Interview: How to Partner Successfully with HR and Hiring Managers

Originally posted at Recruitment Coach.

“As agency recruiters, we are often required to collaborate with multiple stakeholders including hiring managers, HR and Talent Acquisition. This can be incredibly challenging and frustrating – especially when there’s a lack of cooperation or a breakdown in communication.

To facilitate an efficient and successful recruitment process, we must find a way to engage all the stakeholders. So how could you collaborate effectively with your client’s HR, Talent Acquisition and hiring managers? My special guest, Katrina Collier, will answer this question.

Katrina Collier is on a mission to end the collaboration chaos existing between HR, recruiters & hiring managers, to better recruitment and the candidate experience. She is the author of The Robot-Proof Recruiter, a global keynote speaker, and host of The Hiring Partner Perspective (Unedited) podcast.

How to partner with hiring managers and HR

From Katrina’s point of view, what are the underlying challenges that can affect collaboration among these stakeholders? Two points were shared:

• Recruiters need a mindset shift in terms of partnership.
• HR tends to be in competition with Talent Acquisition.

How can you partner & neutralise the above challenges? Hear Katrina’s pragmatic advice.

Mindset shift to partnership and collaboration

Equal and mutually respectful collaboration is the ideal scenario for recruiters and hiring managers. Recruiters need to think of themselves as equal partners in the recruitment process, instead of just focusing on a “customer service” type of mindset. Here is what Katrina said, “Get out of your head and into your heart.” It always goes back to the human factor – we are dealing with humans. Human skills are now more relevant than ever! In this episode, you will hear why.

Building and gaining trust from candidates

As we are dealing with human beings, we need human skills to connect with candidates. So what’s the best way to build and gain trust as recruiters? Katrina mentioned her Mastermind programme and important factors such as:

• Empathy and compassion
• Being fearless
• Providing certainty and clarity
• Patience

Improving your response rate when contacting candidates

In line with the above, patience is indeed needed when we seem to be getting minimal response from potential clients and candidates. How do we get people to respond? Katrina emphasised the importance of considering your own profile and brand.

Do you look like someone who is worth connecting with and speaking to, someone who could add value and provide expert insight? She also mentioned that although LinkedIn is the mainstream platform when searching for candidates, you should leave LinkedIn. I am sure it was an overemphasis, but to Katrina’s point, there are other platforms we can consider when engaging with talents. On top of that, she also gave pointers on how to rethink your approach in engaging your candidates.

Hope for Justice

Katrina also shared a charity organisation that she fully supports, Hope for Justice. She shared how this non-profit organisation impacted her life and how it impacts others. If you wish to know more about Hope for Justice, please visit their website in the links below.

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