Hiring as a Team Sport: Aligning Stakeholders for Hiring Excellence
When we think about hiring, it’s easy to focus on the skills of the recruiter. After all, recruiters are the ones at the forefront; sourcing, screening, and guiding candidates through the process. But if hiring excellence is your goal (and it should be!), there’s something important you need to recognize:
Hiring is a team sport. It’s not just about how well one player performs; it’s about the alignment of the entire team.
I often use an analogy from the Olympics when explaining this concept. Usain Bolt’s world record for the 100 meters—9.58 seconds—is a mark of individual excellence, unparalleled to this day. But if you were to ask how long it would take for four people, including Bolt himself, to run a 100 meter relay, many would estimate a time slower than Bolt running each leg himself.
Surprisingly, the actual time is faster—36.84 seconds. How is that possible? The answer lies in teamwork. The Jamaican relay team, despite only one of them being the fastest man in the world, beat the individual record because of their alignment as a team.
Hiring is no different. Even the most skilled recruiter can’t create an excellent hiring process alone. There are multiple stakeholders, and unless they are working in harmony, your hiring process will falter.
Who Are the Stakeholders?
There are at least three key groups involved in any hiring process, though you could argue there are more:
- Recruiters
- The Hiring Team (hiring managers, interviewers, and possibly HR Business Partners)
- Candidates
For hiring to achieve excellence, these groups need to be aligned. Each of these stakeholders plays a unique role, and if one drops the baton so to speak, the entire process can break down. Let’s take a closer look at each group.
The Role of the Recruiter
Recruiters are, without question, a critical part of the hiring process. They are responsible for finding talent, screening candidates, and ensuring the hiring process moves efficiently. For years, SocialTalent focused on enabling recruiters, and we saw a lot of success in that. By equipping recruitment teams with the right skills and tools, we improved their performance dramatically.
However, we realized something important: recruiters alone cannot deliver hiring excellence. No matter how skilled your recruitment team is, they are only one part of the equation. The candidate experience doesn’t stop with the recruiter—it includes everyone the candidate interacts with during the process, from hiring managers to interviewers.
The Importance of the Hiring Team
The second key group in the hiring process is the hiring team, which includes hiring managers, interviewers, and often HR Business Partners. These individuals have a profound impact on how candidates perceive the organization. In fact, many of the negative comments in Glassdoor reviews are directed not at the recruiters, but at the hiring managers or interviewers. Candidates frequently report that interviewers were unprepared, unresponsive, or failed to provide feedback.
Even the best recruiters can only do so much if the rest of the hiring team isn’t aligned. Hiring managers and interviewers must be on the same page. They need to understand the hiring process, know how to interview effectively, and, crucially, be trained in inclusive hiring practices.
In our experience, once your recruiters are operating at 70-80% of their potential, it’s more valuable to focus on upskilling your hiring managers and interviewers. You’ll see greater returns by ensuring that they are equally capable of delivering a positive hiring experience.
The Forgotten Stakeholder: The Candidate
For a long time, we believed that once the recruiter and hiring team were aligned, hiring excellence would naturally follow. But we were wrong. There’s a third key player in the hiring process that’s often overlooked: the candidate.
Candidates aren’t just passive participants—they’re stakeholders in their own right. And if they aren’t properly prepared or supported throughout the process, hiring excellence becomes impossible. This realization actually came into full focus for us during a hiring process at SocialTalent when we were interviewing an internal candidate for a role. Because they hadn’t been through an interview in so long, they struggled compared to external candidates who were much more agile and at ease throughout the process. The internal candidate had the skills, they had the experience, but they weren’t practiced in interviewing.
This opened our eyes to a broader truth: many candidates fail not because they aren’t qualified, but because they aren’t good at interviewing. This is particularly true for internal candidates and underrepresented talent. They often haven’t had the same opportunities to refine their interview skills, build their personal brand, or develop the confidence needed to perform well.
Enabling Candidates for Success
If we want to achieve hiring excellence, we need to support candidates as much as we support recruiters and hiring teams. That means providing resources and training to help them navigate the interview process. For internal candidates, this might involve mentorship, interview coaching, and resume support. For external candidates, it could mean offering feedback loops, transparent communication, and tools to help them better understand what’s expected.
And let’s not forget underrepresented talent, who often face additional barriers. These candidates might not have had access to the same professional networks, mentorship opportunities, or career guidance. By failing to invest in their success, we’re not just missing out on great talent—we’re perpetuating inequality in the hiring process.
Aligning for Hiring Excellence
If you want to achieve hiring excellence, you need to think about hiring as a team sport. It’s not just about making your recruiters the best they can be—it’s about aligning all the stakeholders involved in the hiring process. Just like the Jamaican relay team, your recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers, and candidates all need to be working in sync to reach the finish line.
This alignment doesn’t happen overnight. It requires intentional effort to ensure that everyone involved in hiring understands their role, is adequately trained, and is committed to the same goal: delivering a world-class hiring experience. Only then can we move from good to great, from competent to excellent.
So, the next time you’re thinking about improving your hiring process, take a step back. Don’t just focus on one part of the team—focus on the whole. Recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers, and candidates must all be aligned. When they are, the results will speak for themselves.