Working with recruiters and hiring managers can be challenging, especially when you are trying to make sweeping changes to the way your company recruits and operates. While you are trying to move forward with new ideas, bring in diverse candidates, and improve your company, those ideas can sometimes get lost during the recruiting process.
Your company needs to make revolutionary changes to keep up with the competition, but you seem to be getting the same candidates from your recruiters and hiring managers every week. There must be a disconnect between your vision/criteria and the results of your recruiting team.
How do you bridge this gap to make more successful hiring decisions? It starts with helping your recruiting team run more cohesively. As the executive, you can help both your hiring managers and your recruiters work more successfully. Here’s a look at how and where your current hiring manager-recruiter relationship may be breaking down and what to do to improve it.
The Importance Of Communication
Communication is a vital part of the hiring manager and the recruiter relationship. Without proper communication, diversity initiatives or changes to the hiring process fall flat. As a company executive, you can help facilitate that communication between recruiters and hiring managers when things break down or get complicated. It is possible to hire qualified, diverse young adults, but there will need to be changes in how your team communicates and recruits to make that happen.
Let’s discuss some of the ways you can help your team with their communication issues as a company executive:
Relate the Company Vision
When you are making a new change toward diversity in the workplace, it can be challenging to understand the company vision. The change is commendable, but you need to document and discuss that change with your recruiters and hiring managers.
Make sure you equip your recruiting team with the skills they need to succeed with your company’s new strategic vision. You may need to train your recruiters to reduce bias and be more purposeful in bringing diversity to the office.
Help your hiring managers get crystal clear on the company vision and what it entails. Create the material they can use to relate this information to their recruiters. Make sure your vision isn’t just clear to the executive team. Think of your company vision as a game of telephone. The more people tell your company’s vision, the more muddled and indecipherable it becomes. Your recruiting team is only as strong as you are as an executive.
Share the Bigger Picture with Employees
As a company executive, you know the ins and outs of the company, the leadership team’s thoughts on diversity, and what the company struggles with. If you want to get better results from your recruiters and hiring managers, you must be willing to teach them what they need to know about the company’s history and what you want from employees going forward. You may be looking for new types of talent, which means it’s even more critical to discuss company history with your recruiting team.
If you and the executive team wants to shape the future of a new diversity program, understand that your recruiting team may not always meet the mark. You may be frustrated with your hiring manager, and they might be frustrated with your recruiters, but it’s a team effort. We all have to be clearer about what we want and take communication seriously. As an executive, you can set the standard for how your team communicates every day.
Make Everyone Understand Their Role in the Company’s Success
Employee burnout is a huge issue, and you can see that issue taking shape in the day-to-day lives of your recruiting team. Recruiters and hiring managers can have an impossible workload, and they may even feel a disconnect between themselves and the company for which they work. This disconnect can be ever-apparent during times of change.
As a company executive, it’s your job to make sure your employees feel appreciated. Help all of your employees feel like an integral part of the team because how they recruit has a direct effect on the company’s success and bottom line. It’s easy to forget how much of an impact an employee makes, especially when they don’t necessarily have a lot of interaction with you.
Are you struggling to show that appreciation? You can take simple steps like taking the time to chat with your recruiters about their problems, sending a quick thank you email, or even hosting a catered lunch for your recruiting team. You don’t need a grand gesture, just let your recruiters and hiring managers know what they do for your company.
Company Executives Should Let Go of the Current Status Quo
Finally, one of the biggest challenges your recruiting team deals with is the status quo. Your company executives may be accustomed to doing things a certain way: going to legacy schools to recruit candidates, attending the same job fairs, using the same LinkedIn search keywords, hiring the same types of employees, etc. While these methods have netted you potential candidates, they haven’t resulted in the kind of candidates you want.
It’s easy to want a more diverse workforce without doing the work to achieve it. If your recruiting team feels confined by your current recruiting practices, it can be challenging to get new results. It is much easier to find those diverse candidates in new environments versus trying to make current environments more diverse. Unfortunately, your old recruiting grounds may lack diversity. Know when it’s time to mix up recruiting practices so your recruiting team can get creative again.
Use The Whether’s tools to engage amazing, diverse talent that will improve your company and your recruiter relationship.
