectations realistic.
Hiring managers have the last say when hiring candidates and are enabled by the recruiter. They do not hire candidates for their full-time job but are often in managerial or leading positions. These individuals are the deciding authority as they are usually hiring for their teams and know precisely what they need in a candidate for a specific role.
What Does a Recruiter Do?
A recruiter assists the hiring manager in finding the best possible candidate for a specific position or job role. The recruiters under these managers usually do the groundwork to find qualified individuals to fill out a position. These recruiters begin by helping the hiring managers draft criteria for a job description to find candidates against the approved standard.
Recruiters develop a recruitment strategy and then use different platforms, such as LinkedIn, to post job descriptions and attract the right demographic of eligible candidates . With the applications pooling in, a recruiter sifts and sorts through the applicants to filter the best possible matches to the hiring manager and weeding out the rest.
If you are a recruiter, you understand how time-consuming and difficult it can be to sift and sort through hundreds of candidates to find the best-suited candidates to present to your hiring manager. All your efforts can go down the drain if you have a strained relationship with your hiring manager.76% of recruiters see attracting talent as the biggest challenge.
Since your hiring manager’s decision on whether or not to employ a candidate is frequently the final verdict, you need to ensure that you and they are on the same team.
How to Make Your Hiring Manager an Ally?
For a recruiter to perform their job in the best way possible, the allegiance and support of the hiring manager are not just important but necessary. This leads many recruiters to wonder what strategies they can use to align with their hiring managers.
Let’s take a look at the strategies to transform your career path.
1. First Impressions Matter
Starting on the wrong foot is never good. If you want a good relationship with your hiring manager, you need to make sure that you make a good impression on them the first time you meet.
Set up a meeting with your hiring manager and ensure that you are on the same page right off the bat.
The meeting should be productive, and to ensure that, you must list down the meeting minutes. Taking the meeting minutes will help you recollect all the criteria your hiring manager has established and all the other relevant information you can use to develop your recruitment strategy.
The opinion of your hiring manager should be of the utmost importance to you. Also, it would be best if you asked for their expectations and any other directions they would like to give for your recruitment strategy.
2. Collaboration Is Crucial
Recruiters do not work under the supervision of hiring managers. Instead, both of you work in collaboration. This is why it is crucial not only for you to collaborate but also for the hiring manager to collaborate and be on the same page. On average, every job offer typically collects250 resumes which can be difficult for you as a recruiter to handle alone.
When you meet with the hiring manager, lay down some ground rules or divide responsibilities to clear roles for both parties.
More importantly, you must collaborate with the hiring manager and decide on a timeline. With a deadline approaching, both of you will try to complete work that has the highest priority. Since this is a professional relationship, there is no harm in being formal and ensuring accountability on both sides. This will help run things as smoothly as possible.
It is also a brilliant idea to use different tools and software to help you collaborate with your hiring manager. You can keep a shared document or an email ID to have complete transparency in the hiring process. This can aid collaboration and keep you and the hiring manager on the same page.
Hiring the right candidate is one of the most critical functions in a company, and hiring the right talent is one of the most important aspects of growing a business.Collaborate to achieve the best results.
3. Communication Is the Way to Go
You and your hiring manager cannot work together if you do not communicate. A lack of communication will hinder the hiring process and strain your relationship, and you don’t want that.
If you feel that your hiring manager is not too thrilled with the idea of communication, there is no harm in being a proactive communicator. However, this does not mean that you continuously pester them for every little thing. Instead, you should keep them in the loop about everything you do.
You do not need to put in a lot of effort. This is because a simple note, email, or even a memo can do. Other than that, you can plan regular meetings and be very vocal about everything so that nothing gets lost due to lack of communication.
4. Set Realistic Expectations
Keep hiring manager expectations realistic; this is also one of the essential strategies recruiters must practice when streamlining the recruitment process. Your hiring manager may have unrealistic expectations of candidates or even you as a recruiter.
They might expect you to present job seekers that check all the boxes and offer more than they expect. However, no matter what experience you have, doing that is not easy. It would be best if you were communicative and expressive with your hiring manager. You should help them understand that they might not meet all their expectations, but they shouldn’t disregard potentially suitable candidates.
You can ask them to list transferable skills and qualifications that the candidate must have and the other requirements they would prefer for the candidate to have. This way, you will have realistic expectations, and your hiring manager will also be able to see the logic in your selection criteria. 73% of hiring managers expect to increase freelance hires, and as a recruiter, you should cater to these requirements.
5. A Little Trust can go a Long Way
Trust strengthens a relationship. If you trust your hiring manager with your vulnerabilities, they will too. To establish a relationship of trust, you must tell your hiring manager everything they should know. For instance, if you have over-committed and cannot come through, you must inform your hiring manager.
A little bit of honesty from your end can help your hiring manager see your side of the picture, and they will know that you are completely transparent with them.
Hiding things from your hiring manager is never a good idea as that disrupts the hiring process and erodes your hiring manager’s trust in you.
6. Extend an Olive Branch
When working with a hiring manager, you have the same goals. You mustn’t hesitate to extend an olive branch and help them wherever they need help.
If you have resources to help your hiring manager, you mustn’t keep them with you. Helping is always a positive action, and when helping your hiring manager, you can expect them to think highly of you.
This will improve your relationship significantly.
7. Consistency Can Help Relationships Grow
A good relationship works like an engine. Once you work with your hiring manager on a recruitment strategy, you will learn how they want things and what works for you to produce the best results.
Recruiters should maintain consistency so that there is a pattern in doing things. Whenever you need to hire new employees, use your experience and develop a consistent plan of action that can help you achieve successful outcomes each time.
Build a Relationship With Your Hiring manager Today
“The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.” – Steve Jobs
To put Steve Job’s quote to practice, recruiters and hiring managers must work hand in hand and have a great relationship to recruit the best possible candidates! These practical strategies can pave the way for a solid and meaningful relationship.
If you are still struggling to build a relationship with your hiring managers, Recruiter.com can help! We are HR professionals that can help you find the best candidates, and we’re experts in building relationships.
To learn more about hiring best practices and the strategies needed to scale your recruitment process quickly, contact us today !
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