Recruiters! Here are 3 Ways to Keep Managers from Ghosting on You!
By Gabe Papapalardo, PhD
All recruiters, internal or external, know the gnawing fear. They take the job description, source for promising candidates, find talent, and get them excited about a new role. They submit their resumes for review only to discover...
The hiring manager has ghosted on them.
Weeks go by with no reply, no updates, no contact. It's enough to chill any recruiter to the bone and send talent running like a teenager in the opening shot of a Wes Anderson film.
So strap on your electron proton pack and prepare to cross the streams. Here are 3 tips to stop your managers from ghosting on you!
Click here to joins us for our 10/31 Halloween anti-ghosting webinar!
1.) Engage upfront - Don't be spooked off from getting in direct contact with the hiring manager. Insist on building this relationship before pursuing and open req. A good placement isn't just one who can do the job; there needs to be fit with the hiring manager's team culture, and this starts with the leadership style of the manager herself. Is the hiring manager one who expects employees to follow direction or one who expects proactive collaboration? Is she a person who expects employees to stay "always on" or one who expects employees to "power off" when not at work? You won't get this information from a job description, and if you get it wrong, the role you filled will return to haunt you again soon enough! Even if it takes a Ouija board, you need to make contact. Engage deep upfront and reference these conversations in your submittal to show the manager you haven't sent a vampire to a team of die-hard Team Jacobs.
2.) Quality over quantity - If you bury your manager 6 feet under with resumes, don't be surprised when they don't claw their way to you like the walking dead. A resume stack paralyzes like a banshee's stare, and don't forget, you're likely not to be the only one sending them resumes! Spend more time upfront to make sure all the must-have skills are covered. Leverage assessments if they're available to get a sense of the culture the candidate is seeking and their personality or work style. Include this data with your submittal. A bit more time spent upfront can save you weeks of ghost-hunting for the hiring manager later, and you'll soon become the managers go-to person for filling high-impact roles. Want to really stand-out? Consider scrapping the resume submission for a more advanced presentation altogether!
3.) Enhance the user experience - Don't make your manager hunt for e-mail attached resumes like treasures in a mummy's tomb. Provide them with a platform that keeps all candidate data in one place available from any device. Don't make them do the work of placing candidates side-by-side with no means for apples-to-apples comparisons. Bring value by standardizing your presentation of candidates to air their decision-making, or better yet, leverage a system that does this work for you!
To explore additional techniques, click here to join me and recruiter expert Donnie Gupton for our Halloween anti-ghosting webinar Weds, 10/31 at 1:00PM EST!
About the author: Dr. Gabe Pappalardo is the VP of Product at Scoutr and holds a PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from NC State University. Gabe has spent nearly a decade consulting organizations on HR topics. His research has been featured in Organizational Research Methods, Computers and Human Behavior, and at meetings of the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychologists and Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
