Recruiting feedback is crucial for making effective hiring decisions, improving your candidate experience, and developing your team's skills. However, many recruiters struggle to get timely, specific, and actionable feedback from their hiring managers and interviewers. How can you coach your team to give better recruiting feedback? Here are some tips to help you.
Before you start any recruitment process, make sure you communicate the goals, roles, and responsibilities of each team member involved. Explain why feedback is important, how it will be used, and what criteria you will use to evaluate candidates. Provide examples of good and bad feedback, and set deadlines for delivering it. You can also create a feedback template or a scorecard to guide your team and ensure consistency.
Make sure your team knows what the expectations are. That starts with sourcing candidates, conducting interviews, making hiring decisions and even onto onboarding. Make sure each team member knows what they are doing and what part of the process they need to spearhead.
Not everyone knows how to give effective recruiting feedback, especially if they are new to interviewing or hiring. You can help your team develop their feedback skills by providing them with training, resources, and coaching. You can cover topics such as how to structure an interview, how to ask behavioral and situational questions, how to avoid biases and stereotypes, and how to write clear and constructive feedback. You can also use role-playing, mock interviews, or peer feedback to practice and improve.
Practice giving feedback with your team to build their confidence. Often people find this difficult as they are not sure what to say or how to say it. The consequences of getting this wrong could lead to complaints, employment tribunals and damage the reputation of the organisation. So give them the skills and time to practice giving feedback. Use examples and role play scenarios. Increase your teams confidence and leave the candidate with the best experience.
When helping your team develop their feedback skills, make sure that you start with role playing. Get them comfortable delivering not so good news. They are going to tell candidates more "no" than "yes" on receiving job offers. It's just the reality. Transparency is the best path to take when delivering feedback in my opinion. Be kind with your delivery, but also transparent.
One of the best ways to coach your team to give better recruiting feedback is to give them feedback on their feedback. You can do this by reviewing their feedback, acknowledging what they did well, and suggesting areas for improvement. You can also ask them to self-reflect on their feedback, and encourage them to seek feedback from other team members or candidates. You can use metrics such as feedback quality, timeliness, and impact to measure and reward your team's performance.
To make recruiting feedback a habit, you need to foster a culture of feedback in your organization. You can do this by creating a safe and supportive environment where feedback is valued, expected, and appreciated. You can also model the behavior you want to see, by giving and receiving feedback regularly, openly, and respectfully. You can also celebrate and recognize your team's achievements, and use feedback as a tool for learning and growth.
Another way to coach your team to give better recruiting feedback is to solicit feedback from candidates. You can ask candidates to rate their interview experience, share their impressions of your team, and suggest areas for improvement. You can use surveys, phone calls, or emails to collect this feedback, and analyze it to identify trends and gaps. You can then share this feedback with your team, and use it to enhance your recruitment process and candidate experience.
Finally, you can coach your team to give better recruiting feedback by reviewing and refining your recruitment process regularly. You can do this by gathering feedback from all stakeholders, such as recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers, and candidates. You can also use data and analytics to evaluate your hiring outcomes, such as quality of hire, time to hire, retention rate, and diversity. You can then use this information to identify what works and what doesn't, and make adjustments accordingly.