Symptoms of Recruiting Sickness

In many organisations, the relationship between talent acquisition and hiring managers has gone awry.

Hiring managers are taking recruiting into their own hands.

They’re briefing third-party agencies to fill positions or even conducting their own outreach. This often results in hiring managers and recruiters looking for different qualities in new hires, leading to a disconnect.

And they’re not sticking to the rules

The fact that hiring managers often dismiss candidates sourced by recruiters and distrust online assessment results suggests something is drastically wrong.

And something is drastically wrong. We’ve seen clients significantly boost their recruitment efforts — increasing the quality and volume of applicants. However, the right hires didn’t follow.

Because the traditional recruiting playbook — what worked before — no longer matches the reality of how hiring works today.

You can see the results of this in the growing lack of trust between recruiters and hiring managers. And you can see it when recruitment teams fail to deliver hires that meet the hiring managers’ expectations.

Breaking this cycle isn’t going to be easy, but it’s absolutely worth it.

Organisations that align their Recruitment and Hiring Managers — both a monumental task in itself and a symptom of doing many other things right — are hitting their hiring targets.

Aligning Recruitment and Hiring Managers: The Benefits

Research shows that organisations with aligned recruitment and hiring teams:

– Achieve higher employee retention rates.

– Enjoy a more efficient hiring process.

– Experience improved candidate satisfaction and employer brand reputation.

So why are so many recruitment teams stuck — and how can we get unstuck? We have thoughts.

Fatigue, Miscommunication, and Mistrust

When the recruitment and hiring manager relationship is unwell, you’ll see some very clear symptoms:

– Ignored Candidates: Hiring managers often disregard up to 70% of candidates provided by recruitment, believing they are not qualified.

– Unused Assessments: Many assessment tools and resources provided by recruitment teams are never used because hiring managers don’t see their relevance.

– High Dropout Rates: Many candidates drop out during the hiring process because their expectations are unmet or the process feels disjointed.

– Lack of Impact: Recruitment efforts are not contributing significantly to the organisation’s hiring goals.

These symptoms indicate a larger problem: Recruitment and hiring managers are operating on outdated models that assume hiring managers have more influence over the hiring process than they do — when, in reality, candidates have taken the power into their own hands.

And that’s if hiring managers even get to interact with candidates. By the time a candidate applies, they’ve done extensive research and formed strong opinions about the company and the role.

Fixing the Recruiting Process

The Solution: Collaborate with hiring managers throughout the hiring journey.

Here’s how:

1. Conduct a Job Analysis: Start by analysing the roles of existing employees. Survey them to understand their tasks and the attributes that make them successful.

2. Agree on Hiring Criteria: Work with hiring managers to define the key attributes and skills needed for the role. This agreement is crucial for consistency.

3. Involve Hiring Managers in Assessment

 Design: Ensure the assessments reflect the role and the attributes hiring managers value. This builds trust in the process.

4. Assist in Hiring Decisions: Understand what experience the hiring managers want to give candidates during interviews and help craft that experience.

The Road Ahead

Adapting to this new model requires fundamentally restructuring how Recruitment and Hiring Managers operate together. It’s not about short-term fixes but building a long-term, trust-based partnership.

Breaking silos is hard work, but continuing with misaligned efforts is equally hard. We need to evolve the recruitment playbook to reflect how candidates operate today, with lots of autonomy.

Influence can still absolutely happen, but it has to be built on trust, not short-term tactics that alienate candidates.

If you’re up for the challenge, our new volume hiring playbook lays out how to do the foundational work of aligning recruitment and hiring managers, setting new KPIs, refining targeting strategies, and optimising your recruitment operations.