The Key to Building Strong Hiring Manager Relationships: Data

Each party has a key ingredient they bring to the table: HR has a strong expertise in sourcing, interviewing and closing candidates, while hiring managers know what combination of experience, education, and skills they want in their next candidate. When these ingredients mix well, you have a recipe for successful hiring.

However, HR and hiring managers often mix as well as oil and water. HR doesn’t communicate what it knows about the recruitment process, and hiring managers don’t do a great job of communicating what they need in a candidate. In the end, HR thinks that hiring managers have unrealistic expectations, while hiring managers feel that HR doesn’t understand what they need in a candidate.

According to LinkedIn’s Data Driven Recruiting eBook, 80% of recruiters think they have a high to very high understanding of the jobs they’re recruiting for, while 61% of hiring managers say recruiters have a low to moderate understanding of the jobs they’re recruiting for. Furthermore, 82% of recruiters say they have recently dealt with a hiring manager with unrealistic expectations. It’s no wonder HR-hiring manager relationships seem strained.

HR and hiring managers need to work as a team to build a strong recruitment process and find qualified talent – and data can help that happen. HR data – including information about talent shortages, time to fill, and compensation – can help HR teams set realistic expectations with their hiring managers and be seen as strategic advisors throughout the recruitment process.

Data about talent shortages, for instance, can be used to help hiring managers understand which positions will be difficult to fill. When a hiring manager comes to you with a hard-to-fill position, you can set the expectation that it will likely take longer and be more costly to fill the role.

Armed with this data, you may suggest that they use a direct hire agency to fill the role, and provide them with average recruitment agency fees so they know what to budget. You may also suggest that they reduce the number of job qualifications and consider opening the search to non-local candidates (and offering them remote work or a relocation package).

The infographic from LinkedIn below suggests sitting down with your hiring managers to show them how the size of your talent pool increases each time a job requirement – including location – is removed.