Build a strong relationship with the Hiring Manager… (Webinar Debriefing)

Hey Everyone

A quick debrief about our last call to definitely end the HM month and let Alina make the show!

You all provided very interesting comments and I just want to gather here some of the most relevant fact from our conversations!

About the best questions to ask !

Elena started the conversation (the best ice-breaker person of the group, no doubt) adding some very interesting idea about questions we had to ask to the HM (how big is the team? Why should you join the company) and gave a precious advice: always looking for the perfect candidate first.

Ana-Maria following intervention was not less efficient and put on the table a great idea: asking you HM for the minus/bad side of the job (what could make a candidate unhappy?).

It was the beginning of some interrogation about honesty and transparency with the candidate and from the HM and Tim jump on it to enrich the debate with other interesting questions like knowing why is the position still open, why the last people on the job quit, what are the real challenge facing in this position in a technical but also behavioral environment…

Brams ad good comments about the question you had to ask, making in evidence a new point: the importance of feel the team and know the people in the team. He explained that could be such a great thing to gather with the candidate to explain him where he will put his foot.

About Your questions ?

Elena was a little bit worried about showing too many CV to managers (afraid that he will think that all these candidates are available and want to interview all of them letting you no other silver bullet). On this point, my Ninja from birth Frank was very reassuring telling her and us that the CV you show to the manager have only one goal : Knowing if you are in the right track are no !

In fact Frank explained that the goal is not to show your best CV but really different ones to have a better overview of what is a fit, what is not and let the Hiring manager redirect you in your search!

Alina throw a rock in the river asking: What are you really doing when you HM does not know who/what he want to recruit?

A really nice question we all have to think about as I am not sure the response we provide (asking relevant questions) is exactly what she was looking for! Let’s suggest in comments!

About Referrals

Yes, a little bit far from the subject but not so…

Obviously this conversation provide us great tips to use in our offices and in our daily basic.

Abraham gather with us his previous experience about it (he was waiting on it) where he organized 1hour session with teams explain them in 20 minutes how searching referrals in their networks and after made them practice during 40 minutes with hand-to-hand support. Cool but time-consuming!

Ana-Maria explained us the Romanian Kitchen trick: As the kitchen is one of the most crowded place in their offices they had install referrals posters but also some job description to encourage people make money/help the company! NICE!

Elena from Bulgaria has also her own technic the Email-before-the-weekend trick : just send an email Friday afternoon with the job you are looking for to all the people in the team just in case of the cross a good potential candidate during a party/soccer game/diner and have Axway referrals in mind ! Clever !

Finally the Welcome trick by Frank, welcoming the new joiners in Axway by presenting them the referral program and use the BONUS referral trick (a referral during your first week and the bonus value is multiplicate by 2 ! ) Rewarding !

About great insights !

Not surprising to find here the most experimented person in the group:

Rassam made a very interesting statement and spoke about the importance of the follow-up meeting (where you should not just talk about the candidates in the process but prefer focus on how the process/context is going, the relevancy of the candidates and the new k-words/referrals possible).

He also proposed to create a common and collaborative intake form (idea much appreciated by all of us) so I will create a collaborative document on Jive that you can all modify and improve…and finally use).

Finally he touched another great idea sharing by many people here and that was not mention in my articles: sending some questions to the HM before the meeting to let him prepare some answers! Brilliant! (I think Alina and Elena are already in this way of doing).

Tim was talking about deserving respect but also make understandable that he is not alone and that if he want you to do a good job, you require him to doing the same.

For Tim, credibility is underestimated by recruiters and he think it’s something you have to build by not being too nice saying yes to all the things and accepting to work with no sufficient resources. The HM managers have to understand 1) How valuable is your time, 2) You are not a lazy, 3) Recruitment is not an easy thing with candidates falling from LinkedIn.

Finally they both add some very interesting insight about the WHY, the selling points advise us to ask the Hiring manager why he loves working here but also why it’s great to work for the team, the project….

About the “hurt-me session”

We ended the webinar with the hurt-me session, a moment when the monthly author encourage people to tell in public what could be the most dumb, impossible, uninteresting thing in the articles he shared during the month.

I get two punishment well deserved from:

Rassam: Suggesting that the idea to follow a people in the team to see exactly how he works is no realistic here because too time-consuming / But he proposed instead to be present for the first HM interview (gaining a better understanding of what is waiting for the candidate)

Ana-Maria: Pointing out the persona building process with the manager as irrelevant cause the manager is just not the best person to answer that…instead asking that to … candidates they are a great resource of information !

Could not agree more with these two arguments.

And that’s it !

As you can see… lot of ideas, great moment…But Lack of structure! My bad … I am sure Alina will do way better for the future webinar and will help us (me?) to better prepare these meetings.

Cheers my friends