Optimizing Recruitment: Tips For Better TA & Hiring Manager Alignment

There's no other way to say it - TA & Hiring Manager alignment is critical to your hiring success. However, there's often a disconnect between a Hiring Manager's perception of a role and the recruiting team's perception. So, what are some ways to solidify recruiter and Hiring Manager alignment?

We were lucky to have Kat Kibben, CEO & Founder of Three Ears Media, join us for our July webinar to guide us through some of their tips for aligning TA and Hiring Managers.

Check out the full 1-hour webinar below or read on for a brief synopsis of the 4 key topics Kat discussed.

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1.) How To Hold An Intake Meeting

Kat has written quite a few articles on how to solidify recruiter & Hiring Manager alignment, and it really all starts with holding an intake meeting. In fact, Kat believes that skipping the intake meeting is one of the top reasons time to fill keeps rising in organizations. Kat walked through some of the most important things to think about when you hold an intake meeting…

• Do your research - do not show up to an intake meeting unprepared. Pull the job that you’re working, highlight anything that you don’t understand, and grab some example resumes to review with the Hiring Manager. 
• Make sure you set expectations at the end of the meeting - repeat back the details at the end of the meeting and set next steps. When this isn’t done, this is usually what causes friction amongst recruiters & Hiring Managers because they’re waiting on updates. 
• Ask contrasting questions - ask questions that create contrast so you understand the experiences you’re looking for. For example, “what does someone with 10 years of experience know that someone with 8 years of experience doesn’t know?” (we’ll get more into what questions to ask in an intake meeting next). 

One thing to keep in mind is that if you’ve hired for the same role in the past 30 days, you most likely don’t need an intake meeting. But let’s say you haven’t hired someone for a specific requisition within a year or so, you need to have an intake meeting because the world is changing really fast. You’ll most likely end up finding what the old version of success is vs. what the current vision is if you skip the intake meeting. 

2.) Kat’s Favorite Hiring Manager Intake Questions

Asking the right questions within an intake meeting is key. Recruiters need to ask questions that help the Hiring Manager imagine the person they’re trying to hire. Here are a few of Kat’s favorite questions to ask: 

• You wake up, put on your pants, now what? Walk me through a day in the life of the role. - While on this topic, Kat presented an astounding fact - 26% of people quit within the first 60 days because the day in the life does not align with what they expected before they signed the offer. 
• Why do people quit? - be transparent right off the bat! 
• What’s happening in 6 months? - this way you can describe the projects that are happening within the next 6 months and candidates will be able to tell you if they’ve worked on similar projects in previous roles. 

These are just a taste of their favorite questions. For more, click here. 

3.) Why Hiring Managers Shouldn’t Write Job Descriptions

Kat feels strongly that Hiring Managers shouldn’t write job descriptions. First things first, there’s a difference between a job description and a job posting. Kat actually encourages hiring teams to have candidates sign the job description when they take the offer.

There is no world in which a Hiring Manager should own the job description. Why? Because you’re making the Hiring Manager the expert instead of you as the recruiter. If you wonder why Hiring Managers treat recruiters like order takers, it’s because you let them. When you’re letting the Hiring Manager take the first stab at the job description or using whatever they give you is exactly why Hiring Managers think recruiters can be replaced by AI.

Long story short, recruiters must be job post writing experts and they must own job descriptions because they’re the primary artifacts of your recruiting function.

4.) How To Delete Biased Requirements From Your Job Postings

Kat mentioned that the #1 way to remove bias from job requirements is to stop copying and pasting everyone else’s requirements. #2 - actually contextualizing requirements. For example, don’t just use years of experience required, but “3 years of experience working in an environment like this where you did this” and providing as much context as possible to let the candidate know if they’re qualified or not. 

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To conclude, Kat wanted everyone to walk away from the conversation with one thing - if you don’t want to be treated like an order taker, don’t ask for an order. You need to take a step back and understand what Hiring Managers are looking for, ask really great questions, and develop your ability to communicate processes with a consultative approach. 

And with that, we wrapped things up!

Huge thanks to Kat for joining us! Don't forget to check out the entire webinar linked above for more great insights from them. For more on Kat and Hiring Manager/TA alignment, check out their blog at https://katrinakibben.com/.

And see you on August 14th for our next webinar! We’ll be joined by Tim Sackett, President of HRU Technical Resources & top 100 global HR tech influencer, where we’ll be digging into his thoughts on what’s trending today in the talent acquisition space. You can register for this live conversation here.