How Training Your Hiring Managers Will Help Your Recruitment Strategy

According to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), the cost of a poor hire at mid-manager level with a salary of £42,000 can cost a business more than £132,000 – a culmination of wasted training, low productivity, decreasing morale and increasing employee turnover.

Hiring managers play a crucial role in the process of getting the right talent on board, but sometimes they can feel adrift in a sea of changing parameters and under pressure to make decisions quickly – especially in a strong candidate-led market.

Here, we look at how training your hiring managers will help not only with your talent strategy and improving your employer brand, but also with saving you money.

Why train your hiring managers?

The recruitment process is a blend of different skills and specialisms, with every discipline playing its part in an effective recruitment strategy. A hiring manager’s decisions, whether good or bad, will impact directly on an organisation’s efficient running, and ultimately impact the bottom line.

Depending on the size of the organisation, a hiring managers’ duties can include any or all of the following:

• Identifying which employees are needed to fill a new position or a current vacancy
• Writing a job specification and advert that will attract suitably-qualified or experienced candidates
• Using that job specification to measure the suitability of applicants
• Setting the parameters and expectations of the interview process
• Conducting the interviews and selection
• Making the final decision in collaboration with other managers
• Liaising with candidates
• Formalising the job offer and negotiating the contract
• Onboarding and induction
• Support towards any wider strategic objective such as hiring diverse employees

With such wide and varied duties, it’s clear to see that it’s in an organisation’s best interests that its hiring managers are trained to the best of their abilities to make informed decisions about who joins the team.

What might a hiring manager need training in?

Hiring managers are expected to deal with a variety of issues, from inclusivity to onboarding, and interviewing skills to workforce planning, together with relatively newer concepts such as brand awareness – both personal and corporate.

In addition, employment law is changing constantly – this year alone, changes are expected to affect data protection, the national minimum wage, statutory sick pay, flexible working, workplace harassment, ethnicity/disability/gender pay gap reporting, and whistleblowing. It’s essential, therefore, that hiring managers are fully aware of the latest legal requirements.

How will training help your recruitment strategy?

As each organisation will have its own recruiting objectives, training should be focused on achieving them. Ask yourself:

• Is your organisation committed to hiring diverse talent?
• Are you attracting a diverse range of quality applicants?
• Does your organisation need to improve employee retention?
• Are you losing candidates during the recruitment process and/or post offer?
• Do you need to enhance your candidate experience?
• Are you keen to reduce your time-to-hire?
• Do your hiring managers need support with interview techniques?
• Who writes job specifications and job adverts, and how successful are they?
• Whatever your organisation’s objectives, training your hiring managers can help with attraction and engagement, which will lead to better performance outcomes, increased market share and an improved bottom line.

Get in touch

Find out more about how Omni can help your hiring managers be more effective, or contact us to discuss your training requirements.