How to Engage Hiring Managers During Hiring Process – Whiteboard [VIDEO]
In this video, pick up some tips on how to better engage hiring managers to effectively participate in your small- to medium-sized business hiring process. Learn how technology can help automate the hiring process and facilitate manager participation, especially when an organization is decentralized.
Video Transcript:
Hi, welcome to another edition of ExactHire Whiteboard Video Chat. I’m Jeff Hallam and today we’re going to talk about how can I engage hiring managers in my recruiting and hiring process.
This comes up a lot, and as you can imagine it’s something that most everyone is trying to get to, but it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to get buy-in from folks who don’t hire for a living. When they have positions open they want them filled, they want good people in them, and a lot of times they’re trying to get through that as quickly as they can as opposed to maybe following your process that you’ve laid out as an HR professional or as a recruiter.
So these four steps are really designed, or these tips I should say, are really designed just to give you some ideas on how you can better engage these folks and hopefully get both what you want, and they want, out of this cycle.
So the first piece is, maybe trying to look at it through their eyes. And anytime you can walk a mile in somebody else’s shoes I think it can certainly benefit the experience. And so you have to think of it from their standpoint, this can often times be seen as a bother. Why do I want to do this? What’s in it for me? I don’t want to take the time. I don’t want to learn another system. And all those things are valid when they are busy…as we all are. So one of the things you can do is as you see it from that perspective, really think hard about what is in it for them. Think about how their needs and what they’re trying to get done can align with what you’re trying to get done. And when you can do that, that’s definitely a great first step. And that kind of transitions over here to point two in terms of making it easy.
By making it easy, what we mean is, if you can really see it through their eyes, it will help you understand what would in fact make this easier for them. So things like not requiring them to quote/unquote learn another system. Not requiring them to put in pages and pages of notes. So the more structure and input and things of that nature you can give them the better. And likewise, if you can create an environment from their perspective, where they can actually very quickly give you their feedback, and it’s always in a consistent format, all the better. And that kind of bleeds over into point three here.
If you can create a template, a form, a document…whatever it might be that can collect this feedback, that’s almost always going to universally go over a little bit better than just the free-form notes. Again, it will take a little getting used to up front for folks, but once they get that, they’re going to understand that from their perspective, it’s quick…they’re putting in their feedback, they can see other peoples’ feedback. It’s easy, they can access it from anywhere, it’s easy to get to, it’s constant. And, then as that starts becoming a little bit more baked in, a little more consistent, then you get to a point very quickly where you can start making sure that there is follow through.
You can hold these folks accountable and let them know that you are going to be checking into this. And when they’re not doing it, this is a good opportunity for you to go back and hold them accountable, and help them understand and reinforce these other points of why it is important, why it’s just as good for them as it is for the organization. And, as you start doing these things, particularly if they’re in the right technological platform, you should really be able to bring a lot of automation to this, get that feedback very consistently, have it always in a consistent format…and as you go through that process, if you’re like a lot of other folks we work with on a regular basis, you should actually see your hiring results not only speed up, but just as importantly the results should improve.
