I continue to be amazed at the great divide between corporate recruiting professionals and the hiring managers they desperately want to serve. Even with training in the proper tools and techniques there seems to be a great division, a lot of finger pointing and a growing frustration. In the last two weeks I've personally trained several large organizations in the basics of Performance-based hiring^sm. Some of these training sessions were focused on hiring managers and others were focused on the recruiting departments. Here's what I heard from hiring managers:

1. Recruiters don't add any value!
2. Recruiters are fundamentally administrators, mostly paper pushers.
3. Recruiters are more focused on the process and bureaucracy than the actual outcomes.
4. Recruiters can't seem to find good talent.
5. I don't really know what our recruiting department does?
6. Recruiting is all up to me. I get very little support from HR or from the recruiting department.
7. We couldn't possibility do what you suggest (In our Performance-Based Hiring Manager Training). The corporate police (HR and corporate marketing) would shut us down in an instant.

On the other hand, here's what I heard from recruiters about hiring managers:

1. Hiring managers are unresponsive, they won't give me time to sit down and really understand the job.
2. Hiring managers are slow to respond even when we have good candidates. Resumes sometimes sit for a week or two before the hiring manager gets to them and often it's too late.
3. Hiring managers don't share in the responsibility for recruiting good talent.
4. Hiring managers don't conduct good objective interviews and often reject great and hard to find candidates for all the wrong reasons.
5. Managers don't understand how many open requisitions I've got to fill.

Part of our mission at the Adler Group is to bridge this gap by championing the key fundamental realities of Performance-based recruiting. Below are some critical truths that will help hiring managers and recruiters to bridge the great divide. You may not want to hear them, but never the less they are true.

1. Hiring managers must take time to help recruiters understand the job up- front before the external recruiting process begins. Hiring managers who can clearly articulate what success looks like on the job will get much better support from their recruiter in the process of finding top talent. Recruiters should be expected to know about the jobs they are recruiting for, but the hiring manager must take the time to outline the big "deal breakers" for each position. Most managers complain that they don't have time. But they seem to be able to find time to interview 12 candidates that aren't great fits because the recruiter didn't have a good spec to follow. They also seem to have unlimited time to manage partially competent and unmotivated employees who require more training, more supervision and more of the manager's time. The upfront investment is minimal compared to the cost of a bad hire.
   
   
2. The recruiter can't do the recruiting job alone. Great recruiting requires a partnership between recruiters and hiring managers. While recruiters can often find decent people, if hiring managers are unresponsive, don't review resumes quickly and don't call good candidates within 24 hours after receiving a resume, then the recruiter can't be held responsible for the lack of quality candidates. During the two weeks a pile of resumes sits on the typical hiring manager's desk, the very best candidates either already take other positions or pull themselves off the market. That's the reality.
   
   
3. The Hiring Manager is critical. Even great recruiters can't close top talent alone. Outstanding candidates take jobs first because they consider the job challenging and rewarding. Second they take the job because they think the manager is someone who can teach them something, help them with their career and inspire them. Hiring managers who don't understand why top people take jobs and who refuse to help recruit top talent are missing out.

These are a just a few fundamentals of great recruiting. If it seems that I am picking on hiring managers, so be it. Hiring managers are often the weakest link in the hiring chain. In my next article I'll focus on the recruiter's side of the partnership equation. Until next time. . .