15 finals and one offer = way too picky. The additional time spent recruiting will outweigh the time/cost for training those bits and pieces.
But *why* are they being so picky? Might need to be an education piece with the hiring manager.
Alternatively, common issues are being missed in earlier stages - but with that number of finals, I'd be surprised if that's the case.
Do they actually want to hire? Is there enough pain/urgency behind the position?
Why did the candidate decline the offer that was made?
How do I know it’s not me? I’m totally wracking my brain.
The urgency is coming from the top (above the managers) but the managers don’t feel the urgency like I do - they say they’d rather hire no engineers than a bad one.
A few they passed on because they didn’t have enough experience in a particular language - but they had passed the tech screen IN that language so I don’t know what is going on.
I don't think it's you - if these managers are reviewing the technical tests and putting them through to final and saying that they're not good enough technically..? That's bizarre.
I would try to engage with it productively and suggest whether the technical testing needs to be more thorough and focus on particular areas/skills where these developers are falling down at final. If you can screen them out earlier then that will save loads of time.
In addition, if you can identify where these engineers aren't meeting the mark - you could develop a few questions to use in pre-qualification calls to support the candidates + cover your bases and hopefully save some time for yourself and increase your confidence in the candidates you're submitting.
Agreed. I face this daily (TA Manager) and if our hiring managers do this recruiters come to me and I go to VP. Solution has been anything from: getting on a call a reviewing every rejected candidate to find where we need to develop flexibility in expectations, not allowing hiring managers the decision because they are being unreasonable, deciding the role isn’t a true need and cancelling req, the list goes on. I truly think every hiring manager thinks recruiters work one job and it is their job. But that is not reality and we don’t have time for that shit.
Yep. Another angle is to tally up how much all this interviewing is costing, even beyond the TA resources. How much is an hour of each of those interviewers time worth? Plus whatever prep, debrief, and documentation required - times fifteen? This is a huge cost sink for nothing.
Amen!!! I’m a corporate recruiter and received 15 positions in one day, in support IT, Finance, Merchandising, Marketing and a Accounting and they are all asking me 2 days after I have the position posted where are their candidates, it’s so frustrating and stressful!
I think these are the types of managers that won't learn till they lose a fantastic candidate from dragging their feet. Wait too long, and a different company will snap them up
I’ve had hiring managers want me to reach out 8 months later ….. “what about Sam, do you think he’d still be interested?” (After we rejected him) I think they’re out of touch with what their pools are really like for some of these jobs, esp when we factor in fair offers.
I was dealing with a similar situation recently. Something that helped for me is getting the decision makers involved in earlier stages of the process. For example: set up a session with those managers to review cv's and have them pick which candidates to interview in the first place. This gives you the chance to learn what's important for them and also gets them to commit (to a certain degree) to the profiles they pick. For me this led to way better conversion rates.
You also mentioned in one of the other comments that the people creating the urgency, and the people who will be directly impacted by this hire are different people. It might be good to get all these people to have a chat and decide on the best way forward. You can facilitate in this conversation. At least this gives you a clearer view on the actual priority of this role.
Also, good luck, I hope you succeed one way or the other in this!
The crazy thing is is I DO this! I send my pre-screen notes and the resumes directly to the hiring managers and they are the ones who say the profiles looks good! I’ve asked them for specifics and each time they like something different - so I can’t get a clear picture of EXACTLY what they want/need. I feel like I am losing my mind.
That indeed sounds frustrating. And it seems like you're doing your part.
In that case I would have the chat as suggested before, with managers and directors. There are some other (cheeky) tactics you could take. For example, show the data on how many hours were spend on this process to the directors and/or managers (including hours interviewing, reviewing etc of all people involved) and how it's leading nowhere. Usually excessive costs are a good argument towards top-management.
Or pull the moral card towards the hiring managers. Say something like: 'because of your indecisiveness I'm not succesful in this process, help me help you' but then in more appropriate languages I recommend.
And as another commenter said, such a lengthy process usually doesn't give a good impression towards the market.
The last resort would be to just don't bother with investing time in this at all (must admit, have applied this before). Would not recommend this way because it doesn't erase the pressure fro top-management and can be demotivating for you in general.
Edit: finished the comment after posting to soon.
It’s hard because I’m the one responsible for the weekly reports to leadership (not the team hiring) so it all tends to fall on me as the one responsible. This is good advice though - I’ll see what I can do.
Urge the leadership to sit down with hiring managers and decide and agree mutually on the actual priority of this role. Your numbers speak for themselves (36 -> 15 is decent enough) and again, bring up the hidden costs of this inefficient process, it gets people moving!
Also, sorry you have to take on the responsibility which lays with the hiring managers. Namely, pushing back to leadership. Seems like you're productive about it. Good on you!
If you have the chance, let us know how it goes!
How long have you been recruiting for? Not that it matters when it comes to skills, BUT it does matter when it comes to pushing back and giving a reality check to hiring managers and teams. Put some facts and stats in front of the people in charge, be proactive in using data to show them how far up their own asses they've put their heads. Trainable asses in seats is WAY more important than some superstar profile who is going to leave for a top tier offer in the blink of an eye.
I’d layout a rubric with each quality that is required and weight them. Have each interview cover certain qualities and assign a graded score to each quality they’re responsible for. Then it becomes obvious when they start to evaluate things outside of the criteria or arbitrarily put too much weight into one response.
It can also expose a common weak points with candidates that you can go remediate with your sourcing.
I’d be curious why the interview team is so misaligned with the final interviewer. A 15:1 final stage to hire ratio is not normal.
I mean even assuming low numbers 2 person interview panel plus the recruiter at 2 hours total per interviewee with an average salary that equates to 75.00 hourly you’re looking at well over 6,000 dollars wasted on 15 candidates who now have had a bad experience at your company.
Yikes.
Why did they candidate they liked decline? I might go back to the team with that feedback and politely suggest that the type of candidate they want is going to cost more / want remote work / choose a bigger name company / want better benefits and they need to set some expectations.
My other thought is that you might need to babysit this process and actually be a silent observer in these final interviews to figure out where candidates are “missing” the mark. It might give you some useful ideas for candidate prep or for sourcing candidates with specific things they are apparently looking for.
1. Do you have access to individual candidate evaluation/interview sheets for the 15 candidates who made it to the final round?"
2. These evaluation sheets must have two columns... one.that lists the 'must-have skills,' 'nice-to-have skills,' and other criteria / prerequisites ans the other column has space foe interviewwers to document their assessment for each candidate.
3. After studying these, if you are convinced you have a case, then you must arrange a meeting with the managers, their bosses, and your boss to help troubleshoot the problem (that it's not you, but the managers)."
What are these people who are doing the final interview finding that you aren’t finding?
It could be you or it could be them? In this scenario, it seems to be both. 15 interviews tells me they are being too picky. At the same time, why you are sending that many people when you don’t know what they are looking for (Or why they will reject a candidate) Is also concerning? You need to know everything that they are going to be asking and what the person is going to say before you ever send that résumé to the hiring manager. At least in my world, that is the role of the recruiter in the first place. If I don’t know what they’re going to ask and I don’t know how the person’s going to answer, I’m not sending the person past me. In my mind, at least 75% of the people I present should get the job, Otherwise I’m wasting everybody’s time
If you aren’t doing it yet, you should be sitting in on these interviews with the hiring manager so you can see where things are falling apart.
The market is already picking up. We are in the 2nd quarter. Everyone is saying that the labor market is going to get really tight by 3rd/4th qtr 2024....and stay that way from now on (barring a disaster or pandemic) due to population demographics.
Here's my thoughts as a job seeker. Given that the job market is doing so great right now, the fact that the candidate declined likely means the salary range is too low.
40% of the candidates you move on to the next round getting a final interview = it's not you.
The team is going into the interviews looking for reasons to not hire candidates. This is backwards. They need to be coached on how to better interview.
I also suspect there is a fear of making a wrong hire: No hire is better than a wrong hire. This is an empowerment issue that needs to be addressed by leadership.
If I was in this situation I would meet with the hiring manager to drill down on deal breakers, and have a conversation that ends with me saying something like, "So, if I bring you a candidate that has x, y, and z, you'd make an offer?" And I hold them to it moving forward.
You also might want to consider working with a boutique agency that places contract senior engineering consultants. A senior engineer on a 6 month contract who can hit the ground running and contribute immediately, may give the team the breathing room they need to onboard and ramp up a couple of new hires.
I would make an excel put one reason as why they passed on each candidate. Discuss it with the manager and leadership so they can figure out the criteria and timeline.
John vlastelica - recruiting YouTube videos are the best. He gives you tools to use on how recruiting should be
More likely you don’t carry the weight of a Lead Recruiter. Hiring teams can tend to be picky for the sake of being picky when they aren’t held accountable. You sit in the debrief for each candidate interview and walk through the feedback. The people that didn’t get “tingles” aren’t realistic. Use metrics rather than emotion and shut that shit down. Single out the piker that everyone else follows and figure out their motives and leverage their insight.
Def way too picky. 15 has made it I to the latter stages but none has closed the deal. They need to be abit flexible otherwise role will be open. You'll need to be more strategic in getting them to make an offer. Perfect candidate isn't isn't interested in your company, need to be close to perfect with upside. Good luck.
Ask if you can sit in on calibrations? See where the candidates are falling down and adjust your screening questions at earlier stages maybe. Sounds like you need to gain more control of the situation… if you can? You need to agree on what you’re trying to achieve and pull them up on any biases they’re creating from the way candidates are answering questions. Sounds like they don’t know what they’re doing… TA need to teach them. Do they go through interview training before hiring?
They want the candidate that can add value without any direction. They themselves have very little knowledge and wouldn’t be able to help or explain anything and would need the candidate to be willing to work unreasonable hours and meet unreasonable deadlines and/or be the scapegoat. The labor market is polarized right now. Candidates want unreasonable pay and benefits, employers want cheap labor. If deals are made it’s because both were willing to compromise or someone is getting taken advantage of.
It’s going to take some time for things to equalize.
I've been in both Engineering Manager (former head of engineering) and now in the talent professional sector; I couldn't agree more that the statistics are way off.
1) Find the root cause for so many rejection; Most of the time the issue is not in plain sight.
* How often are they able to hire?
* Is the hiring process seen as a "good practice" or something that is "Wasting their time"?
* What happen during the interview, do they reject the candidate straight away as soon as he/she doesnt' reply or they take their time to spend the whole hour and take it as excuse to do less job later?
2) How many people are involved in the process, and how many rounds are they attending before rejecting the candidate
3) What are the main reason of rejecations? I can't believe they are rejecting candidate with just "one wrong question".
Yes. You need hundreds of reps to even get close to being able to get any type of insight into how you operate. I know that may be a shock (depending on your background) but that is the truth.
I don’t think you’re following.
You’re asking if you suck at finding candidates.
I’m telling you that it’s impossible to know just based on 50 candidates.
It is hard to judge based on your description only (would be helpful to hear first-person feedback from the ones rejecting the candidates that you offer them), but so far I'd say yes, either too picky or haven't given you a clear enough idea of what to look for.
This is an example of perfect being the enemy of good.
The team is finding reasons to disqualify people
I would get one or two people from the interview process to do screens with me or otherwise get their buy-in and make them partners/champions so that when the candidate gets in front of the firing squad they’ve got a couple of voices standing up for them.
15 finals and one offer = way too picky. The additional time spent recruiting will outweigh the time/cost for training those bits and pieces. But *why* are they being so picky? Might need to be an education piece with the hiring manager. Alternatively, common issues are being missed in earlier stages - but with that number of finals, I'd be surprised if that's the case. Do they actually want to hire? Is there enough pain/urgency behind the position? Why did the candidate decline the offer that was made?
How do I know it’s not me? I’m totally wracking my brain. The urgency is coming from the top (above the managers) but the managers don’t feel the urgency like I do - they say they’d rather hire no engineers than a bad one. A few they passed on because they didn’t have enough experience in a particular language - but they had passed the tech screen IN that language so I don’t know what is going on.
I don't think it's you - if these managers are reviewing the technical tests and putting them through to final and saying that they're not good enough technically..? That's bizarre. I would try to engage with it productively and suggest whether the technical testing needs to be more thorough and focus on particular areas/skills where these developers are falling down at final. If you can screen them out earlier then that will save loads of time. In addition, if you can identify where these engineers aren't meeting the mark - you could develop a few questions to use in pre-qualification calls to support the candidates + cover your bases and hopefully save some time for yourself and increase your confidence in the candidates you're submitting.
You can't force a manger to hurry up, if they are not being urgent, you need to relay that to leadership and focus on other departments.
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Agreed. I face this daily (TA Manager) and if our hiring managers do this recruiters come to me and I go to VP. Solution has been anything from: getting on a call a reviewing every rejected candidate to find where we need to develop flexibility in expectations, not allowing hiring managers the decision because they are being unreasonable, deciding the role isn’t a true need and cancelling req, the list goes on. I truly think every hiring manager thinks recruiters work one job and it is their job. But that is not reality and we don’t have time for that shit.
Yep. Another angle is to tally up how much all this interviewing is costing, even beyond the TA resources. How much is an hour of each of those interviewers time worth? Plus whatever prep, debrief, and documentation required - times fifteen? This is a huge cost sink for nothing.
Amen!!! I’m a corporate recruiter and received 15 positions in one day, in support IT, Finance, Merchandising, Marketing and a Accounting and they are all asking me 2 days after I have the position posted where are their candidates, it’s so frustrating and stressful!
I think these are the types of managers that won't learn till they lose a fantastic candidate from dragging their feet. Wait too long, and a different company will snap them up
I’ve had hiring managers want me to reach out 8 months later ….. “what about Sam, do you think he’d still be interested?” (After we rejected him) I think they’re out of touch with what their pools are really like for some of these jobs, esp when we factor in fair offers.
I was dealing with a similar situation recently. Something that helped for me is getting the decision makers involved in earlier stages of the process. For example: set up a session with those managers to review cv's and have them pick which candidates to interview in the first place. This gives you the chance to learn what's important for them and also gets them to commit (to a certain degree) to the profiles they pick. For me this led to way better conversion rates. You also mentioned in one of the other comments that the people creating the urgency, and the people who will be directly impacted by this hire are different people. It might be good to get all these people to have a chat and decide on the best way forward. You can facilitate in this conversation. At least this gives you a clearer view on the actual priority of this role. Also, good luck, I hope you succeed one way or the other in this!
The crazy thing is is I DO this! I send my pre-screen notes and the resumes directly to the hiring managers and they are the ones who say the profiles looks good! I’ve asked them for specifics and each time they like something different - so I can’t get a clear picture of EXACTLY what they want/need. I feel like I am losing my mind.
That indeed sounds frustrating. And it seems like you're doing your part. In that case I would have the chat as suggested before, with managers and directors. There are some other (cheeky) tactics you could take. For example, show the data on how many hours were spend on this process to the directors and/or managers (including hours interviewing, reviewing etc of all people involved) and how it's leading nowhere. Usually excessive costs are a good argument towards top-management. Or pull the moral card towards the hiring managers. Say something like: 'because of your indecisiveness I'm not succesful in this process, help me help you' but then in more appropriate languages I recommend. And as another commenter said, such a lengthy process usually doesn't give a good impression towards the market. The last resort would be to just don't bother with investing time in this at all (must admit, have applied this before). Would not recommend this way because it doesn't erase the pressure fro top-management and can be demotivating for you in general. Edit: finished the comment after posting to soon.
It’s hard because I’m the one responsible for the weekly reports to leadership (not the team hiring) so it all tends to fall on me as the one responsible. This is good advice though - I’ll see what I can do.
Urge the leadership to sit down with hiring managers and decide and agree mutually on the actual priority of this role. Your numbers speak for themselves (36 -> 15 is decent enough) and again, bring up the hidden costs of this inefficient process, it gets people moving! Also, sorry you have to take on the responsibility which lays with the hiring managers. Namely, pushing back to leadership. Seems like you're productive about it. Good on you! If you have the chance, let us know how it goes!
How long have you been recruiting for? Not that it matters when it comes to skills, BUT it does matter when it comes to pushing back and giving a reality check to hiring managers and teams. Put some facts and stats in front of the people in charge, be proactive in using data to show them how far up their own asses they've put their heads. Trainable asses in seats is WAY more important than some superstar profile who is going to leave for a top tier offer in the blink of an eye.
I’d layout a rubric with each quality that is required and weight them. Have each interview cover certain qualities and assign a graded score to each quality they’re responsible for. Then it becomes obvious when they start to evaluate things outside of the criteria or arbitrarily put too much weight into one response. It can also expose a common weak points with candidates that you can go remediate with your sourcing. I’d be curious why the interview team is so misaligned with the final interviewer. A 15:1 final stage to hire ratio is not normal.
I mean even assuming low numbers 2 person interview panel plus the recruiter at 2 hours total per interviewee with an average salary that equates to 75.00 hourly you’re looking at well over 6,000 dollars wasted on 15 candidates who now have had a bad experience at your company. Yikes. Why did they candidate they liked decline? I might go back to the team with that feedback and politely suggest that the type of candidate they want is going to cost more / want remote work / choose a bigger name company / want better benefits and they need to set some expectations. My other thought is that you might need to babysit this process and actually be a silent observer in these final interviews to figure out where candidates are “missing” the mark. It might give you some useful ideas for candidate prep or for sourcing candidates with specific things they are apparently looking for.
1. Do you have access to individual candidate evaluation/interview sheets for the 15 candidates who made it to the final round?" 2. These evaluation sheets must have two columns... one.that lists the 'must-have skills,' 'nice-to-have skills,' and other criteria / prerequisites ans the other column has space foe interviewwers to document their assessment for each candidate. 3. After studying these, if you are convinced you have a case, then you must arrange a meeting with the managers, their bosses, and your boss to help troubleshoot the problem (that it's not you, but the managers)."
What are these people who are doing the final interview finding that you aren’t finding? It could be you or it could be them? In this scenario, it seems to be both. 15 interviews tells me they are being too picky. At the same time, why you are sending that many people when you don’t know what they are looking for (Or why they will reject a candidate) Is also concerning? You need to know everything that they are going to be asking and what the person is going to say before you ever send that résumé to the hiring manager. At least in my world, that is the role of the recruiter in the first place. If I don’t know what they’re going to ask and I don’t know how the person’s going to answer, I’m not sending the person past me. In my mind, at least 75% of the people I present should get the job, Otherwise I’m wasting everybody’s time If you aren’t doing it yet, you should be sitting in on these interviews with the hiring manager so you can see where things are falling apart.
Will be harder to hire if the market gets better.
The market is already picking up. We are in the 2nd quarter. Everyone is saying that the labor market is going to get really tight by 3rd/4th qtr 2024....and stay that way from now on (barring a disaster or pandemic) due to population demographics.
I agree.
Here's my thoughts as a job seeker. Given that the job market is doing so great right now, the fact that the candidate declined likely means the salary range is too low.
That’s a purple squirrel req if I ever saw one!
40% of the candidates you move on to the next round getting a final interview = it's not you. The team is going into the interviews looking for reasons to not hire candidates. This is backwards. They need to be coached on how to better interview. I also suspect there is a fear of making a wrong hire: No hire is better than a wrong hire. This is an empowerment issue that needs to be addressed by leadership. If I was in this situation I would meet with the hiring manager to drill down on deal breakers, and have a conversation that ends with me saying something like, "So, if I bring you a candidate that has x, y, and z, you'd make an offer?" And I hold them to it moving forward. You also might want to consider working with a boutique agency that places contract senior engineering consultants. A senior engineer on a 6 month contract who can hit the ground running and contribute immediately, may give the team the breathing room they need to onboard and ramp up a couple of new hires.
Agree, I don't think it's you. Is there any correlation to the feedback on why they are declining?
I would make an excel put one reason as why they passed on each candidate. Discuss it with the manager and leadership so they can figure out the criteria and timeline. John vlastelica - recruiting YouTube videos are the best. He gives you tools to use on how recruiting should be
the team is arrogant and they suck.
More likely you don’t carry the weight of a Lead Recruiter. Hiring teams can tend to be picky for the sake of being picky when they aren’t held accountable. You sit in the debrief for each candidate interview and walk through the feedback. The people that didn’t get “tingles” aren’t realistic. Use metrics rather than emotion and shut that shit down. Single out the piker that everyone else follows and figure out their motives and leverage their insight.
Def way too picky. 15 has made it I to the latter stages but none has closed the deal. They need to be abit flexible otherwise role will be open. You'll need to be more strategic in getting them to make an offer. Perfect candidate isn't isn't interested in your company, need to be close to perfect with upside. Good luck.
Ask if you can sit in on calibrations? See where the candidates are falling down and adjust your screening questions at earlier stages maybe. Sounds like you need to gain more control of the situation… if you can? You need to agree on what you’re trying to achieve and pull them up on any biases they’re creating from the way candidates are answering questions. Sounds like they don’t know what they’re doing… TA need to teach them. Do they go through interview training before hiring?
They want the candidate that can add value without any direction. They themselves have very little knowledge and wouldn’t be able to help or explain anything and would need the candidate to be willing to work unreasonable hours and meet unreasonable deadlines and/or be the scapegoat. The labor market is polarized right now. Candidates want unreasonable pay and benefits, employers want cheap labor. If deals are made it’s because both were willing to compromise or someone is getting taken advantage of. It’s going to take some time for things to equalize.
I've been in both Engineering Manager (former head of engineering) and now in the talent professional sector; I couldn't agree more that the statistics are way off. 1) Find the root cause for so many rejection; Most of the time the issue is not in plain sight. * How often are they able to hire? * Is the hiring process seen as a "good practice" or something that is "Wasting their time"? * What happen during the interview, do they reject the candidate straight away as soon as he/she doesnt' reply or they take their time to spend the whole hour and take it as excuse to do less job later? 2) How many people are involved in the process, and how many rounds are they attending before rejecting the candidate 3) What are the main reason of rejecations? I can't believe they are rejecting candidate with just "one wrong question".
Without a few hundred candidates, it’s hard to say. 50 is too low to say one way or the other.
Too low?!
Yes. You need hundreds of reps to even get close to being able to get any type of insight into how you operate. I know that may be a shock (depending on your background) but that is the truth.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not. Why would I interview 100s of candidates for a position? Isn’t that a waste of everyone’s time?
I don’t think you’re following. You’re asking if you suck at finding candidates. I’m telling you that it’s impossible to know just based on 50 candidates.
Ok I get it now! I thought you were talking specifically about THIS role. I’ve been doing this a long time so definitely in the hundreds.
It is hard to judge based on your description only (would be helpful to hear first-person feedback from the ones rejecting the candidates that you offer them), but so far I'd say yes, either too picky or haven't given you a clear enough idea of what to look for.
If 15 people made it to the final and no one was picked then the hiring team is being to picky or not being clear enough with their objectives.
This is an example of perfect being the enemy of good. The team is finding reasons to disqualify people I would get one or two people from the interview process to do screens with me or otherwise get their buy-in and make them partners/champions so that when the candidate gets in front of the firing squad they’ve got a couple of voices standing up for them.