I’ve put together the following to help in-house recruiters who are in the early stages of their careers to deal more effectively with hiring managers. The data comes from my own experience as an in-house recruiter for over 3 years.
When working in-house, the first person you will speak to regarding recruitment needs will be your hiring manager (hopefully you have one). I did not have one at the beginning since the company was a young start-up. Any team was able to request to hire new members and all of them were involved in the hiring process. While this way of recruiting has some advantages, it does not scale when a company grows beyond a few hundred employees.
We implemented leadership and the role of a hiring manager was introduced to the recruitment process. I thought they would naturally be really knowledgeable when it comes to recruitment, employer brand, trends, market & industry data, skills assessment processes, etc. I trusted their requests were based on informed data, talent planning, and synchronized communication with other team members.
I worked on unrealistic assignments that were really hard. After some time I realized it was not working. I was wasting my & everyone’s time. For different reasons, we could never fill that role.
I sat down and analyzed multiple occasions where this happened, with different roles, hiring managers, and teams. After analysis, feedback & reiteration, I designed a strategy to be applied during my first meetings with the hiring managers. Below is what helped me become a Talent Advisor and influence hiring plans.
- Question the why of that role: make sure there is a real need to hire someone externally (what goals this person will work on and how).
- Do your homework: study the role you will be working on & the industry (gather & bring market data; talent pool, competitors, salary brackets, locations, etc.).
- Be confident: as a Talent Acquisition Partner, you have information & knowledge no one else has regarding recruitment (yes, it is true!). We search, speak & evaluate so many people daily that we get to learn a lot about employer brand, recruitment trends, industry news, salary data, benefits, and skills assessments. USE IT!
- Data-driven: as always numbers work! Try to bring data to the table. I never had high-level reporting tools but still, you can use basic resources to put together some numbers: time to hire, cost of hire, and quality of candidates (sourcing), among others.
In summary, become a knowledgeable Talent Advisor. Share the knowledge you have and help your team to hire better & faster.
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