10 Hiring Roadblocks and How to Overcome Them, with Greenhouse
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The document outlines 10 common roadblocks hiring managers face in the recruitment process and provides solutions to overcome these challenges. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration and communication between hiring managers and recruiters to improve the hiring process. Key issues include prioritizing hiring, unclear job expectations, and the need for timely feedback and engagement from hiring managers.
10 Hiring Roadblocks and How to Overcome Them, with Greenhouse
- 1. 10 Hiring Manager Roadblocks and How to Overcome Them
- 2. Webinar Tips for Attendees • You can connect to audio using your computer’s microphone and speakers. • Or, you may select “Use Telephone” after joining the Webinar. • All lines will be muted to avoid background noise. • You can ask questions at any time by typing them into the Questions Pane.
- 3. Speakers Dina Rulli Manager, Talent Acquisition at Glassdoor dina.rulli@glassdoor.com Caitlin Wilterdink Lead Recruiter Greenhouse Caitlin.wilterdink@greenhouse.io
- 4. Agenda: - Defining the Problem - Common Behavior - Identify Goal - 10 Hiring Manager Roadblocks - Solutions - Questions
- 5. The most important person in your recruiting process isn’t the recruiter. It isn’t your candidate either. The Problem
- 6. The most important person in your process is your hiring manager. HMs hold the power to prioritize hiring, define the person you will hire, and ultimately make the decision to hire the person you have worked so hard to find. The Problem
- 8. - Gives me impossible roles to fill - Ignores my emails - Doesn’t give me feedback - Doesn’t know how to interview - Doesn’t tell their team what s/he is looking for - Expects me to do all of the work - Blames recruiting when their team misses project deadlines My Hiring Manager The Problem
- 9. - Doesn’t communicate with me - Doesn’t provide enough information - Doesn’t find me the right people - Takes too long to find candidates - Expects me to do too many interviews - And, I mean really, is recruiting so hard? My Recruiter The Problem
- 10. Misunderstanding, mistrust, and miscommunication aren’t the best ways to build a partnership.
- 11. And you create alignment by building a partnership with your Hiring Managers. You build an effective partnership when you trust, communicate often, and make sure you understand each other. The Problem
- 12. So, how do we fix this? Here are the 10 common hiring manager roadblocks and how to fix them…
- 13. Problem 1: Hiring Managers don’t prioritize hiring
- 14. “I need to cancel my interviews this week in order to meet a deadline.” “Why can’t you write the job description? Isn’t that part of your job?” “I’ll review those resumes next week.”
- 15. Tough Love: Don’t open the role Tough Love: set SLAs and, if they aren’t met, no more candidates Be a “squeaky wheel” Set a regular communication cadence Provide information: show how important hiring is Always be prepared Solutions
- 16. Problem 2: Hiring Managers don’t know what they are looking for
- 17. “I need a Senior MySQL Engineer who can code MySQL, Java and also knows Javascript.” “I want to hire a VP, Sales but can only afford to pay this person $100k.” “We only hire the best people.”
- 18. Define what “the best people” actually means Official kick-off meetings Describe the knowledge, skills, abilities, not a person Ask “why”? Define the Day 1 Problem Provide market information Reevaluate often Solutions
- 19. Problem 3: Hiring Managers don’t know how to prepare and coach their interview team
- 20. “I don’t know how to evaluate this candidate because I don’t know anything about the role.” “Why do I need to provide feedback? We’re not hiring the guy anyway.” “Wait…I have an interview today?”
- 21. Show your HM that ineffective interviews waste the interviewers’ time. Time = $ Train the interviewers yourself Remind the interviewers often Run post-mortems and feedback round tables Value and acknowledge your interviewers’ opinions Solutions
- 22. Problem 4: Hiring Managers don’t know how to budget time for recruiting
- 23. “We’re going to miss our sprint goals this month if we take this much time to interview” “My engineers are complaining that they need to stay late to finish their feedback forms.”
- 24. Automate the interview process Train the recruiting team to assess the technical stuff Build interview time into project deadlines Budget time for feedback Solutions
- 25. Problem 5: Hiring Managers rely solely on recruiting to find candidates
- 26. “I only want to interview people who are late stage.” “Why do I need to ask my team for referrals? Isn’t that your job?” “If I was supposed to hire people, you wouldn’t be here.”
- 27. Tell your hiring managers what you can’t (or won’t) do Push back on them, recruiting is a reciprocal process Get HM help with prospecting Get HM help with referrals Tough love, when needed Solutions
- 28. Problem 6: Hiring Managers don’t provide timely feedback to recruiting
- 29. “I don’t have time to write feedback.” “I don’t have time to meet about them, just bring in the next one.” “It’s too cumbersome to leave feedback.”
- 30. Make feedback easy to give – so it is not a chore and task that hiring managers dread Set up a weekly debrief meeting Go straight to the top Solutions
- 31. Problem 7: Hiring Managers become unresponsive
- 32. “My actual job is more important than dealing with this. Isn’t this your job?” No reply, no reply, no reply… “I’m super busy and don’t have the time.”
- 33. Be persistent – get an answer from whoever will respond to you Get their attention! Use your Allies – if they won’t respond to you, will they respond to your Manager? Solutions
- 34. Problem 8: Hiring Managers panic if they don’t get a ton of applications in the first few days a job is open
- 35. “What’s wrong with the post? I think I need you to change the description.” “Where are we promoting this job? I need this to be front and center.” “There aren’t enough people applying to my post.”
- 36. Assess advertising channels Assess the competition Assess the title + description Expected timelines for sourcing Explain the best candidates are not waiting for you to post a job – they must be sought after + woo’ed Solutions
- 37. Problem 9: Hiring Managers want a purple squirrel
- 38. “I need the best candidates in the door.” “Why do I need to ask my team for referrals? Isn’t that your job?” “If I was supposed to hire people, you wouldn’t be here.”
- 39. Set up time to source together Review top performers Start interviewing Get to the bottom of why they need this purple squirrel Stack rank skills Solutions
- 40. Problem 10: Hiring Managers don’t see the value in weekly update meetings/calls
- 41. “I can’t have a standing meeting to deal with this.” “I’m too busy.”
- 42. Can the search be delegated? Join Hiring Manager’s weekly team meeting Alternative ways to communicate Solutions
- 43. The #1 most important thing you can do…
- 44. Get your executive team on board.
- 45. Your CEO must communicate the importance of hiring to every hiring manager as frequently as possible. Every management meeting should discuss hiring, 1:1’s should discuss hiring, all hands meetings should discuss hiring, company newsletters should discuss hiring…
- 46. Building alignment means creating trust, communicating often and educating each other.
- 47. Communicate
- 48. Proactively provide information Meetings! Run post-mortems Identify bottle-necks and decide how to solve together
- 49. Trust
- 50. Be honest if you will miss a deadline Explain your expectations Hold each other accountable
- 52. Participate in the team onboarding process Go to standups Train your interviewers Opensource your recruiting meetings
- 53. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- #2: Katie
- #3: Katie
- #4: Katie
- #6: Caitlin
- #7: Caitlin
- #8: Dina
- #9: Caitlin
- #10: Dina – And, so we aren’t placing 100% of the blame on HMs, here are some things they would probably say about us:
- #11: Caitlin - Effective recruiting only works when you have a reciprocal relationship with your HMs
- #12: Caitlin
- #13: Caitlin - There’s light at the end of the tunnel
- #14: Caitlin – Common behavior includes: not reviewing resumes, forgetting scheduled interviews, failing to provide a job description for a role,
- #15: Caitlin – Here are a few ways this behavior manifests itself. You hear a lot of hiring managers say that they only hire the best people but they are unable to define what the best people actually do.
- #16: Caitlin – Tough Love: Don’t open the role Tough Love: set SLAs and, if they aren’t met, no more candidates Be a “squeaky wheel”…talk about sitting on engineers desks at Conductor Set a regular communication cadence…15 minutes per week Provide information: show how important hiring is….if we are losing candidates because the process is taking too long track this data. And show your hiring manager. One of the biggest reasons people love the Greenhouse process is how fast and efficient we are. We have an average app to offer date of 20 days you don’t get this fast if you don’t prioritize Always be prepared…your hiring managers will trust you if you always know where people are in the candidate pipeline DINA – Often times I ask Managers what is not getting done, or how their lives would be easier if this person was hired on. There’s something about personalizing that question that 9 times out of 10 will spark a fire in them to prioritize recruiting.
- #17: Caitlin –
- #18: Caitlin – #1 = ugh #2 doesn’t exist #3 is impossible and way out of line with the market
- #19: Caitlin – Define what “the best people” actually means Official kick off meetings Describe the knowledge, skills, abilities, not a person Ask “why”? Define the Day 1 Problem Provide market information Reevaluate often
- #20: Caitlin –
- #21: Caitlin –
- #22: Caitlin – Show your HM that ineffective interviews waste the interviewers time. Time = $ Train the interviewers yourself Remind the interviewers often Run post-mortems and feedback round tables Value and acknowledge your interviewers’ opinions DINA – take ownership here and help the manager create questions and topics for the Interview team to uncover. This can be a bit time consuming on the front-end, but makes the process move much more quickly and efficiently on the back-end. It also creates a good candidate experience and showcases that you are prepared and organized as an organization. Not to mention you learn so much more about candidates.
- #23: Caitlin –
- #24: Caitlin –
- #25: Caitlin – Automate the interview process…talk about testing tools like HackerRank Training on the technical stuff… means less people make it to the dept interview stage Build interview time into project deadlines… if the team interviews an average of 6 candidates per week and spends 4 hours per candidate, assume you lose 24 hours of actual development or customer time. Budget time for feedback DINA – Caitlin – I love the solution of building recruiting into project deadlines. This makes it digestible and realistic and especially for Engineering and Dev teams, it puts things into their common terms.
- #26: Caitlin –
- #27: Caitlin – Okay, so the last one is a bit extreme.
- #28: Caitlin – Tell your hiring managers what you can’t do Push back on them, recruiting is a reciprocal process Prospecting Referrals Tough love
- #29: Dina
- #30: Dina Okay, so the last one is a bit extreme.
- #31: If make giving feedback is really easy, then Interview team members are more likely to provide it. At Glassdoor, we’ve instituted a simple thumbs up, thumbs down, or middle of the road rating system and then added in an additional standard 3 questions to evaluate. If the Interviewer wants to add more, we always accept that, but this keeps consistency and also gets the Recruiter the core information necessary to know how to quickly move forward with candidates. If Hiring Managers are completely adverse to leaving feedback in the ATS or maybe your ATS is too clunky to make this easy for them, it’s a good idea to have a weekly recruiting debrief meeting where you can review all candidates in the mix, those that interviewed in the past, who to move forward and/or cut lose, etc. This isn’t ideal because you won’t have the feedback in your ATS, but the Recruiter can always add in a quick note when they close the candidate out or move them forward to additional steps. Go straight to the Top – you need an advocate and who better to be that person than the head of the department. Generally these folks understand the importance of recruiting and are willing to request / require this of their team.
- #32: Dina
- #33: Dina Okay, so the last one is a bit extreme.
- #34: Unresponsiveness is unfortunately a normal part of our world as Recruiters. The key here is why are they being unresponsive. Is this position no longer a priority? Has it been put on hold? Are they promoting someone internally? There are a number of reasons behind unresponsiveness, but regardless, you need an answer. In today’s competitive recruiting landscape, giving the excuse to Execs that the Hiring Manager is unresponsive is unfortunately just not acceptable, so you need to get an answer, from someone! So how do you do this? Get their attention - text, email, voicemails, chat, or the old stand-by of simply dropping by their office. Find a time on their calendar that is open and drop by or set up a quick 10 minute catch up session. Do they arrive early to work or stay late? Oftentimes these are the best time to grab time with someone. Use it to your advantage. If you are able to get some time with them, make sure to come prepared! Know exactly what questions you need answered in order to move forward. Be succinct. By showing them that you understand their time is valuable, you’ll start to build rapport. Use your Manager to your advantage, that’s what they are there for. And ultimately if it gets you an answer and allows you to not miss your hiring goals, it’s a win-win.
- #35: Dina
- #36: Dina Okay, so the last one is a bit extreme.
- #37: Dina Assess advertising channels – are there niche job boards where you can post? Assess the competition – what do they call this role? Are you using the latest hot vernacular. In today’s fast changing environment, what was the norm yesterday, could very well be old news today. Assess the description - are the title + description maximizing SEO? Is the description written in your company’s brand + voice or is just like every other description out there. Discuss with the Manager normal timelines for Sourcing – communicate your strategy + approach. Make your sourcing visible to them so they see daily + weekly activity. Over-communicate. Another good idea here is to set realistic response rates to sourcing. Generally around 15 - 20% of passive candidates respond, so if you are reaching out to 20 people in the first few days of the search, the expectation is that only 3, maybe 4 of those folks will respond to you and there is no guarantee that they are qualified or interested in the role. This last solution: explaining to the HM that the best candidates are not waiting with baited breath to apply goes right in line with the Sourcing solution we just spoke about. The best thing you can do is educate your Managers on these trends. Also remember, you are the Expert.
- #38: Dina
- #39: Dina Okay, so the last one is a bit extreme.
- #40: Dina Set up time to source together – if they see that they cannot find perfection, they likely will be more willing to be more lenient on some criteria Discuss the top performers on their team, were they purple squirrels or rather candidates with core skills, but with intangibles such as willingness to learn, and hunger for learnings and advancement. Technical skills can often be learned, but the right attitude is hard to come by. Start interviewing – sometimes the best thing to do is have the Hiring Manager speak with a few candidates and perhaps they can become intrigued enough to want to pursue or at least lower their expectations/criteria. Don’t spend too much time on this, but rather than being paralyzed by the search, and providing no one, you are educating the Hiring Manager and perhaps winning yourself some new flexibility in the search Get to the bottom of why they need this purple squirrel – is it due to weaknesses on their team, or maybe perhaps their own insecurities? Are they overwhelmed? Are they new to recruiting? Maybe this is what their Manager told them to find, but they disagree? By getting to the root cause and drivers behind the stringency of the criteria, there may be aha moment for you and the Manager. And last, but not least, have the HM Stack rank the required skills for the req – so that you as the Recruiter understand what the 3 must-haves are. Finding 3 things in one person is much easier than 10. Give yourself a fighting chance to find the right candidate and understand where you can make trade-offs.
- #41: Dina
- #42: Dina Okay, so the last one is a bit extreme.
- #43: Dina First, we have the solution of delegation. As your HM if there is someone on their team whole they could delegate this to? Perhaps an emerging leader? This is a two-fer solution because this could be a great development opportunity for them as recruiting will likely be a part of their responsibilities should they be promoted and also gets this off the HM’s plate. Let the HM know you’ll work with this person and then present them with your top 3 candidates. Join Hiring Manager’s weekly team meeting – so that you do not need an additional meeting, join their team meeting and address recruiting for 5 minutes. You might also then be able to get time with our Hiring Managers as well, kill 2 birds with 1 stone. You can also use this time to ask for referrals. Additionally, this integrates you with the team and has you seen as a valuable extension of their business. Ask if there other ways to communicate where you will be responsive – slack, google docs, email. What is their preferred method? Once you know that, commit to a solution such as consolidating all updates into a weekly updates and highlight the action items you need from the Hiring Manager so it’s not a huge time suck.
- #44: Caitlin
- #45: Caitlin
- #46: Caitlin If your executive team communicates that hiring is VIP than your HMs And hold your CEO accountable. If she says “we take recruiting seriously” and then showcases the same behavior as your hiring managers, talk to her about it.
- #47: Caitlin
- #48: Caitlin
- #49: Caitlin Proactively provide information Meetings! Run post-mortems Identify bottle-necks and decide how to solve together
- #50: Dina Caitlin touched a bit on this, but trust is a key component to your success with a HM
- #51: Dina – When building Trust, honesty goes a long way. And you are only human so communicate if you will miss a deadline. Definitely do not make this a habit, but everyone makes a mistake every once in a while. Explain your expectations for the relationship. Make sure each of you are on the same page, this will save a lot of grief in the long run. And lastly, Hold each other accountable. We’ve used the term “relationship” a lot today, recruiting really is a relationship and when all parties are held accountable and are delivering, you’ll reach success.
- #52: Caitlin
- #53: Caitlin – Participate in the team onboarding process Go to standups Train your interviewers Opensource your recruiting meetings
- #54: Katie to jump in and moderate Dina/Caitlin to answer – Personal anecdotes for each one. “Here’s what I do” Engineering… try to have examples of Aaron at Yahoo? Tying referrals into Team Goals… GH has a competition to see who can make the most referrals