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Client management

Stakeholder management

“To be an effective Recruiter, you need to add value to the process, not just in delivering a candidate, but by aligning and setting the expectation of the stakeholder to ensure that they understand what you are doing and why, and the importance it is to what they want to achieve.”

Who is a stakeholder?

An organization, group, or individual who could impact or be impacted by your project.

The hiring manager

The Business Owner/C Level Managers

Recruiters (Internal or External)

Any individual or group impacted by the hiring

Any individual or group in a position to support or prevent the hiring success

Rules of stakeholders management

Understand who your stakeholders are

Spend time on finding out who your stakeholders are. In recruitment, stakeholders can be a hiring manager (anyone who is the decision maker about a hiring), a team member who assess the skills of a candidate, an internal recruiter who wants to be informed about the process or the business owner/someone from the C level management.

Understand your stakeholders interests

Understand what is the stakeholder’s interest within the hiring process (for example, he/she might be an engineering manager and wants to hire someone who has experience in a specific technology because in a month they start collaborating with a new client)

Define the level of stakeholder interest

The stakeholders with a bigger interest than others, tend to be trickier on the candidate selection and the decision making. Rank your stakeholders from 1 to 3 based on how big is their interest and act accordingly.

Assess stakeholder’s power

Some stakeholders have more power than others. These ones will be harder to manage, especially of the have also high interest. For example, the CTO of the company who is the hiring manager also of a software developer role, has more power than the corporate recruiter of the company. At the same time, a CTO might have bigger power but lower interest when it comes to hiring an Online Marketeer. Knowing who these stakeholders are and what they want is critical in mastering their management.

Put the stakeholders on power-interest grid

When you have all the info above, you can choose your management strategy:

🤜 High power+low interest= your strategy must be to keep them satisfied.

😇 Low power+low interest= you only need monitor stakeholders.

🤔. High interest+low power= keeping stakeholders informed

😱 Most power+most interest= need to be closely managed as they have both the power and interest to quash projects if they desire.

Prioritize stakeholders

All stakeholders are important, but some are likely to be more important than others in different scenarios. Understanding who is most important to manage in any given situation will make it easier for you to manage stakeholder issues more effectively overall.

Develop a communications strategy

Letting your stakeholders know what you are doing and why and doing this in a timely manner will help you to manage their expectations more comfortably. This is because in some point you will be able to control when they react to your activities by telling them at a specific time. Consider the power of interest when communicating with stakeholders – not all stakeholders want the tiniest of details all the time.

Grab opportunities to please them

Celebrate every little success and find small things to impress the stakeholders. Working proactively to achieve their goals will be an extra milestone to your and the company’s reputation.

What is the role of a stakeholder and how she/he influences your hire

In order to have a clear communication with the stakeholders and run a smooth hiring process, we need to identify the role of every stakeholder. Identifying the role of every stakeholder helps us to set the right communication style, frequency of communication and be aware of how every person can influence the hiring process.

How do we achieve this?

Set up an intake call with every person who is the hiring manager of the position and use your interviewing skills to learn more about the person using the questions below:

What is your name?

What is your function within this organization?

How long do you work here?

What is the hiring plan for the next months?

What do you expect from our collaboration?

How MatcHR manages the stakeholders/Hiring Managers

Intake Call Preparation

The intake call with the hiring manager, is an essential stage for building up our relationship and for identifying their needs and their expectations. At MatcHR, we follow a process where you will find below. At

RPO Cooperation with MatcHR⁠

and

Client Management⁠

you will find step-by-step process to follow.

During the intake call

Break the ice! A friendly comment or topic to break the ice makes always the conversation more friendly and help your hiring managers to open up.

Introduce yourself :) Make sure to mention your experience and your background and how you have successfully worked in the past on similar industries and similar positions. Stakeholders want to feel that their role is in good hands

Ask the Hiring manager to introduce herself/himself. Include questions about their experience and their background, how many years they work for this company, their role, their responsibilities etc.

Go through the role you will recruiting for and start the qualification by following the

Intake form⁠

⁠

Decide on timelines and weekly/monthly targets

Set the expectations. What does the hiring manager expect from your collaboration? In what time frame?

Agree on communication channel; Decide the channel you both want to use for your communication and how often. Make sure that they are flexible

Agree on communication timeframe; How often can you reach them out?

Agree on feedback timeframe; We always aim to make the hiring process shorter so make sure to agree on a timeframe for submitting feedback (e.g. 24 hours)

Agree on interview slots and ask them to book them in their calendar upfront.

Agree on interview steps.

Agree on reporting style; How often they would like to receive a report and via which channel? What do they expect to see on the report?

Set up weekly catch-ups with them to share any updates, inform them about the process and always keep an agenda.

Continuous improvement

All kind of relationships require a continuous work from both sides. For this reason, there are things that we do continuously.

Keep them ALWAYS in loop based on the interest of the HM. Don’t forget to follow the Rules of Stakeholders Management above.

Feel free to celebrate small victories.

Be open with them and make sure that you are both on the same page.

Always write down the feedback of the HMs. This, will help you on interviewing the next candidates

Ask as many questions as you can. If you don’t ask, you will never find out :)

Don’t be afraid to step up (always in a polite way). Most of the HMs are not familiar with recruitment and they expect from us to lead the way. If something from their side is stopping or slowing the process, say it. They will appreciate it your help.

Hiring Managers are not monsters that are sitting on their thrones expecting from you to deliver amazing candidates. Recruitment is part of their job as it’s their responsibility to grow their team. If they think otherwise, communicate it with them.

Stakeholders Communication Template

A good way to track your stakeholders, is the

Stakeholders Communication Template⁠

⁠

We are here to support each other!

If:

You have any questions at anytime

You have an issue with a client or an HM and you need a piece of advice

You have roadblocks on the relationship with the HM

You are going through an amazing or not so amazing day and you just want to share your thoughts

Then feel free to speak to Katia!

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