Kris Dunn over at HR Capitalist has one of the best profiles in the HR blog space. One of the best parts of his profile is that he is teaching his kids the art of the cross over dribble. Every time I read that I chuckle.
Recently Kris tackled Hiring Manager Sabotage. It is a humorous look at a long standing problem in the recruiting community - hiring leaders who tell you the position is critical, we need to hire someone yesterday and then promptly do nothing with the candidates you send along to them. He lists 6 reasons why hiring leaders do this (most of them quite funny). Check out the post for yourself because it is strong but the money quote is this:
Here are some thoughts of why the hiring manager doesn't want to interview for another 30 days, after you got rung up in a staff meeting about open positions:
1. We migrate to what we are good at, and they aren't good/comfortable with interviewing.
Out of these answers, I think #1 is the most probable reason for the delay in most circumstances. They don't interview for a living, and it's easier to de-prioritize it than to deal with it and get it over with.
Hiring leaders are not often equipped properly to interview. Most companies make the faulty assumption that if the hiring leader is doing or leads the people doing the job then they are going to know what to ask and how to ask it. Unfortunately this leads to an interview that is all surface and no depth. Hiring decisions are made based on what candidates have and not what they can do. There are several other reasons why hiring leaders delay and stall the recruitment process.
- They don't really know what they are looking for. Hiring leaders and typical HR job descriptions define the critical position search in terms of what candidates have to have not what they can do. They say things like "candidate has to have 5 years of experience, a degree in bio-nuclear engineering from one of 5 schools, experience working with teams, knowledge of yada, yada and yada". You get the idea. Of course, none of these things have anything at all to do with actually getting results and doing anything. With criteria like this it should not be surprising that when a recruiter presents candidates the job specifciations and needs of the hiring leader start to shift like sand beneath your feet. Great recruiters turn these HAVES into DO's. Just ask your hiring leader what will the successful candidate DO with their 5 years of experience? What will they actually do with their experience leading teams? Turn the "have" description into a bunch of verbs that have measurable expected outcomes and time lines and suddenly the role has meat on the bone. Not to mention it makes searching and finding the right talent a bit easier.
- Hiring leaders are not held accountable to how they behave. They feel that every candidate in their job space should be beating down the door to work for them. They are often ignorant of market demographics, labor market conditions, salary constraints etc. In part this is the recruiting teams fault for not properly educating their organization on these matters. Because of this hiring leaders don't turn resumes around quickly, they don't make interviewing a priority on their schedules, they don't return recruiter phone calls, they won't debrief after the interview etc. Putting a Service Level Agreement (SLA) in place can help to correct this. Essentially come to an agreement with your hiring leader on rules of engagement for the search. Where are we going to look for this talent? What is the sourcing strategy? How often do you want to communicate about updates on the search? How quickly will you, hiring leader, turn around resumes with descriptive feedback? What is the minimum amount of information we need to have to agree to interview? To make a hiring decision? When and how will we debrief after an interview takes place? What are agreed upon turn around times on phone calls and voice messages? You get the idea. Both the recruiter and the hiring leader sign the agreement and now we can hold each other accountable.
- Sometimes hiring leaders don't know what they don't know. Recruiters and HR organizations don't spend enough time bringing their hiring leaders up to speed on trends in their industry space, job space, labor market etc. Ongoing dialog with hiring leaders and recruiters about what is going on with their world is critical to creating an understanding about what might be faced if a search were to be started. Having these conversations outside the pressure and challenge of actually having to find someone will make for a more level headed understanding of one another and when the search is on things will go a bit more smoothly. Recruiters and hiring leaders need one another to succeed. They should have at least a functional knowledge of what is going on in each others world and the really great recruiters are immersed in the hiring leader world. Educate, inform and keep your hiring leaders on top of what is going on with recruiting in their space.
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