How to Be a Better Hiring Manager

You’ve probably noticed that finding the right candidate isn't always straightforward. Hiring can feel like a maze, juggling between job descriptions, interviews, and team feedback. Understanding what makes a great hiring manager can drastically improve your hiring process, leading to better team performance and increased job satisfaction. Practical tips and targeted improvements can streamline your efforts and help you build stronger, more diverse teams.

Let’s discuss the key traits and responsibilities that define an excellent hiring manager and see how you can adopt them to enhance your effectiveness. Dive in to discover actionable steps to refine your approach, ensure a great candidate experience, and make informed hiring decisions.

1. What Makes a Great Hiring Manager?

1.1 Help the Recruiter Understand the Role

Helping the recruiter fully grasp the role you're hiring for is crucial. Provide comprehensive insights into job responsibilities, required skills, and the team environment. Share specific examples of successful employees in similar roles and outline your expectations clearly. This will allow the recruiter to target the right candidates more effectively.

Pro-tip: Schedule regular check-ins with recruiters to address any questions and provide updates. This ongoing dialogue ensures that both parties are aligned and working cohesively towards finding the ideal candidate.

1.2 Clearly Define Your Ideal Candidate

Defining your ideal candidate involves more than listing qualifications. Specify the critical competencies, experiences, and attributes necessary for the role. Use a scorecard system to rank these traits, which makes evaluating candidates against a consistent standard easier. This method helps eliminate bias and focuses on the most important aspects of the role.

You can also develop a candidate persona—a detailed profile representing your ideal hire. Include insights about their career goals, preferred working style, and soft skills. This nuanced understanding will guide your search and improve your chances of finding a great fit.

Pro-tip: Share your candidate persona and scorecard with your team. This transparency ensures everyone evaluates candidates using the same criteria and prioritises relevant skills and attributes.

1.3 Move Quickly as a Team

Efficient hiring processes are essential in a competitive job market. To move quickly as a team, streamline your interview scheduling and decision-making processes. Use collaborative tools to coordinate schedules and gather feedback promptly. Fast turnaround times help keep top candidates engaged and reduce the risk of losing them to other opportunities.

Team alignment is critical. Ensure that all interviewers understand the role, the must-have criteria, and the desired attributes. Hold pre-interview briefings to get everyone on the same page and post-interview debriefs to share insights and make swift decisions.

1.4 Focus on Candidate Experience

Candidate experience can make or break your hiring success. Maintaining a respectful and professional process leaves a positive impression, regardless of the outcome. Ensure that interviews start on time, and update candidates regularly about their application status.

Create a compelling and welcoming environment, both virtually and face-to-face. Provide clear instructions, be punctual, and show genuine interest in the candidate’s background and aspirations. A seamless experience fosters engagement and can turn candidates into advocates for your brand, even if they aren’t hired.

1.5 Build Inclusive and Diverse Teams

Inclusive and diverse teams bring varied perspectives and foster innovation. Promote diversity by creating an unbiased hiring process. Use structured interview questions and scoring to mitigate unconscious bias. Emphasise the importance of cultural add rather than cultural fit, encouraging diversity of thought and experience.

Incorporate diverse interview panels to ensure well-rounded candidate evaluations. Training your team on diversity and inclusion principles can also enhance their awareness and commitment to these values. Remember, an inclusive hiring process helps attract a broader talent pool and builds a stronger organisational culture.

2. Use Tools to Improve Hiring Processes

2.1 Benefits of Structured Interviews

Implementing structured interviews can significantly improve your hiring process. Start by designing structured templates that include consistent questions for every candidate. This ensures you're comparing apples to apples in every interview. Clear, specific scorecards help interviewers evaluate responses based on pre-determined criteria. Importantly, structured interviews can reduce bias, giving each candidate an equal opportunity to showcase their skills.

Additionally, structured interviews help in maintaining a professional and organised process. They keep the interview focused and ensure that all essential topics are covered. Evidenced's Structured Interview Builder lets you break interviews down into timed sections, ensuring equitable time for each competency. This not only makes interviews more efficient but also enhances the candidate experience by creating a consistent framework.

Pro-tip: Using structured interviews can reduce bias and ensure you assess every candidate fairly. This leads to more objective and data-driven hiring decisions.

2.2 Why It’s Important to Record Interviews

Recording interviews can be a game-changer for your hiring process. With recordings, you can revisit a candidate’s responses without relying solely on written notes. This reduces the likelihood of missing critical information or misinterpreting responses. When your team can review recordings, it allows for collaborative decision-making — everyone can revisit and discuss specific moments in the interview.

Moreover, interview recordings help improve your interviewers' skills. By reviewing their interviews, interviewers can identify areas for improvement. Evidenced offers real-time video recording that synchronises with live transcripts, allowing you to find key moments easily. You can play back the video at your convenience, making it simpler to evaluate a candidate's potential comprehensively.

Pro-tip: Always get the candidate’s consent before recording the interview. Use tools that provide seamless recording and playback to improve efficiency and accuracy in evaluations.

2.3 Enhancing Candidate Experience

Enhancing the candidate experience is crucial for attracting top talent. Ensure candidates feel respected and valued throughout the hiring process. Simple actions, such as being punctual, sending timely feedback and offering transparent communication, can significantly impact their experience. Creating a welcoming and inclusive environment starts with a well-organised interviewing process.

Using Evidenced can also elevate the candidate experience. Features like a branded waiting room, live candidate chat, and post-interview surveys show candidates that their interaction with your company matters. The branded waiting room adds a touch of professionalism, and post-interview surveys help you gather unbiased feedback to refine your hiring process constantly. Ensuring candidates are engaged and informed at all stages can make your company stand out.

2.4 Bias-free Decision Making

Achieving bias-free decision-making in the hiring process is essential for building diverse teams. Start by defining the competencies you're looking for and stick to them during evaluations. Avoid subjective criteria, and use structured scorecards to ensure consistent assessments. Conduct training for your team on recognising and mitigating unconscious biases.

Adopting technology can really help, Evidenced hides fellow interviewers decisions until you’ve submitted your own. Ensuring you come to your own conclusions instead of being influenced by others.

Pro-tip: Regular training on unconscious bias, coupled with the right tools, can help your team make more objective and inclusive hiring decisions.

Incorporating these tools will ensure your hiring practices are effective, inclusive, and fair. By leveraging structured interview templates, recording interviews, prioritising candidate experience, and committing to bias-free decision making, you will become a better hiring manager and attract top talent.