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Who is the most important stakeholder in your online recruitment strategy? Candidates usually take top spot- we get it. 
Candidate experience is absolutely paramount. We know from our own customers' that improving candidate experience can reduce application dropout rate by 61%.
Directors and Managers need access to reports and dashboards. They need to be able to quickly see top-level metrics and drill into the underlying recruitment activity. Whereas In-house Recruiters will typically be 'living in the software' ensuring your processes and recruitment campaigns are running smoothly, so naturally, their wants and needs as ‘power users’ are important.
But what about hiring managers? Hiring manager requirements are often overlooked because they are infrequent users- recruitment is not their 'day job'. They just want to get the job done, manage their shortlist and progress the right candidates.
Negative impact
So, hiring managers will probably just be OK- right? They can log into the ATS and do what they need. They’ll probably find their way around if we give them a bit of training.
But what if your hiring managers are not OK? What if they find your ATS a time-waster rather than time-saver? And, what if they resort to doing things the 'old way' with spreadsheets and emails? It is a common problem for many organisations that can lead to lost time and even damage to the employer brand. Here are some ways it could affect other stakeholders:
- In-house Recruiters will spend more time chasing hiring managers on administrative tasks rather than proactively recruiting.
- Management reports can't be relied upon since there will be incomplete or inaccurate data in the ATS. So, any decisions based on these reports - like where to allocate recruitment advertising budgets, might not deliver the expected return on investment.
- And most importantly of all, if hiring managers do not follow best practice recruitment guidelines, then candidates could fall through gaps. Missed communications with candidates will undoubtedly have a detrimental effect on candidate experience.
Solution
So how do you get hiring managers to engage consistently with your ATS?
One solution is to use a dedicated portal that is precision engineered for hiring managers. Ideally, this will deliver the following benefits:
1. Improved engagement
Hiring managers are light and infrequent users. Getting them to log into a fully featured recruitment ATS & CRM is a big ask. With a simple, task-based interface that makes it quick and easy to screen, review and move candidates through the process you are far more likely to get them to ditch their spreadsheets.
2. Access to talent pools
Allowing hiring managers to access specific pools of your pre-screened talent might help them find the right new hire quickly.
Access to these talent pools means they can search and potentially contact candidates that have previously applied for their roles, this might help give you the edge in skills-shortage areas.
3. Consistent messaging
The portal should empower hiring managers to communicate with candidates and the central recruitment team. But with empowerment comes responsibility - you'll need to ensure any communications maintain your employer brand and tone of voice. For example, by controlling which email templates hiring managers can use.
4. Interview Scheduling
Arranging interviews and co-ordinating diaries between hiring managers and candidates is a frustration for many in-house recruitment teams. By enabling online interview scheduling this administration headache can be rapidly resolved.
5. Recruitment 'on the go'
It’s sometimes easy to forget that hiring manager isn’t a job title. They each have day jobs and teams to manage. So giving them the ability to recruit on any device from any location can be crucial- especially if time is short and you need to hire quickly.
To find out more about how a hiring manager portal could help your organisation, download our datasheet.
