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How to Master an Intake Meeting with the Hiring Manager

Jonathan Kidder

In order to hire an applicant you will first need to master how to have an intake meeting with the hiring manager. To be successful at  recruiting you need to have a great relationship with the hiring manager. You need to paint a clear concise picture for them around the process from start to finish. Recruiting someone into a role involves quite a lengthy process – from screening, to submittals, to in-person interviews, and to the final offer stages.

 

To start the rat race you need to have a kickoff intake meeting. During that call you need to come prepared with your plan and you need to overly communicate your process with that hiring manager. The more ways you can set expectations the better you will be in the long run. It will help you set on track and if you run into problems down the road you’ll have ways to recover.

 

What is an intake meeting?

Recruiters have touch base calls with the hiring managers during the initial phases of a recruitment process. During those meetings the recruiters do a deep dive into the responsibilities of that job opening. With the hiring manager they cover job duties, discuss qualifications, required skills, comp-range, and overall target of what they are looking for in an applicant.

 

How to prepare for the meeting?

The recruiting process starts long before a Recruiter starts screening applicant resumes. You need to come prepared with a plan of execution:

  1. Create a talent map by your location. Target your company’s competitors, research job titles, skill-sets, college/universities. The more data you have the better you can represent how challenging it will be to find and source applicants.
  2. Working with your compensation team on salary bench-mark data.
  3. Working on creating a job description. Sometimes you might have an older requisition with the same skill-sets.

 

Intake Questions to ask the Hiring Manager:

How would you describe the role in basic terms?

What problems are you aiming to solve by hiring this role?

How does this role contribute toward the organization’s strategic goals?

Describe the structure of your team, and how this position fits into it.

What does the career path for this role look like?

Describe the team culture. What type of personality will fit in?

What are the minimum technical requirements of this role?

What are three key questions I need to ask candidates during the initial phone screen?

What will the interview process look like for this role?

Why do you choose to work here?

Anything to fun to share about your current team?

 

Setting Expectations after the Meeting

After the kickoff meeting within the same week try and write up an email summary of everything you discussed. You can even put a deadline for dates of execution. I also recommend sending out a weekly or bi-weekly meeting calendar invite.

  1. Talent Sourcing: Have a goal to screen and submit at least 3-4 submissions a week.
  2. Setting a time frame of expectations. Share how the long the process will take. Use your average time-to-fill as that expectation.
  3. Interview expectations: How many rounds will this take? Who will the applicants have to meet with throughout the process? Does the hiring manager have a list of interviewers to use?

 

Here’s an example of an email update:

Thanks again for your time this afternoon. It was quite helpful to connect with you regarding your job opening.

As discussed, I will be working to get you candidates that fit your minimum needs and match your ideal characteristics to be able to present you with strong candidates to move forward with in person. Below are the items we reviewed. Please let me know if you see an error or would like to walk through or adjust any portion. I look forward to working with you! Below is a walk through of my plan.  

Sincerely, Jonathan

 

Title: Manager, FP&A – Req Number Listed

Schedule Ongoing Touch Base: Tuesday mornings – DONE

Role Highlights: Opportunity to build a strong, visible relationship with leadership as a true business partner building analytics and providing guidance with a great brand.

Recommended Reading:

Amy Miller Interview Spotlight

Top Diversity Recruiting Tools to Find Talent

How to Create a Diversity Sourcing Strategy

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