Automation and Candidate Experience have been the hottest topics in the recruitment industry lately. The message is simple – a good experience of the Candidates will increase the number of them. Automating recruitment processes will make the process run faster. It is true. But it is not enough.
Candidate Experience: why doesn’t it improve your recruiting results?
Imagine you are recruiting a Candidate for a job. You examine his motivations, needs, you are an expert in your field and a partner in the entire process. You provide information at every stage, provide feedback, negotiate contract terms. You consult and advise on the labor market and how to prepare for a job interview. You are confident and you feel confident. You are the expert. Your relationship with the Candidate allows you to build trust, honesty and increases the chances of their employment. You can say about yourself that you care about the Candidate Experience at the highest possible level.
And suddenly … Your Hiring Manager does not contact the Candidate, provides partial feedback, changes the offer or worse – expectations regarding the Candidate Profile. You are left alone with the pipeline of great people you led in the process and knowing that you cannot offer them anything else. At this point, not only your work has been wasted. Your nurtured Candidate Experience has also suffered.
Where it all starts and ends
Some time ago, I had the opportunity to conduct a webinar in which I shared five ways to build a relationship with Hiring Manager. I was able to show a certain attitude and competences that we promote and develop in Talent Place. After the webinar, I received a lot of news about how important this topic is in our industry. Lots of people contacted us, saying how much we still have to do in this area to make this cooperation partner-like and effective – starting with awareness and ending with education.
It was then that the question came to my mind: Why do we talk so much about Candidate Experience , about automation, and much less about what to do to build positive experiences with Hiring Managers? This is where it all begins and it all ends. We will not achieve high quality or efficiency in recruitment processes – even with the help of process automation or Candidate Experience, if we do not simultaneously ensure partnership cooperation with Hiring Managers.
Hiring Manager Experience: how to build it?
What if your way of acting and thinking about Candidate Experience were transferred to your relationship with the Hiring Manager? It’s true – for a relationship to be a partnership, we need the involvement of two parties, but if we want to change something, we have to start with ourselves.
Working with recruiters, I have often observed how different their way of working with the Candidate and the Hiring Manager was different. They adopted a confident, expert attitude towards the Candidate, advised or negotiated terms. In relation to the Hiring Managers, their self-confidence decreased, they communicated their expectations worse, put themselves in a lower position, timidly offered solutions, and did not ask the right questions. All this meant that their recruitment processes could not be effective, despite the high-quality Candidate Experience or the automation of some processes.
Learn to listen and ask the right questions
Exactly as you interview a Candidate, you should prepare for the interview with the Hiring Manager. Listening and asking the right questions is especially important in the early stages of recruiting. It is the key to getting to know your needs and building a relationship with Hiring Manager. I would venture to say that this is the most important part of the process that determines all the other factors.
Despite this fact, it often happens that this stage is not treated as a key one and it often comes down to learning the role and starting activities. Such conduct closes the chance to build winning teams and, at the same time, a winning company.
Often at this stage, recruiters who want to build their position as an expert talk a lot about their experience or the market situation and immediately propose ready-made solutions. Their attention is focused on answering the questions “What can I do in this situation” or “How can I demonstrate my knowledge”. Not on the team’s situation or the business context of this recruitment.
In addition to getting to know a person’s profile, you should ask insightful questions about the team, culture and development plans of that person and find out why this role is crucial for the organization. If you do, you will demonstrate your intention to understand your needs and increase trust from the start. Remember to keep the questions open, complex and specific. It is good practice to learn during the interview not only the needs related to the employment itself, but also the previous experience of the Hiring Manager in recruitment processes. If you know what recruitment competencies your Hiring Manager has, you will know how and to what extent you can help him.
Be a partner, not just a “service provider”.
Recruiting is not only about getting an assignment and delivering it. Many recruiters do not understand this and put themselves in the role of a “service provider” rather than a cooperation partner. If you want to partner with a Hiring Manager, first of all, start by convincing yourself that you are. This subtle but key difference in the recruiter’s attitude affects the quality of the next stages of recruitment. Most often, this belief is the first thing that determines what actions you take, e.g. in cooperation with the Hiring Manager. If you do not feel that you can be a partner, you will be much less likely to take the initiative to build this partnership relationship.
Awareness of your role in the process and what a healthy relationship should look like will allow you to create effective recruitment processes.
Such behavior also requires high interpersonal skills, such as: sociability, assertiveness, the ability to provide feedback and constantly expand one’s expert knowledge. It is also worth remembering about clear and precise communication of your own needs and principles of cooperation. This is an element often overlooked by recruiters who do not feel like cooperation partners and only respect the expectations of the other party, ignoring their own. If you can be a partner in the process for the Candidate – then you can confidently transfer this attitude to the relationship with the Hiring Manager.
Have opinions and give recommendations
Not only can it be helpful in building a partnership in cooperation having and expanding expert knowledge, but also the ability to transfer it in such a way that it is useful and applied by the Hiring Manager. The mere possession of knowledge without introducing it into cooperation with the Hiring Manager is not sufficient and constitutes a passive form of cooperation.
For example: a recruiter knows what a good recruiting process should look like, but does not take the initiative that his Hiring Manager has the same understanding and knowledge of the subject. It takes into account elements that have not been used before, such as providing reliable feedback to Candidates. In this aspect, the role of a recruiter is also to educate and improve the quality of processes that will not be better if we do not involve both parties in them.
A recruiter who has his own opinion, shares effective recommendations and is able to influence their use by Hiring Managers, is a recruiter who understands the recruitment process from a strategic level for the organization. Thus, he gains partnership and respect in business. How does this affect the effectiveness of recruitment processes? Huge! Having understanding and partnership on the part of Hiring Managers, we will reach the right Candidates faster, build a better Candidate Experience, better match them to the organization and reduce team turnover.
Be concise and work with the data
Most Hiring Managers are people who have a very tight schedule. And they must also include the recruitment process in it. You will be of great help to Hiring Manager in this process if your communication is concise and specific and your recommendations are based on facts and data. Nothing irritates busy Hiring Managers more than long e-mails, guessing what’s going on and no quick fixes.
With this knowledge, you should arrange processes in such a way as to facilitate cooperation with you as much as possible. For example – if you recommend Candidates, your recommendation should be structured and based on key information that allows you to evaluate the Candidate in terms of promotion to the next stage. If you want to introduce a change or improvement in the process, show how it will affect the recruitment process and refer to specific examples – for example competitors.
If you want to negotiate the candidate’s remuneration, refer to the data from the report, market statistics or the number of interviews from which you obtained the information. It works much more effectively and professionally than saying “this is the market”. This way of working will increase not only the manager’s comfort in working with you. It will also affect the effectiveness of the entire recruitment process.
Is it worth building a Hiring Manager Experience in recruitment processes? Definitely yes. If we educate consciously on this topic and introduce solutions in our organizations – we will certainly increase the efficiency of recruitment processes, and automation and Candidate Experience will support us more, and we will be able to really use their potential.
