As recruitment professionals, we understand that it’s not always easy to work together with Hiring Managers. Sometimes they’re too little involved, or they stall the process so you lose out on quality candidates. They can be overly picky and demand the perfect full-stack developer, who is fluent in 30 languages, under the age of 23, and has 40 years of experience. 

It can be frustrating, we know. However, a good relationship between recruiters and the hiring manager does wonders to your talent acquisition efficiency and helps to improve Candidate Experience.

Improving the hiring manager experience will drastically decrease your time to hire and improve your quality of hire. Moreover, a study by Deloitte showed that “developing strong relationships with hiring managers,” was the number one driver of a Talent Acquisition team’s performance. 

So how do you build that strong recruiter and hiring manager relationship? In this article, we show you how measuring the partnership between your recruiters and hiring managers will give you the insights you need to create a strong and healthy relationship. Collecting these insights means you can improve the processes you have in place and strive to become a trusted partner to your hiring managers. 

To this end, hiring managers and recruiters should each detail their experience of the process using feedback surveys, giving you a baseline to understand how their partnership is functioning. This allows them to identify how they can improve their relationship and ensure a smoother recruiting process for all involved parties.

Curious about the latest trends in hiring manager satisfaction?

We've just released our new Hiring Manager Satisfaction Benchmark Report, which breaks down the data by company size, region, question theme, and more. You can read it here, or through the image below.

What makes a strong recruiter and hiring manager relationship?

In short, recruiters and hiring managers should aim to work side-by-side during their hunt for a suitable candidate to create a more efficient talent pipeline. This type of cooperation reinforces the importance of a strong partnership between recruiters and hiring managers, and highlights just how crucial proper alignment is. 

Traditional hiring practices are unilateral: the hiring manager drafts and sends a list of requirements to the recruiters, who eventually send vetted candidates their way with the hope that they’re suitable for the position. However, taking recruitment to be a collaborative team project, rather than an orthodox top-down model, brings with it a number of benefits. 

A key component of a successful relationship is a strong partnership between recruiters and hiring managers. Hiring managers and recruiters should strive to work together on setting flexible frameworks for open positions, clearly understanding which areas are must-haves, and which attributes are just nice-to-haves. Maintaining clear communication should be at the forefront of this partnership, and both recruiters and hiring managers should be open-minded and well informed on the status of different candidates. 

Recruiters still take the lead, but working closely with hiring managers makes sure that they are involved much earlier than they otherwise would be, and have greater input on the candidates. This means that the candidates that do make it through the process are better vetted, and less time is wasted on candidates who wouldn’t be considered worthwhile by the hiring manager. 

Why is a strong relationship between recruiters and hiring managers important?

Like we mentioned before, studies show that a solid relationship between recruiters and hiring managers reduces time-to-hire, improves quality of hire, and drives Talent Acquisition success. 

There are various other benefits, too: our Candidate Values Report drew on 370,000+ candidate responses and found that one of the most crucial elements of a positive Candidate Experience was a clear understanding of the role. In order to provide a consistent and concise understanding of a role to a given candidate, recruiters and hiring managers need to have a strong relationship and be consistently in sync. If they’re properly aligned, then candidates can receive consistent and accurate information, improving their Candidate Experience. 

So, having a strong relationship between recruiters and hiring managers provides for the best possible experience for everyone: candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers. It lets you get the most out of your recruiting efforts. 

Having a great Candidate Experience offers a plethora of benefits to your recruiting efforts, and helps to optimize your recruiting logistics. A smooth partnership between recruiters and hiring managers helps to ensure that hiring managers are satisfied, which is an important step in improving your recruitment operations. Plus, the benefits of happy recruiters shouldn’t be discounted. Consider the example of DocuSign, who noticed that recruiter productivity was strongly correlated with their happiness.

So, how do you make sure that hiring managers and recruiters have a strong partnership? It’s important to start with measuring and evaluating the partnership between recruiters and hiring managers. Understanding how both parties feel about their cooperation clues you in to the state of their relationship, and should be a priority.

Why is measuring the recruiter and hiring manager partnership important?

Simply put, to quote the classic line from management guru Peter Drucker, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. 

Measuring and evaluating the recruiter and hiring managers partnership shows you how well they are cooperating. It also enables you to identify the strengths and weaknesses present in your recruiting operations, shortlisting both what is working well, and what isn’t. 

Consistently measuring how your recruiters and hiring managers feel helps you figure out how you can continuously optimize strategy, understanding what can still be improved about their partnership. 

How do you measure the recruiter and hiring manager partnership?

In order to evaluate how strong the recruiter and hiring manager relationship is, you have to ask your recruiters and hiring managers to rate their experiences separately, and then compare the data. 

The best way to do this is by sending out a recruiter and hiring manager partnership survey. Since hiring has these two main parties, there are two variants of this survey. The first is directed at hiring managers, and lets them evaluate the recruiting team. The second is meant for recruiters, and allows them to evaluate the collaboration with hiring managers. 

What should you ask in a recruiter and hiring manager partnership survey?

Quantifying something as complex as a collaborative partnership between recruiters and hiring managers is not a simple task. 

Here at Starred, we automatically collect, process, and analyze feedback data for recruitment purposes. Our mission is to improve the recruitment process for all parties by allowing you to unlock data-driven insights. That’s why we have a good idea of what questions to ask, how to present them, and how to collect and analyze this data. 

We’ve crafted two main survey templates to help you kickstart your journey in understanding your recruiter and hiring managers’ relationship. Both of these feature numerous questions and categories, with each question being measured on a 10-point scale. Each question also features an optional comment field, letting respondents leave qualitative data or clarify the context of their answers.

Find Recruiter Partnership Survey Template here.

Find Hiring Manager Partnership Survey Template here.

Partnership Survey for Hiring Managers

Partnership

• ‍On a scale from 1-10, how would you rate your most recent partnership experience with our Recruitment team?
• Do you have any suggestions for how the Recruiting team and/or process could have been better?

Role Kick-off Meeting

• ‍How would you rate the following aspects discussed during the role kick-off meeting with @RecruiterName? 

Sourcing and Recruitment Strategy

• ‍Did you agree on an effective sourcing and recruitment strategy?

Interview Process

• ‍Did you agree on a structured interview process?

‍Understanding of Role

• ‍Did the recruiter understand the role well?

Recruiter

Advice

• ‍Was the recruiter a strong talent advisor?

Delivery on Commitment

• ‍Did the recruiter deliver on commitments identified at the start of the process?

Candidates

Candidate Diversity

• ‍Was the recruiter able to build a diverse candidate pool?

Candidate Quality

• ‍Was the recruiter able to find high quality candidates that match the role requirements?

Understanding

• ‍Did the candidates you spoke with have a good understanding of the position and job requirements?

Recruitment Process

Interview Scheduling

• ‍Was the process of scheduling interviews smooth and efficient?

Interview

• ‍Was the recruiter clear in their communication and did they provide updates on a regular basis?

Offer Stage

• ‍Were you aligned on the offer strategy?

Overall Reflection

• ‍Was the overall recruitment process quick and efficient?

Partnership Survey for Recruiters 

Partnership

• ‍On a scale from 1-10, how would you rate your most recent partnership experience with the Hiring Manager(s)?
• Do you have any suggestions for how the Recruiting team and/or process could have been better?

Role Kick-off Meeting

• ‍How would you rate the following aspects discussed during the role kick-off meeting with the Hiring Manager(s).   

Sourcing and Recruitment Strategy

• ‍Did you agree on an effective sourcing and recruitment strategy?

Interview Process

• ‍Did you agree on a structured interview process?

Explaining the Role

• ‍Was the Hiring Manager(s) able to provide a thorough explanation of the role and its requirements?

Hiring Manager(s)

Feedback

• ‍Did the Hiring Manager(s) provide quality feedback on the candidates that were interviewed?

Delivery on Commitment

• ‍Did the Hiring Manager(s) deliver on commitments identified at the start of the process?

Candidates

Diverse Talent

• ‍Were you able to build a diverse candidate pool?

Candidate Quality

• ‍Were you able to find high quality candidates that match the role requirements?

Recruitment Process

Interview Scheduling

• ‍Was the process of scheduling interviews smooth and efficient?

Communication

• ‍Were the Hiring Manager(s) clear in communication and did they provide updates on a regular basis?

Offer Stage

• ‍Were you aligned on the offer strategy?

Overall Reflection

• ‍Was the overall recruitment process quick and efficient?

Comparing and Visualizing the Data

The most important part of understanding the state of the relationship between recruiters and hiring managers is being able to compare the data and analyze what each party says in relation to the other. If you’re doing this manually, it means matching recruiters and hiring managers’ surveys and comparing their answers. Then, you have to jot down the main takeaways, note the main differences, and discuss them with each party.

This can be a tedious task, especially if it also involves statistical analysis of your quantitative data and a close examination of your qualitative data. Automated solutions make the process a whole lot simpler. For example, Starred offers a dedicated dashboard suite. This gives you a solid understanding of how your recruiter and hiring managers’ relationships look like at a glance:

Focusing on measuring their partnership is crucial to building a strong recruiter and hiring manager relationship. Having these data-driven insights into your performance allows you to identify the most salient areas for potential improvement. It helps you understand where hiring managers and recruiters are aligned, and where they need to improve.

Our in-house benchmark shows that most hiring managers (among our customers) seem to be relatively happy, in 2023 with an average NPS of 65!

This is just one part of creating a strong recruiter and hiring manager relationship, but keeping tabs on your hiring managers' satisfaction is also crucial. You can read more about hiring manager satisfaction here.

Thinking about starting to measure the recruiter and hiring manager partnership? Feel free to reach out and book a demo.