3 Ways Recruiters Can Help Hiring Managers Hire Better

In today’s evolving talent landscape, recruiters have a unique opportunity to move beyond the traditional, transactional model and become true strategic partners to hiring managers.  

As automation takes over high-volume, repetitive hiring tasks, the value of the recruiter lies increasingly in human insight and influence, and to be truly invaluable, recruiters must position themselves more as talent advisors.  

“There are opportunities to step up and be impactful,” said Ben Gotkin, a recruiting trainer and consultant at Recruiting Toolbox in Seattle, speaking at an event hosted by recruitDC, a professional networking community in the Washington, D.C., area. “There are ways to help our hiring managers make better, faster, more impactful decisions around how they hire. We can have the best recruiting team on the planet, but if our hiring managers fail the process, it doesn’t matter.” 

Gotkin said that recruiters must acknowledge that hiring is just one of many priorities for managers, but everyone needs to be aware that the consequences of poor hiring — delayed product launches, lost revenue, and burned-out teams — can be severe.  

The future of the recruiting role is advisory and consultative, he said. “We have to influence hiring managers. We have to get their attention. We have to appeal to what they care about the most — speed and quality. Making a great hire fast.”  

Once the recruiter’s approach and the goals of hiring managers are aligned, “we can guide them toward smarter, more effective hiring, ultimately driving better outcomes for the entire business,” he said. 

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Go Faster

Every hiring manager wants the recruiting process to move faster.  

“They typically want someone hired yesterday,” Gotkin said. “But do they have self-awareness of the impact they have on the speed of the process? No. And that’s where an opportunity lies.” 

Recruiters are often held back by the decisions that hiring managers are making or not making.  

“The greatest drags on speed tend to be unrealistic expectations around the candidate profile and compensation,” he said. “Unfortunately, we tend to take those unrealistic expectations about the candidate and say, ‘I’ll get back to you with resumes.’ We miss the opportunity on the front end to push back and let them know why we think what they want is unrealistic. The long list of must-haves in combination with the unwillingness to pay market rates causes a real gap.” 

Gotkin said recruiters must work with hiring managers to either redefine what they want or what they will pay in order to get the person they want.  

“We have to let them know that there are real trade-offs between cost, speed, and quality,” he said. “For example, if you need someone really fast who is high-quality, the cost will have to go up. If you need someone high-quality but you are not willing to pay market rate, it will slow things down. These are the laws of recruiting physics. It’s this simple.”  

Recruiters have to make hiring managers understand that these variables and the choices made upfront will have an impact on the ability to meet hiring goals.  

“I will reframe what they originally ask for with options that take the variables into account,” Gotkin said. “I will ask, ‘Would you rather have someone who is 80% what you want and can be hired in two weeks, or still searching for the perfect candidate three months from now?’ That’s how we can push back. We never say, ‘No.’ Our job is to educate and provide options. Be clear about their role, the process, the timelines.” 

Gotkin said to never ask a hiring manager to describe their ideal candidate. “A better use of time is to align on a realistic profile and whether or not we can afford that person,” he said.  

He advised arriving at the intake meeting with data showing how long it typically takes a candidate to go through each stage of the hiring process. “Point out the things that often slow the process down. Address those obstacles early,” he said. 

Know the Business 

Hiring managers commonly say that they wish their recruiters knew more about the business. If a recruiter doesn’t understand the business, how can they target the necessary talent?  

“In order to build a high level of trust and confidence with hiring managers, we have to understand their business,” Gotkin said.  

He explained how a supervisor early in his recruiting career directed him to shadow the different job types at the company.  

“I worked in the warehouse, I rode the truck, I worked in the stores,” he said. “I saw the work in action. As I advanced in my career, I took the time to truly understand what the business did, what does success look like, what the risks were. Recruiters need high levels of business acumen and intellectual curiosity to truly succeed.”  

Gotkin encouraged recruiters to shadow the roles they hire for, read the annual business report, and try to understand how the roles fit into the bigger business strategy.  

“A recruiting strategy should never be built independent of the business strategy,” he said. “Misalignment is the root of all evil in recruiting. Misalignment causes problems.”    

Bring the Insights  

Hiring managers expect recruiters to be the hiring experts. But they often don’t have confidence in recruiters’ expertise, Gotkin said. “So, we need to show up as experts, with data and a point of view. We need to be experts on the sell, which includes compensation, the labor market, in order to know who our competitors are, the sources of hire with the most ROI, and where the pain points are in the hiring process.” 

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He said that the initial intake meeting should be more like a strategy meeting than simply taking an order. “Do the research, look at historical challenges, pull data, and bring insights to the meeting. Have a collaborative conversation with the hiring manager to build a plan together. Share ideas and ask for feedback. That takes more time on the front end, but the better job we do with that often avoids later corrections and failures.”