Hiring often touches multiple roles and functions across organizations. Without unified sources for tracking, this adds new hurdles to keeping everyone on the same page. We interviewed Sarah Bradshaw, Talent Acquisition Partner at BambooHR to learn more. Here are the top hiring collaboration hacks.
Hack #1 — Screen for a candidate’s soft skills
Sarah says that this can be done through a thorough and successful intake or “kick off” meeting, as well as through building and utilizing a scorecard. “In the intake meeting, you should dig in deep with the hiring team and ask lots of questions to make sure that you all know exactly what you’re looking for and what you need for the role. With that information, you can then build a scorecard which, if built well, will detail out each of the competencies you’re looking for in a candidate, including soft skills or traits,” she says.
To learn more about scorecards, what they are, and how to build and use one, “Who” by Geoff Smart and Randy Street is a great resource! Scorecards should be customizable to your company and role as well.
Hack #2 — Check job descriptions for inclusive language
According to Sarah, at BambooHR, the talent acquisition partner is usually responsible for creating the job ad. The hiring manager will review it as well, so between the two of them, inclusive language is something they should both be checking for. “We’ll also sometimes share our job ads with our copywriting team before posting, and they’ll sometimes have some good insights to share as well,” she says
As far as inclusive language for different genders goes, she recommends a gender decoder. This helps to ensure that you’re not accidentally favoring one audience over the other.
Hack #3 — Ensure your job ad reaches top talent
In the book “Staffing the Contemporary Organization” by Donald L. Caruth, Gail D. Caruth and Stephanie S. Pane, they have a great template of questions to go over to build the job description. This is what Sarah modeled their job description templates on at BambooHR.
A job description should be more in depth and what you then use to create your job ad, which is what the candidate will see and what is posted online. It includes the most important information about the company, the job, and what you’re looking for in a candidate.
As far as creating a job ad to attract top talent, you need to make sure you’re doing two things:
- First, make sure to use your company’s brand voice. Don’t just try and sound like every other company and every other job ad out there. Show your brand through your job ad.
- Second, make sure that you understand the candidate persona that you’re looking for, and appeal to that specific persona.
For example, if you were hiring a software engineer, and you knew that software engineers are regularly overworked, but your company offers a work/life balance where they wouldn’t regularly have to work more than 40 hours, you can gear your job ad to appeal to that type of an audience. Show your employer value proposition or EVP through your job ad.
Hack #4 — Minimize “groupthink”
Scorecards are really helpful to minimize group bias. They help a hiring team to look at a candidate more objectively. “When we do interviews here at BambooHR for our Talent Acquisition team, after we rate the candidate in the different areas, we’ll hide our responses so that the other person rating them will be able to rate the candidate as well without having been influenced by the others’ thoughts. We also have built a very open culture, . and open conversations are encouraged,” she says. The best way to find the best candidate is to be open about thoughts, opinions, concerns, etc. and talk them through so that you land in the best place.
Hack #5 — Leverage a consistent recruiting process
One way to do this is to ensure that you are partnering with your hiring manager every step of the way.Make sure they see you as a partner and see the value in what you have to say and the counsel you have to give. It will also be helpful to explain the why behind certain recruitment tools. “If they don’t understand them and don’t understand how they’ll make the process better, then they may be resistant to adopting them. If they understand the why, they may be more receptive, she says. A thorough hiring manager training can also really help
Hack #6 — Measure your candidate experience
Employer branding websites such as Glassdoor, where interviewees can leave ratings and reviews are helpful as well as a new hire survey that we send out to all new employees, asking for feedback on their interviewing experience. Lastly, a check in at 90 days to ask questions about how their experience has been so far can also be enlightening.
Hack #7 — Have a philosophy around salary
Be open with the candidate up front, as well as to build a trusting relationship with them early on so that they know we’re not trying to take advantage of them. “We don’t often have to do salary negotiations here because we’re very thoughtful about the number we offer in the first place. We think about what the best compensation would be for someone with the candidate’s specific experience, in this specific role, and offer what we truly think is best. We don’t try to go as low as we can. I explain this to the candidates throughout the interview process so that when it comes time for making an offer, they know that we’re going to give our best offer,” says Sarah. As a result, the candidate is less likely to counter offer and more likely to trust that they’re being given the best offer.
Final Thoughts: Hacks to Better Hiring Manager Collaboration
Partnering with hiring managers is the key to making successful hires. A good checklist of things you need and to stick by for any position across the board are:
- A thorough job ad
- An in depth and successful intake or kickoff meeting
- A complete and compelling job ad
- A clean and efficient interview process
- A really great scorecard
A few other things that can really help are having a tight and open partnership with the hiring manager and building a trusting relationship with candidates throughout the interview process!
>> To learn more about how to improve your hiring manager collaboration at your company, check out our Hiring Manager Playbook for insights to apply today!