How to Ensure That Hiring Managers Do Their Part of the Recruitment Work with Higher Motivation

Hiring managers are rarely professional recruiters. Thus, they need our help.

Over the last couple of months, I was looking for a new job. I applied for a few positions, and all the answers I got were either “Thank you for your application” and nothing more after that, or four to five short emails where they stated that they went with another applicant. Only one hiring manager took the time to answer with two lines of personal feedback, and I felt good about it even though I was not chosen.

All is well that ends well—I ended up finding an amazing job here at TalentAdore. But I still remember the companies that failed to handle their processes well.

It is a real problem that hiring managers do not feel motivated to communicate with candidates. In this blog post, you will find out why it matters so much and learn the concrete steps you can take to increase your hiring managers’ motivation.

Why Hiring Managers’ Motivation Is Crucial

Marissa Peer, a world-renowned therapist, and author, once said,

“What is this insight I’ve spent 30 years and thousands of hours of practice learning? It is my understanding that humans come onto this planet with two powerful emotional needs: to find connection and to avoid rejection. If you dig deep enough into the emotional problems of almost anyone, you can trace their issues back to the lack of fulfillment of those two needs. It’s really that simple because that truth is so powerful, and part of its strength is its simplicity.”

Hiring managers have a responsibility to evaluate candidates and reject people with the wrong skill set, work history, or education. They also need to motivate the winning candidate to seal the deal and join your company. Sometimes, they need to go back to square one and start over if no suitable candidates have shown up yet. For all this work, they need the right motivation.

Hiring Managers Influence Candidate Experience

Do not burn any bridges by alienating rejected candidates with blanket rejections or, even worse, radio silence!

Hiring managers have an important role in the hiring process and the power to affect the lives of many. Why did I say many? Are they not just hiring one person per role? Yes, that might be, but they are also saying no to many more. Several hundred people could apply for an open position, and the hiring manager can only choose one.

What about all the others, the ones who were rejected? Did the hiring manager care for them, or were they just sent a blanket email saying that the company went with another candidate? The rejected candidates might have spent hours on research. They put their hearts and minds into applying for the job, and they tried to answer all the questions and explain why they would be a good match.

Application Is a Love Letter

Here at TalentAdore, we think of applications as love letters to companies. Does your hiring manager see it the same way? We adore talent (hence our name), and we think it is important that everyone else does, too.

Why should caring about rejected applicants be important to your hiring manager? Well, it is purely human. Also, it is about your brand. Think about the good-will you give to your company when you take great care of your candidates. You are not risking burning any bridges by alienating rejected candidates with blanket rejections or, even worse, radio silence!

Now you and your company can be part of making the world a better place with a little human touch by trying “to find a connection and to avoid rejection”!

Why Hiring Managers Do Not Feel Motivated

“Oh, we just don’t have time for it.”

“It really is not my responsibility.”

Hiring managers might think like this, and they are partly right. They usually have other responsibilities, and the hiring part may only occasionally fall on their laps when they need to fill a resource in their department, for instance.

Communicating with candidates manually can be difficult and time-consuming. How do you write a polite feedback message? How do you explain to candidates how the process moves forward when there are tens or even hundreds of candidates? What should you do in the interviews and after them?

Hiring managers are rarely professional recruiters. They probably just want to fill the position as soon as possible and get it over with. They might not even think about the impact their decision has on all the rejected candidates. Without understanding, there is no motivation to even try.

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Practical Steps for Increasing Hiring Managers’ Motivation

How do you tackle the issues of a lack of time, experience, and understanding? Here are a few tips.

1. Automate Communication with Candidates

The more manual work there is for hiring managers, the less likely they are to do it. Thus, making hiring managers write messages from scratch is not a great idea.

Write message templates for hiring managers that they can easily use in specific situations—for example, when the process is delayed. Moreover, create status updates that can be sent automatically or with just one click.

2. Simplify the User Experience with a Hiring Manager View

Make sure your ATS has an intuitive UI so that hiring managers will not be exhausted from using a complex system. They should have their own Hiring Manager view and, thus, be able to use only the features they need without unnecessary bells and whistles distracting them from the job.

A simple mobile user interface is a great ad-on. With it, hiring managers can easily handle the most important recruitment tasks on their mobile devices while on the go. This option saves time and leads to a reduced application handling time.

3. Educate Them About the Purpose of the Candidate Experience

Do you know if your hiring managers understand the purpose of the candidate experience? Go through the benefits and what happens if the experience is bad with your hiring managers. What does it mean for the company, the manager, and the candidate? Back up your arguments with real data about the candidate experience

4. Reward Great Candidate Feedback

Have you ever thought about rewarding hiring managers for getting great reviews from candidates? We have one customer who goes through candidate feedback with each hiring manager a few times a year. They monitor the performance of each hiring manager and can see from the statistics how they are doing. With the help of feedback, they can reward great performances and discuss areas for improvement.

5. Give Clear Instructions for Job Interviews

In each job interview, you might want to explain certain things about your organization, such as the company story, and ask at least a few key questions. Add this information to your recruitment software, if possible, and create question lists for taking notes. These tools help hiring managers make their interviews systematic. They also increase the professionalism of the interview process.

It is also vital to tell the managers what they should do after the interview. Are they expected to give feedback to the candidates themselves or write notes and let HR handle the feedback?

Be as clear with your instructions as possible and ask your hiring managers if anything is unclear to them. You may be surprised that some things that feel self-explanatory to you as an HR professional are not clear at all to hiring managers. It could be something as small as what to wear to the interview or how the interview software works.

Conclusion: Improve Hiring Managers’ Motivation

Wouldn’t it be great if all hiring managers remembered the golden rule, “treat others like you want to be treated”? That is the power of TalentAdore. We bring back what we call the “human touch.” Our automated process and technology help hiring managers easily find the right candidate and give personalized feedback to all rejected applicants.

We are happy to help you and your company in this process, now and in the future. Request a demo to discuss more with us.