Working Well With Your Recruiter

Steve shumaker
A Positive Working Relationship With Your Recruiter Can Help You Bring On Employees That Will Ultimately Become Stars.

Before you can be the best manager you can be, you must get good people coming in the door. That is where the cycle of good goals, coaching, employee development and positive results begin.

All of the best management techniques are best utilized with employees that start out eager to learn and capable of going beyond your expectations. If you are the typical manager, you have inherited a number of employees, good and bad.

You have to determine a strategy to get their performance to high levels, but you can start fresh with new employees. A positive working relationship with your recruiter can help you immensely in bringing on employees that will ultimately become stars in your organization.

There are some things that you can do to build a positive relationship with your recruiter. The following are a few things that, if you do them, will help you build a team together:

Work together on job descriptions. Get together with your recruiter and HR rep to build a job description that clearly describes the position that you are trying to fill. It should include specific skills and abilities required, outcomes expected, and what exactly the job entails. Once you have it completed, run it by a few operations people for feedback.

Build a job profile. Once the specific job description is in place, work with your recruiter to build a job profile that can be used when posting or advertising for the position. This document will be what prospective employees see first, so it should be a solid first impression.

Discuss unique challenges. Meet with your recruiter to discuss unique situations surrounding the position. These might include challenges you have had in the past filling the position, personalities that work best, your management style, teamwork, etc. These are important things that may not show up in a job description, but are helpful when the recruiter is screening applicants.

Keep constant contact. Stay in touch with your recruiter. Let them know your schedule so they can schedule interviews for you. If there are changes to the job, keep them in the loop. If you are not available, make sure you have someone available to work with the recruiter. Open positions cost money, so it is important to keep the process moving and work with your recruiter continuously.

Be aware of timeframes. Ask the recruiter how long it takes to conduct background checks and drug screens. They vary with different situations. Your recruiter is a professional and they want to fill the position as much as you do. They can give you a sense of how long things take so you can plan for them.

Ask for interviewing advice. If you have never been trained in the skill of interviewing, ask your recruiter for some advice. They can guide you as to the best type of questions to ask, and steer you away from legal difficulties. It is the recruiter’s job to screen applicants for basic qualifications. It is your job to do the face-to-face interview to see how well the applicant matches what you are looking for in an employee.

Follow-up after each interview. Get back with your recruiter right away after each interview. Let them know what you liked and what you did not like. Try to do this within 24 hours of the interview, while it is still fresh in your mind. Let the recruiter know if you want to bring the applicant back for more interviews or if you would like to make the applicant an offer.

Keep the process moving. Recruiters, just like you, have a job to do. If you waste their time by not returning calls or emails, the process will get bogged down. That is not fair to anyone, and the applicant will not get a very good impression of you and your company. Live up to your commitments and the recruiter will live up to theirs.

When hiring new employees, your must work as a team with your recruiter. Your recruiter is there to help you, but you must help them also. Getting good employees at the beginning is not easy, but having a solid working relationship with your recruiter will help immensely.

Steve Schumacher is a management consultant, trainer and public speaker with more than 25 years of experience in numerous industries throughout North America, including aggregates operations. He can be reached at [email protected].

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