In the many businesses we work with the hiring manager is often a person who has significant other time consuming responsibilities. Hiring is seen as a real problem for many managers, they usually are in a hurry to hire and they don’t have all the skills and tools at their disposal to make an informed hiring decision. How many times have you heard a hiring manager say that if the new hire doesn’t work out in 3 months they will try someone else?  Red Flag. This is a signal that the hiring manager really does not know what they are looking for, or how to look and is willing to gamble with new employees coming into the organization.

This brings us to the question  – who is in charge of hiring at your company? If you work for a large company you may have an HR department or even a full time recruiter to handle the hiring needs. Anyone who knows anything about hiring will tell you it is a very time consuming and difficult task. Conducting 5-6 full scale professional interviews in one day can be very draining.

So, what should a company do to get a hiring manager ready to interview and select? The sad answer is that very few companies actually take the time to find out what the hiring skills are of the hiring manager. It is very often assumed that any manager should know how to hire people. This is an incorrect assumption and can lead to all sorts of employee problems down the road. We are seeing a trend to outsourcing recruitment even in smaller companies. This is a smart idea on many fronts, with the only caveat being, you must select the proper recruiter as there are many unqualified recruiters out there working for large recruitment firms. Selecting the right recruiter starts with developing the relationship before you have a recruitment need. This is how we have built our reputation at TwoGreySuits.

If you go it alone, do yourself a favour and insist your hiring managers have some basic interview skills and more importantly that you know what behaviors in addition to what skills you are looking for. Members of The HR Power Centre can gain all the info they need in our Recruitment module.