Recruiting top sales and marketing candidates for our clients often requires us to work closely with their Hiring Managers and HR teams. We like to think of this relationship as a partnership where we can provide direct feedback and advice to hiring managers.
We have found that when we are upfront and transparent, it helps expedite the hiring process and helps our clients hire the right people.
In our almost 20 years of recruiting, we still encounter tricky situations where it’s sometimes difficult, but necessary, to provide direct feedback. In turn, this feedback helps build a stronger relationship between the recruiter and the hiring manager.
If you want to hear about how the recruiters at Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search navigate these situations and provide direct feedback to hiring managers, then you can listen to our CEO and Founder, Kathleen Steffey, talk with William Tincup on the Recruiting Daily podcast.
Below, you will find some quick tips for providing direct feedback to Hiring Managers as well as some of the podcast’s highlights.
How to Build Better Relationships and Provide Direct Feedback to Hiring Managers
1. Be direct and honest
It can be difficult to have intentional conversations and provide direct feedback to hiring managers and tell them what’s not working in the process. But I’ve found that hiring managers respect you more if you are actually having straight talk with them and trying to strategize on how to have a win-win.
However, if you’re complaining or telling them what they’re not doing right, hiring managers are not as responsive to this feedback.
2. Set expectations
The key to a great partnership with a hiring manager is all about how you set up the relationship from the beginning. Before the search, set up expectations and have a conversation about what they’re looking for in a recruiting partner and how we can best work together.
3. Dive deep into priorities
In Naviga’s process, we have a one-hour calibration call with the hiring manager and our HR partner. In this call, we’re receiving a ton of information from them and a job description that we use to put all of the puzzle pieces together.
During this call, we find out their top ten hiring priorities and then break it down to their top three priorities. We will take it even further and find out their number one hiring priority. That way, by the time we are submitting candidates, there’s no confusion on either side about what they need in a candidate.
4. Be clear about compensation
As a specialized sales and marketing recruitment firm, we are pretty equipped with what you need to pay per industry across the country and in different cities.
So in our initial conversations with a potential client, we always discuss their compensation expectations. If a client has a specific compensation range in mind that is way off from industry standards, then we will first try to work with them. If they can’t budge on compensation and the range is still much lower than what we are seeing in the marketplace, then we won’t take the search.
But if we share with them that the compensation seems a little bit low and they’re willing to work with us, then we will show them our research on current compensation ranges for sales and marketing professionals. Most clients really respect that insight and aren’t turned off at all about receiving this information upfront. And if they’re able to, they will adjust the compensation going forward.
5. Act as a trusted advisor
Right from the start of your partnership, you should position yourself as an authority on hiring. If you’re able to build trust and give thoughtful feedback at the beginning of a search, then a hiring manager is more likely to trust you when it comes to making hard decisions later on in the hiring process.
Oftentimes, hiring managers will ask for my perspective or what I think about particular candidates. I won’t try to sway them wrong just to make a placement. This is what I do for a living and I’ll tell them the truth. If we need to start the search over, then we will start the search over until we find exactly who they are looking to hire.
Check out some more highlights from the podcast episode Providing Direct Feedback to Hiring Managers with Kathleen Steffey, below.
00:02:11 William Tincup
You’ve worked with a lot of hiring managers over your career. I love the part where we’re talking about how they love or they need and respect feedback and it’s not taboo. Take me into that for just a second because you’ve had, I’m sure, a range of experiences with hiring managers and HR.
00:02:33 Kathleen Steffey
Yeah definitely. Well, I’ve worked in recruiting on the corporate side of recruiting so internally and then I’ve also owned Naviga for 18 years. So my perspective with hiring managers is both in-house and then they’re my customer and they have been for 18 years. It can get tricky if you’re not used to it or let’s say have the maturity and experience to actually have some pretty intentional conversations with hiring managers to talk about what’s not working in the process. I’ve found that they respect you more if you are actually having a straight talk with them and trying to strategize on how to have a win-win versus complaining or telling them what they’re not doing right.
00:03:23 William Tincup
Yeah. In fact, a friend yesterday said, I don’t work for you, we’re partners.
00:03:56 Kathleen Steffey
Yep, I like that perspective. And I think it’s all about how you set it upfront before the search and set expectations. You need to have a conversation about what they’re looking for and how we’re going to work together and what works best, you know from a talent acquisition standpoint and things like that.
00:05:11 William Tincup
How do you deal with job descriptions? What’s your bit?
00:05:15 Kathleen Steffey
So in our process, we have a one-hour calibration with the hiring manager and our HR partner. So we’re receiving a ton of information that we pretty much pull out in order to put the puzzle pieces together, so we are given a job description from them. But what happens after we do this calibration, we take the job description they gave us and what we’ve learned in the calibration session and create what we call a search engagement profile. It is a sexier version of a job description and much more detailed and it’s more marketable for candidates.
00:06:03 William Tincup
I love this and I love the word calibration. What do y’all do during the calibration call?
00:06:17 Kathleen Steffey
So we have a series of questions that we ask and the questions get us to somewhere very special and very important. It brings out what the hiring manager truly views the gaps are in the particular department, or with the position and how this particular candidate can fill that gap. So here’s an example of a question we might ask on a calibration.
“Tell me six months from now in looking at the person that you have hired from us, what will make you say that you’ve made the right decision. What execution are you going to be looking for and what characteristics are you going to be looking for in behaviors that say alright, I’m feeling good?”
And then we asked them. Hey at 12 months, What are you going to be looking for then? So the answers to these questions tell my team exactly what to go for in terms of the backgrounds, requirements, execution history, track records, behaviors, all these different things and it’s such a simple question, but it’s so beautiful because it gives us what we really need to find quality talent.
00:07:37 William Tincup
Well, first of all, I love that and it’s a great way to collaborate, a great way to partner with somebody. They still got to be able to tell you things.
00:16:39 William Tincup
How is remote work going to change the dynamic for y’all’s business now that you have positions again? Does work from home impact you at all or has it impacted the conversations you’ve had with clients hiring managers and HR?
00:17:22 Kathleen Steffey
Well, Naviga has been remote for six years. So there wasn’t a big change and with sales and marketing professionals, a lot of them are remote. What’s happened in the last four months and how It’s impacted us is the entire organization. Let’s talk about one client for an example. If they’re moving thousands of people remotely they have that initiative in itself. Even if the business was doing well, they’re profitable and you know revenues grew this year and all that stuff. They still had to pause what they were doing to put this entire organization remotely. So HR, you know, God bless. They’ve been amazing and overwhelmed. They’ve had a huge initiative under their belt. So what’s happened in the month of April was a lack of communication. It got quiet and things weren’t moving as fast, but what I’ve noticed is a beautiful thing at these organizations. The employees have adjusted so well remotely because right in May we started just moving right along but it was a huge undertaking to get these organizations having remote staff.
00:21:25 William Tincup
What’s a great hiring manager for you? What’s just somebody that just gets it?
00:21:52 Kathleen Steffey
Yeah, a great hiring manager is somebody who trusts in our abilities and asks us for advice based on how much trust we have built in the process. For example, Kathleen, what do you think? You know, I’m feeling this way, but then again that way and I mean, what are you thinking? Give me your perspective.
And I think it’s because of my corporate HR experience, but I am not the type that will sway them wrong and sway them just to hire because this is what I do for a living. I’ll tell them the truth and if we need to start to search over we will start the search over but I love it when hiring managers show that trust and ask for advice.
00:23:04 William Tincup
So this really tracks for me. If someone trusts you and you trust in them, then it’s earned. This is a two-way street. We covered a bunch of stuff in a very short amount of time.
00:25:34 Kathleen Steffey
Thank you. I’ve had fun.
00:25:36 William Tincup
Alrighty, well that’s it and until the next episode.
Thanks for this post. These are some great tips of building relationship with managers before recruiting sales and marketing candidates.