Start Off on the Right Foot

Set up a meeting as soon as you are aware of an open role (the earlier, the better). Ensure you both are on the same page about qualifications, role responsibilities, etc. As the recruiter, go in having researched the industry, competitors, geography, and salaries.

In this kickoff meeting, educate your hiring manager on your recruiting process. This could be their first time hiring or working with you, and they may not be familiar with pipelines, sourcing, screening, etc.

Draft a job description together. Ensure it focuses on the opportunity the job provides rather than the responsibilities it requires. Choose your words wisely. As the recruiter, you're current on which words hold bias and which have a high response rate.

Work together to formulate an interview plan and schedule. Ask your hiring manager about past hires who've been successful. What qualities do they possess that contributed to their success? Once you've determined these, figure out which questions would help reveal these qualities during an interview. Additionally, anticipate the questions candidates will ask while interviewing, such as: Why is the role open? What is the culture like on the team? When's the start date?

Bring a few preliminary candidate profiles with you. Even if they're far from the right fit for the role, going over them with the hiring manager will significantly inform the rest of your search.

Lead with Honesty and Trust

Like all relationships, a good relationship between a recruiter and their hiring manager is based on trust. In order to have trust, you must be honest with one another. Sometimes, pushing back on the hiring manager's asks (or demands) is intimidating. Remember, you're the expert. You know whether they're asking for too much when offering too little. The more honest you are with them upfront, the more they'll trust you throughout the process.

Talk with the hiring manager and ensure they're realistic about the skills they want candidates to have. Which are "need to haves" and "nice to haves"? Is the salary they're offering adequate for the role and the area? Be open about your ability and bandwidth, too. Let your hiring manager know if you need to become more proficient in interviewing software engineers. They can make sure a team member is available to help.

Be Firm Throughout the Process

Communicate more than you think you have to. Are you waiting to find one more candidate before sending a batch of resumes to your hiring manager? Let them know so they don't feel you're forgetting about them.

Determine your communication preferences. This is super simple but can make a huge difference. Some people are great at email, while some have unanswered emails from Y2K but will text you back in a second.

Set deadlines for each other and respect them. If sourcing candidates for a specific role takes longer than expected, let your hiring manager know and adjust your deadlines accordingly. Ensure your hiring manager has time on their calendar to review resumes and interview candidates.

Consider setting up a service agreement with outlined responsibilities. For example, the recruiter agrees to source 10 candidates by X date, and the hiring manager agrees to review all resumes within 48 hours of receiving them. At the end of the day, you both want the same thing! But if communication or timing is cloudy, your process falls off the rails, and candidates slip through the cracks.

Provide Interview Coaching

If a hiring manager is new or hires infrequently, doing some interview coaching is critical. Ensure they stick to a list of preset questions so no subconsciously biased questions slip in. In extreme situations, the wrong questions could have legal ramifications, leading to legal fees and damaging the company's reputation.

Interview coaching is also good practice for the hiring manager and can help them work out any nerves because it's not just the interviewee who gets nervous! Consider creating supplementary material like an information booklet or video you can give your hiring manager. It's helpful and shows how much effort you put into your work.

Schedule a Post-Hire Meeting

After the ink on the offer letter has dried, schedule a final meeting with the hiring manager to review the experience. If everything went well, this is a quick check-in where you exchange pleasantries.

Hopefully, it's a learning experience, and you can walk away from the meeting with constructive feedback. Try to learn and grow from each experience with a hiring manager, and you'll continuously improve as a recruiter.

In Summary

To have the best recruiter-hiring manager relationship, you should:

• Build a strong foundation with an initial meeting
• Communicate honestly and more frequently than you may think is necessary
• Coach hiring managers on how to properly conduct an interview
• Learn from your experience!

And if you really want to impress your hiring manager, use Fetcher. It sources while you sleep, and you'll walk into every meeting prepared with a robust, qualified pipeline, up-to-date candidate data, and analytics.