Building a team of star players is one of the most important responsibilities of a manager. It is the key to doing award-winning work at scale. Finding the right candidate is hard to do right and efficiently. Often I've found the focus put on trying to be efficient and find reasons to filter out candidates (and pick from what you are left with) rather than deep-dive to find the right candidate. The nuance might seem subtle but I hope it becomes clear as we discuss how to optimize the roles of the Human Resources (HR) recruiter vs the hiring manager/team throughout the hiring process.
Over my career, I've built numerous teams at some large enterprise companies with large HR teams and at start-ups where I had to drive the process with agency support. Some learnings emerged, from interviewing hundreds of candidates with various processes and approaches.
Understanding the Role of HR in Hiring
I've worked with some really wonderful HR recruiters but also had some not-so-great HR experiences. As the hiring manager you can help the recruiter by understanding how to best utilize their skills and tools to complement your knowledge and experience in this partnership. The recruiter will never know the role you are hiring for as well as you so you will need to invest some time into helping them know what to look for beyond the bare minimum of a job description. But what they are great at is:
Sourcing: Utilizing various channels to find qualified candidates.
Screening: Evaluating resumes, conducting initial interviews, and assessing candidate fit (based on your Job description and questions).
Compliance: HR ensures adherence to employment laws and regulations throughout the hiring process.
Recruitment Marketing: Building a strong employer brand to attract top talent.
Relationship Building: Fostering connections with candidates and hiring managers.
Negotiating Compensation package: Design an offer based on the norms of the team and company taking into account the market and company/team prestige. They will know the Benefits, employee stock purchase and grants, and other employee programs
Onboarding: The general onboarding of the new employee to the company before team-specific onboarding
Help your recruiter help you
To effectively partner with the HR recruiter, the hiring manager should provide:
Detailed Job Description: A clear and comprehensive outline of the role's responsibilities, required skills, and experience. This gives HR and prospective candidates a base understanding of the role.
Candidate Profile: A detailed description of the ideal candidate, including desired qualifications, relevant past experiences, personality traits, and cultural fit. I often include past companies that I would like to see and I think their teams work similarly and have faced similar challenges. I also include certifications or equivalent experiences in processes or applications. Note which are required vs nice to have.
Hiring Timeline: A realistic timeframe for filling the position. This might also be tied to budget availability and expect it to take months to find a superstar.
Interview Questions: Input on key questions to ask candidates. This is where your knowledge of the role comes into play. You will want to think about key questions you want the recruiter to ask candidates to help you pre-vet potential interviewees. The questions should be things that don't need specialized knowledge/experience to evaluate and you can give the recruiter answers you want.
Salary Range: Competitive salary information to attract top talent. The range is determined by your company's leveling and team budget. Some recruiters think they are saving the company by lowballing but if you want a superstar this will send the message this team/company doesn't look at you as important talent or can't afford top-tier talent on teams.
Performance Metrics: Key performance indicators (KPIs) for the role, to understand what the expectations of success look like. This is important as superstars will want to know there is a fair way for them to succeed.
Budget: Allocation for recruitment costs, including advertising, agency fees, and onboarding expenses. This is often at the department level and may be grouped with some other line items on your budget.
Defining the Ideal Operations Candidate
This is where you start to plan your questions/scenarios for the interviews and an answer scorecard for evaluating candidates. It's best to have this done ahead of time so you can evaluate candidates fairly.
Outline the key skills and qualities of a successful operations professional. These are certifications and other hard skills on various applications you use. Additionally, you want to understand their experience in designing and implementing specific processes you use or plan to use.
Discussion of their past experiences, should naturally lead to what they are passionate about and what they are most interested in tackling in the future that is "leading edge"
It takes more than just a bundle of skills and experiences to have them work optimally within the team. Their work style needs to fit in with the rest of the team and the company's culture and values. Have them tell you how others would describe working with them.
Build your list of questions/scenarios and set weights for importance to the role... then score the candidates as you interview them. If there are other interviewers (executives, team members, your peers/stakeholders, etc.), you may want to coordinate your questions so they don't overlap too much and you can have different focus areas (hard skills, experiences, thought leadership, collaboration, cultural fit, etc.)
At the interview, I have the questions in my notes and take notes on the answers. After the interview, I score each group of questions and give and an overall grade. Expect you will have to go through many many candidates to find "the one"... and you will need to refer to your notes to remember some of the details of the earlier interviewees. [Share in the comments some questions you've had that generated revealing conversation]
Share a clear understanding of the role's responsibilities and expectations, how the team operates, and what the culture is like (fast moving with constant collaboration vs laid back and everyone works mostly on their own, etc.).
Building a Strong Partnership with HR
Help the recruiter understand if this is a new role or replacement and if the budget and level are taken from another role that is being replaced
Set up weekly meetings to discuss progress and candidates you reviewed and rejected and the reasons why. This helps the recruiter finetune their selection criteria and questions they asked as they vet candidates.
Identify roles that are coming in future quarters (usually as budget is freed up)
Review the number monthly (# of candidates sent for your review, number selected for interview, Candidate interview scores number of offers, all by Job Request)
Discuss ideas for improving the process as a whole
Conclusion
Most organizations don't put enough deliberate effort into improving the hiring process let alone trying to hire superstars. Often they settle to finding someone good enough with the least amount of effort. Most competent candidates can seem really similar with a scant 30-60 min interview. If you hire the wrong person it takes a long time to correct that error. Take the time to prepare probing questions and scenarios to dive deep into how good a fit they are for your team.
Work closely with the HR team to find the right superstar for your team. Leverage your respective expertise to most efficiently and effectively hire the best candidates. It's the best thing you can do for your team's and your own success (as a great manager).
[Share any tips and experiences you had as a hiring manager or candidate in the comments below.]
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