Part 4: Hiring Manager Roadblocks, Stack Ranking Skills

This blog post is the fourth in a series of five posts based on our webinar with Greenhouse, 10 Hiring Manager Recruiter Roadblocks and How to Overcome Them. In our personal or professional lives, we are encouraged to strive for greatness or perfection, often to the exclusion of personal growth or job satisfaction. Hiring managers, too, often insist on finding that 100% perfect candidate that satisfies a lengthy laundry list of skills and qualifications. They want that elusive Purple Squirrel and won’t settle for anything less than a Purple Squirrel. In the end, this rigid, inflexible perspective can negatively impact your recruiting efforts and slow the entire hiring process. To ensure you’re hiring candidates that can make a long-term impact at your organization, broaden your perspective by focusing on growth potential, not mere perfection. Why does this happen? To fill their open positions, hiring managers naturally look for ideal candidates with impressive qualifications that match the roles. In turn, they expect recruiters to bring in only the finest candidates and proceed to evaluate applicants based solely on their resume and interview skills.

Hiring managers often consider interviewing candidates as an isolated responsibility. Instead of actively participating in the process, they prefer to meet with candidates and leave preliminary candidate research and follow-up to recruiters. Unfortunately, hiring managers typically have little interest in asking their team for referrals, believing that task falls in recruiters’ laps.

Worse, hiring managers often blame recruiters for communication SNAFUs, declaring, “If I was supposed to hire people, you wouldn’t be here.” Taking responsibility for your role is just one tactic to help alleviate this disconnect. Draft descriptions together Set up time with your hiring manager to source together. If you can demonstrate that perfection isn’t the end goal, you may agree to be more lenient on candidate skill sets. It’s important to work together with your hiring manager during this process to ensure that everyone is on the same page and you’re setting realistic expectations about the types of candidates you’re going to attract. Review top performers Look within your own team or department. Was everyone an actual Purple Squirrel or were they candidates with core skills who came on board with intangibles such as a willingness to learn and a hunger for growth and advancement. Remember, technical skills can be learned, but the right attitude is hard to come by. Additionally, it’s been shown that IQ is not the only factor in determining how successful an employee will be – studies have shown that other variables, such as background, socioeconomic class and education level, as well as various personality traits are also factors that can be linked to employee success. Start interviewing Suggest your hiring manager speak with a few candidates to get a sense if your job requirements are unrealistic or too stringent. But don’t spend too much time on reconnaissance or risk paralyzing your search. Why do they want a Purple Squirrel? Is it weaknesses on their team? Past hiring mistakes? Simple insecurity? Maybe it comes down to simply following orders from an insistent manager. Whatever the root cause, understanding the source or motivation of the hiring manager can be that “Ah, ha!” moment that leads to a better, mutual understanding between hiring manager and recruiter. Stack rank skills It’s simple math: settling on three must-have skills or qualifications is much easier than an impossible 10. This trade-off can give you a fighting chance to find the right candidate. When beginning your candidate search, keep in mind that you many never find your perfect Purple Squirrel in the candidate wild. Instead, evaluate candidates based on growth potential, potential leadership and desire to advance. Meanwhile, if your recruiting efforts are being impacted by unrealistic expectations, take a look at our webinar 10 Hiring Manager Roadblocks and How to Overcome Them.