Recruitment Relationship: Fixing The Fear of Commitment

It’s not me, it’s you…

“Commitment-phobe: One who cannot or will not commit to anyone in any given relationship, although they make sounds to the contrary.”

We all know a commitment-phobe in our personal lives (OK it’s me in mine, before I get any sarky text messages from my friends… or mother). But how often do you come across a commitment-phobe in your professional career?  If you work in recruitment, I’ll bet you come across a commitment-phobe Hiring Managers daily.

Don’t we hear comments all the time like:

• “I can do interviews at one point in Julember…”
• “I really love this candidate and he/she would be a great fit, but I want to interview a few more before I make an offer…”
• “That’s an amazing shortlist, but can you send over another five CVs?”
• “I know I said I wanted Superman, and you found him, but now I want Spiderman…!”

And doesn’t this put the mockers on the recruitment process and the quality of candidates finally brought into the business? This ongoing soap opera, love/hate relationship between Recruiters and Hiring Managers isn’t a new issue.  A white paper by Bersin by Deloitte/Robin Erickson in 2014 said that “developing strong relationships with Hiring Managers is the top driver of talent acquisition performance”.

So… if you are ready to commit to your Hiring Manager, ready to deliver better candidates at the time you agreed, ready to buy the house, book a long-haul holiday and get a dog… but your Hiring Manager is a commitment-phobe, how are you going to get him/her to love you back?

It’s no mean feat.  In fact, a survey conducted by ERE in April 2016 found that Hiring Managers rate the quality of candidates they find much higher than the quality of candidates you find (pfft!).  The survey also found that amongst Hiring Managers top concerns were things like:

• “Too many challenges and inconsistencies in hiring”
• “Need better technology”

Not a pretty picture, but don’t worry, you’re not off to a desert island with your new dog just yet…

So before despair sets in, take a step back, assess your major pain points and investigate how to fix them. Sometimes the pain lies in the process, in which case it’s time to get back to the drawing board. Other times your process is solid but there’s still too much latent time where you’re losing productivity and, most importantly, prospective leads. When this is the case we can turn to the glorious world of tech to help us.

Collaborative software has revolutionised the way we work today. No longer able to blame tardiness and incomplete tasks on missing to-do notes or lost messages we now have a centralised platform where people can share their work in real-time with their teammates and with clients.

So how does this translate into our beloved world of recruitment? Not only can you introduce some generic productivity tools but there’s a whole market of recruitment specific tools just waiting to be explored.

Talenytics is a prime example of how you can smoothen your recruitment process and encourage Recruiter and Hiring Manager collaboration throughout the entire recruitment process.  It enables you to work with your Hiring Manager positively by engaging all stakeholders involved in your hiring journey at each stage in an automated, simple and easy to use way.

At the very beginning of the role, you and your Hiring Manager will agree what the perfect candidate looks like, and what the perfect recruitment process looks like for that role (you agree on things such as interview dates, shortlist numbers, target offer dates).  Being able to track all of this information in a shared space holds both parties accountable so even if plans don’t follow procedure the process remains transparent.

Talenytics has been proven to increase Recruiter and Hiring Manager alignment by 92%.  It also drives an 84% increase in Candidate Quality.  Using any online platform can help you and your Hiring Manager not only commit to each other, but commit to finding your organisation the very best talent available in the most efficient way.

To find out more about Talenytics get in touch with one of our Hiring Quality experts.  Why don’t you try and get a Hiring Manager to commit to joining you so we can show them how it will benefit them too?

P.S – Sorry for moaning Hiring Managers, we love you really, we just want to take our relationship to the next level 🙂

Sources

• High Impact Talent Acquisition: Key Findings and Maturity Model, Bersin by Deloitte / Robin Erickson, Ph.D., Kim Lamoureux and Denise Moulton, September 2014.
• State of Talent Acquisition 2016, A Tale of Two Views, Ron Mester, ERE Media, April 2016.