3 Reasons You Need To Collaborate With Your Hiring Manager

The fact that you need to collaborate with the hiring manager seems quite common sense, right? But, as a recruiter, have you ever thought about what really collaborating actually means? A close collaboration can make or break a good hiring process and although maybe common sense, a real close collaboration between recruiter and hiring manager is usually not too common.

So, recruiters, pay attention, here are 3 reasons why you need to collaborate very closely with your hiring managers:

To develop a real understanding of the job you are recruiting for

The large majority of recruiters think they have a very good understanding of the job for which they are hiring. However, the majority of hiring managers say the complete opposite: they consider recruiters to only have a low to moderate understanding of the job for which they recruit. Quite interesting no? This means that as a recruiter, you need to go above and beyond to develop a real understanding of the job. Not just understanding the job description that you have posted online, not just understanding the tasks and responsibilities of the job, and not just the general expertise needed for this job. No, you need to dedicate time to developing a thorough understanding of what this job entails in order to be able to hire the perfect candidate for it. Hence, it´s so important to work very closely with the hiring manager to make sure you get this deep understanding before starting the sourcing process.

To do full screening in line with that deep understanding of the job

Related to above point, a lot of hiring managers are of the opinion that recruiters´ candidate screening is not sufficient. On the other hand, many recruiters consider that if the candidate screening was not good enough it is mostly due to hiring managers not making clear enough what they are looking for and not providing the right examples for them to work with. Although contradictory opinions, both of them are due to a lack of collaboration between the recruiter and the hiring manager and the thereof resulting lack of real understanding of the job that needs to be filled. Therefore, we can´t emphasize enough the importance of the need to develop a close relationship from the beginning between hiring manager and recruiter to avoid these kinds of misunderstandings.

To be able to develop a talent pipeline for the client

On the one hand, a lot of recruiters complain that hiring managers have unrealistic expectations of time to fill complicated positions. On the other hand, most hiring managers wish recruiters would set-up a more established talent pipeline for hard-to-fill positions to speed up the recruitment process so they don´t have to start from scratch every time and get rushed for filling these positions. With a close and long-term collaboration between hiring manager and recruiters, such a bench for possible talent can be created to always have a plan of action ready when a complicated vacancy comes up.

In summary, as a recruiter, you should work much closer with your hiring manager in order to make the recruitment process much more successful and to establish a collaborative, long-term relationship. Therefore, try to set some standards from the beginning, such as meeting regularly to discuss the specifics of the vacancies, to prepare the right interview questions together, to decide on the selection strategies to get the best candidates, and to constantly tweak your criteria for the process. Close communication is key throughout the whole process and insightful discussions on every step of the selection process will only strengthen the relationship. If you focus on this, you will achieve much better performance for talent acquisition.

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