Have you ever ordered groceries online? I can’t allow that level of trust with a stranger. They aren’t going to compare prices and make sure I get the best deal. They don’t know that I would swap broccoli for green beans, but only if the broccoli is on sale and it doesn’t look like it’s melting in the bottom of the produce stand. I’m a little neurotic about groceries, but that’s not the point.
The pandemic accelerated the creation of shop-for-you apps at places like the grocery store. However, the smart technology is not quite intelligent enough. There are a variety of things that can go wrong when a person completes orders without any context.
Order-Taker or Chef: The Recruiting Role
If you wonder why hiring managers look at recruiters like order-takers, consider how similar your relationship is to any of these on-demand shopping apps. At least, that’s what the average recruiting relationship looks like at most companies — the hiring manager submits an order and you complete it. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be.
Furthermore, this whole scenario goes completely sideways when we rely on hiring managers who are not taught to write job postings to write your requisitions. Aren’t you supposed to be the hiring expert? So why do you have them making orders?
Changing the Order: Recruiters Should Write Job Posts
Hiring managers should be able to rely on you for more than delivering candidates to their door. It shouldn’t feel like an autonomous process to come up with a list of requirements, only to dump them on someone else’s door and say, “Hire me a good one.”
That relationship is broken and could easily be fixed by educating recruiters on writing great job postings and positioning themselves as the experts for these postings and your hiring process. Recreating this moment changes the tone for the entire hiring process, and it starts with the job post.
Except, this is where managers say recruiters are too busy, not good writers, etc. Pick your reason. I can go on and on. I have this conversation once a week.
So why should recruiters write job postings? There are three immediate benefits to repositioning the role of the recruiter in this process.
- Trust. If you facilitate trust early in the process, the hiring manager is more likely to trust your slate and every other recommendation you make every single step of the way. Trust is fundamental to the hiring manager and recruiter relationship — and it happens during intake.
- Time to fill. Writing the correct requirements in the first place will make the right people apply. Create clarity and you’ll immediately see a shift in time to fill. Which will also make hiring managers trust you even more. Being good has that impact.
- Retention. The cost of losing someone after training them is enormous.
Don’t rely on hiring managers who don’t know how to write job postings to create something accurate and true. Instead, coach recruiters to take the lead and prioritize time with hiring managers, then watch your relationship evolve.