A Hiring Manager’s Checklist: What Do You Need To Know?

Adrian Dixon

June 12, 2019

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Have you been curious as to what hiring managers need to consider in their day-to-day workflow?

Hiring managers are busy people

That’s usually what hurts the hiring manager-to-recruiter relationship: Hiring managers are busy people (as are recruiters), and oftentimes hiring managers don’t fully understand the full scope of recruiting beyond “I need a great person for my team ASAP!” Because both sides are busy and understanding of each side’s role can be confusing — recruiters don’t always understand the full scope of what every department does, either — the relationship can be messy, meetings can be rushed, and the wrong candidates can be put forth.

There are any number of ways to remedy this challenge, including using artificial intelligence in your recruiting, but one of the most basic ways is to have a checklist of what you, as a recruiter, need from the hiring manager. Here’s one template you can follow.

The Basic Questions

  • What is the job title?
  • Who will this person report to?
  • What is the department?
  • What are the expected daily tasks?
  • Have you ever had someone in this role before?
    • If yes: What were the pros/cons of them in the role?
    • If no: Move along.
  • What are the main responsibilities?
  • Are any credentials or advanced degrees needed?
  • Is it overtime-eligible?
  • What would be the time off availability for a new hire?
  • What about benefits?
  • What is the overall compensation?

The Second Tier

These questions allow you to understand the team better, which can help when having early conversations with candidates. It also gives you a little bit of color to use when writing job descriptions or posting about the job online:

  • How would you describe the culture of your team?
  • What is the current average tenure of your existing team?
  • Where could this job evolve to in 1, 3, and 5 years?
  • What is the best project your team has completed in the past year?
  • What was the most challenging project of the past year?
  • Give me three adjectives to describe your team.
  • How important is collaboration?
  • What tech stack tools are used on your team?
    • How proficient do you want candidates to be with these tools?
  • How would you see your team/department changing in the next year?
  • Does this role overlap with any other existing roles?
  • Does this team socialize outside of work together?
  • What are the big events or touchpoints of a year on this team (trade shows, campaign rollouts, etc.)?
    • When is the “busy season?”
  • Is it OK to “bring your whole self to work” or is this team more about getting the work done?

How Ideal helps hiring managers

We didn’t even get into recruiting tech stack considerations above, but hiring manager adoption rate on any technology you use to help with recruiting is really important. You don’t want recruiting tech to become “shelf-ware,” and you want hiring managers to feel as if — to know that — both the recruiters and the tech are pointed at best practices. The goal is to provide the hiring manager peace of mind that their team will get the best addition possible. Ideal has the tech to screen for the right people, and this checklist above is one way to help build the IRL relationship with the hiring manager.

One final note: Obviously there are a good deal of questions above, and the hiring manager is a busy person, as noted. You can send hiring managers the full list and bold questions that you absolutely need an answer to, but encourage them to answer more questions in order to give you the most context possible on the role. Some might answer all of them, and some will only answer the bold ones. But it still gives you a baseline of what exactly you’re looking for. Once you have that, the tech is your partner in the search.