If you don't have time to tell me what you are looking for, I don't have time to recruit for you
This isn't a rant and it's not intended to be a big complainy post about hiring managers. I've been fortunate to work with amazing hiring managers in my career; ones that have really been a highlight of my job (OK, mostly just at Microsoft). The few that are more difficult to work with just needed some guidance. One of the great things about working with marketing people is that if you can frame your recruiting challenge as a business issue, they get it. Most of the time. And many of them can sympathize with the rock finding mission.
The man: Find me a rock
Me: Can you tell me what kind of rock you would like me to find?
The man: No, just bring me some rocks and I'll tell you when I see it
Me: Is this the rock? What about this rock? This rock? OK, this rock thing isn't working for me.
Does this sound familiar? No matter what position you are in, chances are you have gone on a rock finding expedition. It's frustrating. And the rock rarely ever feels like the right one in the end anyway.
Hiring managers are busy people. We get that. But if hiring managers don't have time to write job specs (not just a job description, but actual specs), then how do they have time to interview? Or onboard? And isn't hiring one of THE most important things we do?
This is actually part of the reason why I enjoy pipeline recruiting so much; you find the candidate first and then look for the position to match. It flips the process, makes hiring managers compete for talent (nicely, of course), and it focuses the attention on the candidate versus the position. The position is important, but my passion lies with the candidate experience.
But most recruiters serve a particular business...with hiring managers...with or without job specs. In the best case scenario, they have a manager that is supportive of them firing an uncommitted client. In the worst case, they are on a rock finding expedition. Best case: they are equipped to advise the hiring manager on candidate profiles they should be looking for to fill in skill gaps on their team, advise on the availability of talent in the marketplace. Worst case: they are an order taker (and sometimes, that's fine).
Since we are upstream in the candidate generation process, we see recruiters struggling with this. If the recruiters can't get the specs from the hiring manager, my team can't help them.
I remember back to my line recruiting days, when I advised hiring managers that I was going to close down their search if they didn't have time to work with me on complete job specs. What I was really thinking was "You don't have time for recruiting on your req? Me neither."
Comments
Anonymous
March 20, 2007
I couldn't agree more. When one of my groups was looking to hire a new SDE and SDET I volunteered to take the responsibility from my manager (the hiring mgr) when I saw that he didn't have the time. I had a vested interest in who we hired as they would be my peers and directly affect the quality of our team's work. I spent several hours putting together job specs AND a description. Probably days combing through resumes, working with our recruiter and phone screens. It wasn't what I really wanted to do, but in the end it was worth it as we hired a great person who will do well.Anonymous
March 20, 2007
Ugh. Sounds like the client who wants a design but doesn't know what they like until they see it...wastes so much time (especially on websites). I never considered a requirements document for a person...too bad you can't create a wireframe of a potential hire!Anonymous
March 20, 2007
I suspect that the hiring manager you're dealing with is just clueless as to what the requirements are. He is probably not qualified for his job. How can you not enjoy irony.Anonymous
March 20, 2007
tod - you are one of the good guys Kevin - what's a wireframe? average-sized tim - the real irony is that I am not dealing with any hiring managers at all! It's our recruiting business partners that are. So they want to work with my team to find candidates for open positions but they can't because THEIR hiring managers don't have documentation. It's not a rampant issue but there's enough of it that I feel sorry for the recruiters that have to fill their open positions. Incidentally, I don't think the hiring managers are clueless regarding the requirements. They just don't take the time to document and discuss with their recruiters. More of an issue of prioritization than cluelessness. My team has the benefit of being able to push back on the work but the recruiters may or may not.Anonymous
March 20, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 21, 2007
a wireframe is just a skeleton of the site design, very much like a the pencil drawing before the painting, to show architecture, drop downs, etc...