What Great Hiring Managers Get Right

A good recruiter can do a lot more than find candidates. They can help you understand the market, pressure test your expectations, identify where your process is creating friction, help you make tradeoffs, and ultimately improve the quality of the hiring decision. But that only works when the relationship is set up the right way.

Over the years, I’ve worked with hiring managers who treated recruiting as a true partnership and others who treated it primarily as a service function or worse, an option. The searches that were the most successful were the ones where both sides had a clear understanding of the problem we were trying to solve, communicated openly, and were willing to adjust when the market gave us new information.

Start With the Problem, Not the Job Description

One of the most useful things a hiring manager can do is explain why the role exists in the first place. What problem needs to be solved? What is not happening today that needs to happen six or twelve months from now? What would make you look back a year after the hire and say, “That was exactly the person we needed”?

Those conversations are often much more useful than walking line by line through a job description. Job descriptions tend to accumulate requirements over time. Some are essential, some are preferences, and some may have simply carried over from the last time the role was open. Understanding the business problem helps the recruiter distinguish between what someone truly needs to have and what would simply be nice to have. Equipping the recruiter with that knowledge can dramatically improve a search.

Clarity About the Tradeoffs

Every search has tradeoffs. You may want someone with a certain industry background, a specific functional skill set, management experience, a particular location, and compensation expectations that fit within a defined range. Sometimes all of those things exist in the same person, and sometimes they do not.

The earlier a recruiter understands where there is flexibility, the better they can navigate the market. Would you consider someone from an adjacent industry? Could someone grow into part of the role? Is one requirement much more important than another? Could compensation flex for an exceptional candidate? These tradeoffs are not about lowering the bar. It’s being intentional about where the bar should be.

Give Feedback That Helps the Search

If a candidate misses the mark, the recruiter needs to understand why. “Not the right fit” isn’t sufficent enough to improve the search in a meaningful way. Was the candidate's experience too tactical? Did they lack depth in a particular area? Were they strong functionally but weaker as a leader? Did the interview uncover something that was not obvious from the résumé?

The more specific the feedback, the faster and better the recruiter can recalibrate. Furthermore, if several candidates are missing the mark in the same way, that may be telling you something important about the search itself. At that point, continuing to send more candidates is probably not the best answer.

Let the Recruiter Challenge Your Assumptions

This may be the most important part of the relationship. A recruiter is spending far more time in the candidate market than most hiring managers. They are hearing real compensation expectations, seeing which candidates are available, understanding what competing companies are offering, and learning why people are saying yes or no. That perspective is valuable and it can mean the difference between a successful open-and-shut hire, or a months-long, drawn-out search.

If your recruiter tells you the compensation is below market, the profile is too narrow, candidates are dropping out because the process is taking too long, or the experience you want is not showing up at the level you expected, that feedback must be part of the conversation. A good recruiter should not simply tell you what you want to hear. They should tell you what they are seeing.

Keep the Process Moving

Hiring processes can lose momentum quickly. A strong candidate who interviews on Monday may be speaking with several other companies by Friday, and a team that waits a week to provide feedback can easily lose someone it would have hired.

That doesn't mean rushing important decisions. It means creating enough discipline around the process that decisions happen while the information is still fresh and the candidate is still engaged. Clear interview roles, timely feedback, defined ownership, and a realistic decision process can make a significant difference.

The same applies when the search itself changes. Priorities shift, teams evolve, and sometimes interviewing candidates helps clarify what you really need. That is normal. What creates problems is when the search changes and the recruiter does not know it.

Treat the Recruiter as an Extension of the Company or Team

For many candidates, the recruiter is one of the first meaningful interactions they will have with your organization. Candidates form opinions about the company based on how clearly the recruiter communicates, whether expectations are realistic, how the interview process is explained, and how they are treated throughout the process.

That means the recruiter needs more than a job description. They need to understand the company, the team, the opportunity, the challenges, and why someone should seriously consider joining. When they have that context, they are not simply selling a job. They are helping a candidate make an informed decision.

It Comes Back to Partnership

For better results from a recruiter, the answer is not simply to ask for more candidates. It all boils down to creating a better partnership. 

That means giving the recruiter enough context to understand the business problem, being clear about what really matters, providing useful feedback, and being open when the market is telling you something different than you expected.

The strongest recruiting relationships I’ve seen work because both sides bring something the other does not. The hiring manager knows the business and the team. The recruiter knows the market and the candidate landscape. When those perspectives are combined, the search becomes more focused, the process gets better, and the hiring decisions tend to improve.

A good recruiter should do more than fill a role. They should help you think more clearly about who you need, what the market will support, and how to make the best possible hire.