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The Science of Recruiting - Part 8: Influencing Hiring Managers - The Hiring Decision

By Lou Adler, February 20, 2004

You can't afford to do searches over again. After you've presented 3-5 solid, maybe even superior candidates, the worst thing a manager can say is, "Do you have any more candidates?" Preventing this is one of the reasons why you must be able to influence hiring managers at every step in the hiring process.

Read more articles by this author.

Related Topics:

The Science of Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers

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The Science of Recruiting - Part 10: Closing and Negotiating Offers - Advanced

The Science of Recruiting - Part 9: Negotiating and Closing Offers - The Set Up

The Science of Recruiting - Part 7: Influencing Hiring Managers: How You Present Candidates Matters

There are three parts to this. It begins when you take the job assignment. The key to this is to get the hiring managers to tell you what the person needs to do to be successful, not what the person must have. If you rely on traditional job descriptions, you'll always come up short, since they're not representative of the real job. Your objective is to change the decision-making criteria up-front to something that measures performance more accurately, like deliverables, rather than skills. Your next chance to influence hiring managers is when you present candidates. This needs to be as professional as possible. I suggest a well-written resume, a formal assessment by the recruiter with examples of accomplishments, and a summary of two major accomplishments, written by the candidate. All of this minimizes superficial assessments by the hiring manager and other members of the interviewing team.

Both of these topics were discussed in earlier editions of the Science of Recruiting. While this takes a little bit of extra time up front, it minimizes the number of candidates you need to present, so the total time investment is far less.

Your really big chance to influence hiring managers is after the first round of interviews. This is when the decision is made to move forward with one or two candidates, or look for more. If you do it properly, it's your opportunity to prevent the dreaded "need more candidates" call. How to pull this off is this topic for this segment of our series. Here are some ideas:

1. Be involved. If you're not in the meeting when the decision is made to move-forward, you have no chance to affect the hiring decision. You will not normally be invited to this meeting, so invite yourself. You might even volunteer to lead the debriefing session. During these sessions you'll need to be the person to make sure every other person voting on a candidate has conducted a thorough interview. This is pretty easy to figure out. Superficial comments and generalities means the interview was incomplete. Lots of specific details with examples means the interview was effective. Comments like "a good fit," "smart," and "a real go-getter," are too soft. So are their opposites: "slow," "too quiet," and "doesn't have it." However comments like these indicates the interviewer dug deep: "led a team of six developers on the successful launch of the Panther software product in 2003," or "made quota in all but one quarter in the past seven periods, and was rookie-of-the-year in 2001." You need to be tenacious to obtain this information.

2. Be a solid interviewer. To gain respect you need to both know the job and how to interview well. This way hiring managers will trust your judgment. In fact, if you're real good they'll even invite you to the debriefing sessions. My suggestion for interviewing: get detailed examples of the candidate's biggest accomplishments. Spend 10 minutes, or so, on each one. This will give you the information you need to write-up your assessment and lead the debriefing session. It's especially helpful when you know more about the candidate's accomplishments than the other interviewers. Then you can calmly refute any incorrect comments that come up in the debriefing session.

3. No one is perfect. You'll never find a perfect candidate. So you need to make sure that hiring managers don't use the traditional job description to assess competency. The performance-based job description we recommend using describes the deliverables the person must accomplish. This way the assessment decision is made on a candidate's ability and motivation to meet these objectives, not skills, experience, and academics. This is easy to do if you use the interview to focus on the candidate's past accomplishments. Then use the assessment to compare these to the job requirements.

4. Balance is the key. We suggest using a multi-factor approach when evaluating candidates. This insures that the candidate is assessed across all job needs not just one or two. This prevents the common problem of managers who often globalize strengths or weaknesses. For example, too often a candidate without exactly the right experience or with the "wrong" education is immediately discarded, or one who is smart and assertive is assumed to be universally competent. Download the free multi-factor assessment form to insure this balance across all job needs. When you debrief the interviewing team it's also very important to not start by describing weaknesses. Many people will jump on the bandwagon and kill an otherwise competent candidate if weaknesses get magnified out of proportion too early. When you start describing strengths, then weaknesses can then be discussed in a balanced and fair way.

5. Prepare a decision matrix. List key job needs and performance objectives in a column on the left side of a table. Some of these might include technical competency, size of the team to be managed, and key job deliverables (e.g., complete project X by June). Then prepare a separate column for each candidate, and rank each candidate on an ABC scale for each factor. This way you'll be able to quickly compare all candidates across all the important job needs. Using a decision matrix like this is a good way for a recruiter to facilitate the group debriefing session. Of course, demand an example to justify every ranking.




6. Stay involved. You can't influence anybody if you're not available and present at the key decision points in the hiring process. If you want to more influence with your hiring manager clients you need to proactively stay involved every step of the way. It does take more work on your part, but overall it will be more satisfying. It's much better than finding more candidates for searches that by all rights have already been completed.

Recruiters must lead the hiring process, not react to it. This is the key to increasing your influence with hiring managers and clients alike. Lead the effort taking the assignment. Then lead the effort again by conducting a thorough and professional interview. Finally, lead the effort by volunteering to facilitate the debriefing session. Soon you'll be invited in before the requisition is even approved to help determine the real job. That's the day you're recognized as a valued asset to your company. It's a great day. Look forward to it.