10 hiring roadblocks and how to overcome them, with greenhouse
TRANSCRIPT
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Speakers
Dina RulliManager, Talent Acquisition
Caitlin WilterdinkLead Recruiter Greenhouse
Agenda:
- Defining the Problem- Common Behavior- Identify Goal- 10 Hiring Manager Roadblocks- Solutions- Questions
The most important person in your recruiting process isn’t the recruiter.
It isn’t your candidate either.
The Problem
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
- 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
- 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
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
“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.”
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
“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.”
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
“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?”
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
“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.”
Automate the interview process
Train the recruiting team to
assess the technical stuff
Build interview time into
project deadlines
Budget time for feedback
Solutions
“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.”
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
“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.”
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
“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.”
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
Problem 8:
Hiring Managers panic if they don’t get a ton of applications in the first few days a job is open
“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.”
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
“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.”
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
Can the search be delegated?
Join Hiring Manager’s weekly
team meeting
Alternative ways to communicate
Solutions
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…
Proactively provide information
Meetings!
Run post-mortems
Identify bottle-necks and decide how to solve together
Participate in the team onboarding process
Go to standups
Train your interviewers
Opensource your recruiting meetings