Your recruiting experience is only as good as your hiring managers. No matter what you do to make sure candidates are well informed with regular communication. No matter how much recruiters treat candidates with respect. Just one bad interview experience can wipe it all out.
Are you measuring interview performance? Are you using candidate feedback to understand what’s working and what’s not with your recruiting experience? If not, you should be.
Interview Performance: Trust AND Verify
Recruiters often feel distrustful of hiring managers for this very reason. Trust is something that arises from understanding. When you don’t have a good understanding of what happens during interviews, it’s hard to trust.
Conversely, if you understand the good and bad of interview performance, you are in a position to manage the effectiveness of this hiring stage and trust that you are providing a top notch recruiting experience. Trust and verification is the key for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is accountability.
Hold Hiring Managers Accountable for Recruiting Experience
In theory, we are all accountable for our piece of the hiring process. In most organizations, however, recruiters are ultimately accountable for all hiring performance. Hiring managers are typically not held accountable for any part of the hiring process, let alone the interview. Not in any real way.
Without a direct report relationship between hiring managers and the recruiting function, accountability is an uphill battle. Managers are typically not hired or paid for their interview performance. Broadly speaking, they are overworked and under-qualified for the role of evaluating candidates, providing excellent candidate experience, and consistently delivering on their part in the hiring process.
So how do you hold hiring managers accountable for their piece of the recruiting process?
Ask candidates for feedback. Ask recruiters for feedback. And for good measure, ask hiring managers for feedback too.
Survale supports these loops with real time candidate experience surveys, talent acquisition survey questions, and hiring manager satisfaction surveys that make it easy to collect and use feedback in every direction.
For a list of hiring manager feedback questions, click here.
Real Time Feedback Holds the Key to Recruiting Experience
Workiva, a leading enterprise cloud platform for data collaboration, reporting, and compliance, gets feedback from candidates shortly after they complete their interviews. They use Survale’s talent feedback platform to send out automatic feedback requests to candidates at the phone screen, hiring manager interview, and offer stages of their hiring process. Survale also sends automatic feedback requests from hiring managers when the requisition is closed.
The satisfaction data they receive from candidates alerts them to issues that happen during each phase of the process. The free form comments provide clear explanations of what went wrong. This feedback becomes a virtual instruction manual on how to fix issues. From set and setting, to manners, to preparedness, to engagement, recruiting is now very aware of what’s happening in that important black box that is the interview.
And hiring managers now know they are being held accountable. That’s because the candidate feedback provides the data and strategies for recruiting to clearly surface issues with the managers. Trust issues are no longer a problem. This feedback-driven approach removes all doubt about what’s going on and provides the data needed to make improvements through shared understanding.
Feedback is a Two-Way Street
It’s amazing what data can do to drive real change in recruiting experience. Workiva, and many other companies like Dent Wizard and CDW, ask hiring managers for feedback about recruiter performance. It’s the other side of the same coin. Managers appreciate the respect and transparency that this feedback into the process gives them. Recruiting departments gain stronger alignment between both groups.
This three-way feedback loop among candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers aligns everyone around hard data. Leaders do not guess whether they have interview experience problems with certain teams or locations. They know. And they have the data to prove it. Fixing problems becomes simpler.
Recruiters begin to spot and understand communication or process gaps they may have with certain managers. Again, they can use this data to change how they work or give better support materials to hiring managers. All of this helps shine a light on what used to be a blind spot in the hiring process. It brings better recruiting experience and stronger outcomes for everyone involved.
Why Interview Feedback Should Be Built Into Your Hiring Process
This process is not about blame. It’s about improvement. Most hiring managers are not trained interviewers. They don’t always know what candidates expect. They often juggle interviews along with other tasks. But they play a huge role in how people experience your brand.
Without data, there’s no way to fix the problems. With it, recruiters and hiring managers can work together to improve. This is the only way to consistently deliver a great hiring experience.
The Survale system uses short feedback loops to make this easy. Every stage, every interaction, and every handoff is tracked. The feedback helps teams make small changes that add up to better hiring outcomes.
Make Feedback Your Hiring Advantage
If you want to improve your recruiting experience, interview performance is the place to start. Use feedback from every direction. Measure hiring manager satisfaction. Track recruiter impact. Most of all, listen to what your candidates are saying right after each step.
Survale gives you the tools to do all of this. And it does it in real time, without adding work to your teams.
For more on how companies like Workiva, CDW, and Dent Wizard use feedback to improve hiring, check out the Survale case studies or explore how other teams are using data to create better outcomes from start to finish.
FAQs
How do you describe recruiting experience?
It’s how a candidate feels during the hiring process. This includes the application, interviews, communication, and decision stage.
What is the role of a hiring manager in recruitment?
Hiring managers help define job needs, interview candidates, give feedback, and make final decisions on offers.
How do recruiters work with hiring managers?
Recruiters source and screen candidates. Hiring managers review them, conduct interviews, and make hiring choices.
Is a hiring manager the same as a recruiter?
No. A recruiter manages the search process. A hiring manager makes the final hiring decision and manages the employee once hired.
