When is a hiring manager not a hiring manager?
When they’re something else entirely.
Did you know that hiring managers don’t call themselves hiring managers? They might not even call themselves managers. They might be called supervisors or team leaders or any other job title that has responsibility for people.
I know this, because I used to be one. Before I went freelance, I was a senior manager in a corporate and I used to hire people to join my team. We didn’t call it ‘hiring’. We called it recruitment.
I know what it’s like to have five or more recruitment agencies phoning me up every day trying to win business from my employer.
I know what it’s like to write job descriptions for every role (without getting any training in how to do that). The purpose of the JD was to detail every little thing the employee might ever be asked to do. It was part of the employee contract. It didn’t include anything about why an applicant might like the job. The JD was never intended to be used to attract anyone to the role.
I know what it’s like to have a vacant seat in the department and to feel the stress of covering that person’s workload while trying to find someone quickly who could do the job and fit in with everyone else.
I remember having to sort through 300 or more CVs for every vacancy.
I remember interviewing one candidate who had a piece of work in his portfolio that I knew he hadn’t done (because I knew the person who had done it). And another who said his hobby was ‘swimming naked in the Lake District’. When I asked him about it, he told me it was a joke.
I remember when I was ‘strongly encouraged’ to hire a particular person. It was against my better instincts but I was new to management, so I did it anyway. I remember the two years that followed while I tried and tried to train and develop this person who was never really suited to the job, while also trying to keep the rest of the team happy.
Hiring manager is not a job title. Do a search for ‘hiring manager’ and all you’ll find is recruiters talking to each other. You won’t find a company that’s recruiting for a hiring manager. You won’t see a job ad trying to attract a hiring manager.
Do you respect the people you call hiring managers? Do you have an insight into what it’s like to be one? Do you have the skills to help them out?
By better understanding the people who are your clients (hiring managers), you can ask them better questions and glean better information to use in your job ads.
This advice is brought to you by Copywriting for Recruiters. For information about our training courses, please see our recruitment copywriting courses page.
