How To Hire A Manager: A Guide For Recruiters
Hiring a manager is a pivotal task that can significantly impact your company's success. A great manager can lead a team to new heights, while a poor one can cause disarray and low morale.
Certified recruiter programs can prepare HR teams to handle the complexities of managerial hiring. But what can you do right now?
In this article, I’m going to help you navigate the process of hiring a manager effectively through a step-by-step process and a little bit of personal experience.
What Makes A Good Manager?
In 2023, Pew Research Center did a survey that showed 80% of American workers rated their direct manager or supervisor as good, very good or excellent.
For the remaining 20%, I know all too well what they were feeling.
A few years back, I was working at a midsize business with about 200 employees. One day I was chatting with a colleague, Janine, during our lunch break about the experience each of us was having with our managers and I remember how stark the contrast was between those experiences.
Janine detailed her days working under a manager who had a knack for seeing the bigger picture and inspiring the team. This manager was a beacon of support, always listening to concerns and providing constructive feedback.
When Janine faced a particularly challenging project, she was able to go to her manager for guidance and clear, actionable advice. For her, having that insight boosted her confidence in what she was doing. The team's morale was high, and everyone felt valued and motivated.
The other experience
I, on the other hand, had a less favorable experience with my previous manager. He was often unapproachable, rarely communicated clearly, and frequently took credit for the team's successes while blaming others for failures often caused by his constant disruptions to our workflows.
This led to a toxic work environment where finger pointing was common and I and the rest of my team felt demoralized and undervalued. The constant stress and lack of support eventually pushed many talented employees, including me, to seek opportunities elsewhere.
What I took from hearing about our contrasting experiences was that it highlighted the profound impact a manager can have on their team's well-being and productivity.
One style of leadership fostered growth and satisfaction, the other can be described as mismanagement and created a detrimental atmosphere that stifled potential and drove employees away.
Following recruitment legal standards when hiring managers ensures that organizations avoid costly mistakes and maintain credibility.
5 Qualities Of A Good Manager
Qualifying what makes a good manager is pretty subjective. To some, it’s their ability to communicate in a way that makes them feel comfortable or appreciated. For others, it’s their transparency and ability to see the big picture when making a decision.
For Talent Development and Performance expert, Elena Agaragimova, there are some must haves in terms of the candidate's personality and experience.
"I evaluate what kinds of teams have they managed, type of settings (remote/hybrid), how did they measure their team's success, how did they plan their team's growth and promotions, and what is the retention rate on the team?" she says.
"Then I'm looking at their inter-personal skills - how they manage stakeholders and navigate the various relationships internally and externally. It is also important to understand how they guide their team through that change. Things I would want to know is how they manage change in their own life, how they prioritize their wellness to cope with demands of work, how do they react to stressors and conflicts, how do they process failure? These things will be a good indicator of how they will handle their team members."
In truth, there's no simple answer to what makes a good manager, but here's how I would look at it.
Leadership skills
That sound vague enough? Okay, let’s clarify that a bit. A good leader understands that their position is one of building things, be it connections between colleagues, the plan for a new product, project teams, or a sense of belonging within that team.
But perhaps the most important leadership skill one can have is self awareness. Do I mean understanding how your behaviors, emotions, anxieties, etc. impact your teams and managerial colleagues? Or do I mean knowing your strengths and limitations around adaptability, capacity for listening to people and ability to manage time. The answer is yes, all of the above.
As a manager, you’re at a high enough level you’ll need to know when to be brutally honest, when to delegate, when to be open to a new challenge and how to help your people thrive in a variety of situations. Leadership skills is an extremely loaded term. So think about what skills define the leaders who have meant most to you in your career and cultivate a definition of what a good leader of your team looks like.
"The very best managers I've had or worked with are people people," says Chris Williams, former Vice President of HR at Microsoft, following his recent Ask the Expert session for the People Managing People Community. "They're the ones who understood who I was as a person. You can teach that a little bit, but the truth is there are just some people who are jerks."
Communication ability
That’s right, communication isn’t a skill. It’s an ability. People can learn to do it, but the higher you go in the managerial and leadership ranks, it’s most often going to feel like something you have or something you don’t.
That sounds limiting and won’t necessarily be a popular opinion. Everyone wants to believe that an ability to communicate is something a person can build. But the fact is, the most important facet of your communication is that it’s genuine.
Good leaders communicate in their way and they work to make it accessible to everyone they come in contact with. They don’t try to copy some leadership guru or tips from the author of a book on how to be a better manager. They don’t contrive ways to make themselves likable (cringey jokes, fake laughs, etc.) and they always show a respect for people’s time and efforts in how they communicate.
Put simply, it’s an ability because if a person is able to be comfortable with themselves and how they communicate, they’ll learn how to get the best out of your people in a way that suits their personality and be an effective communicator as a manager in their own way.
When hiring someone for a managerial position, I look for a level of comfort in their own skin and confidence in their ability without coming off as arrogant. It sounds like a fine line to ask someone to walk, but I’m not hiring a junior analyst here. I’m looking for someone with the ability to entice a team of people to follow them.
Problem-solving skills
When problems arise, and they will, who do people turn to? Managers, that’s who. And there will be problems. Whether it’s between teams, issues of time management, poor performance, missed deadlines or miscommunication. It happens.
How a managerial candidate thinks about these things is almost as important as what they do. In practice, lots of things can impact what they do, from the context or environment of a situation to directives from a higher level within the organization. But the starting point is how they think and there are some important kinds of questions you want to ask in an interview that will give you some insight into their thought processes. For example:
- Can you describe a time when your team faced a significant challenge? How did you approach the situation, and what steps did you take to resolve the issue?
- Tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult decision that was unpopular with your team. How did you handle the situation, and what was the outcome?
- Describe a situation where you identified a potential problem before it became a major issue. What actions did you take, and how did you communicate your findings to your team?
- How do you handle conflicts within your team? Can you provide an example of a time when you successfully mediated a conflict and what the result was?
- Can you give an example of a project that didn't go as planned? What were the key issues, and how did you lead your team to overcome them?
Emotional intelligence
The ability to empathize serves us in a lot of areas of life, but obviously none more so than when we’re dealing with other people. And as a manager, most of what you’re doing is dealing with people.
Having a high EQ will help the candidate break down people’s defense and coping mechanisms that often serve as barriers to positive communication and build key relationships that drive things like collaboration and creativity.
To assess someone’s EQ, it’s partially about honing your own emotional intelligence as an interviewer and really paying attention to how someone responds to those situational questions. Look at their style of nonverbal communication, not just what they say. It will give you an idea of their comfort level with difficult questions and complex scenarios.
Decision-making capabilities
The hardest part of any managerial or leadership position is having to make decisions. Decisions that have knock on effects, decisions that disrupt people’s work, impact performance and challenge someone to do something uncomfortable or new.
It’s just part of the job. To assess someone’s ability to do this, you’ll likely present them with a hypothetical scenario in which they need to make a clear decision and explain their rationale. Of course, that is important to see in real time how a person responds and what sort of decision they make, but a big step that you don’t want to skip here is checking the person’s references and asking those people about their decision making ability.
Hearing it from someone else can also give you insight into how that person communicates their decisions and is perceived by their colleagues.
9 Steps To Hiring A Manager
Okay, you basically know what you’re looking for, but before we get too far, let’s just lay the process bare so you’re clear on everything you have to accomplish.
Step 1: Define the role and requirements
Start by clearly outlining the responsibilities and expectations for the managerial position. Identify the essential skills and qualifications needed for the role. This helps in attracting candidates who are a good fit.
Step 2: Create a compelling job description
Writing an effective job description is key to attracting qualified candidates. Highlight the benefits and opportunities associated with the role, such as career growth, company culture, and any unique perks your company offers.
Step 3: Sourcing candidates
Utilize various strategies to source candidates, including both internal and external job boards, social media recruiting, employee referrals, and professional networks.
Employee referrals and considering internal candidates are extremely valuable, as these individuals are already familiar with your company's culture and operations.
Employee referral tools can automate the referral process and make it easier for workers to refer qualified candidates for open positions within the company.
Step 4: Screening and shortlisting
You can use the resume screening features of your recruiting software to identify top candidates. Once you've fine-tuned your process with the technology, conduct preliminary phone or video interviews to further narrow down the list.
This helps in saving time and resources during the in-depth interview phase.
Step 5: Conducting interviews
First, using an efficient interview planning tool is crucial to streamline manager-level interviews without missing any key steps.
Structure and conduct in-depth interviews to thoroughly evaluate candidates. Use behavioral and situational questions to gauge their managerial competencies and how they handle real-world scenarios.
Mariya Hristova, People and Operations Lead at Focaldata, asks specific questions "to understand a managerial candidate's thinking around motivating teams, management and performance." Questions like:
- How do you balance managing a team if individuals with their own needs vs. Making sure you adhere to a company culture?
- Explain how you make the call that someone is not a fit for the role rather than you not finding the right way to coach them?
- Tell me about a time when you turned an under performer around? (especially essential for managers that have been managing a 3-4 years plus)
- How do you motivate your teams and can you give me an example of when that method has been most effective in your experience?
"In general, half the assessment if not more (dependent on the role) should be about their leadership skills - both in management of people and strategic leadership," Hristova says.
During the interview, you obviously want to be present in the conversation, but Agaragimova has some advice on what to look for.
Step 6: Assessing skills and competencies
You can use assessments and tests to evaluate candidates’ skills. Incorporate practical exercises and role-specific tasks to see how they perform in situations they would encounter on the job.
Using one of the many types of pre-employment testing will further refine your understanding of their skills.
Pre-employment testing software can help here by offering customizable assessments, automated scoring and reporting for efficiency, and integration capabilities with HR systems.
Step 7: Checking references and backgrounds
Verify candidates' employment history and references to ensure their credibility. There are a variety of background check software and reference checking software vendors you can engage with to deploy tools made specifically for this task.
Step 8: Making the offer
Extend a job offer and negotiate terms effectively. Clear communication during this phase is crucial to set expectations and avoid misunderstandings.
Step 9: Onboarding the new manager
Ensure a smooth transition and successful integration of the new manager by providing comprehensive training and resources. A well-structured onboarding process helps them acclimate quickly and start contributing to the team’s success.
Assessing Your Managerial Candidate
Okay, so you've got the steps you're going to follow, but what are you looking for in terms of how they suit the role and your organization?
There's a few things I like to keep in mind, but first there's an important caveat. As someone who's been involved in the hiring process of a manager while working in the same position they would later occupy, one thing I'm not looking for is a carbon copy of myself or anyone else on the team.
While it might sound nice, adding someone who shares many of the same qualities as current team members can limit diversity of thought and experience and add less to the culture of the team than someone from a different background, be it cultural or experiential.
Importance of industry experience
A manager with industry experience can hit the ground running. They understand the nuances and challenges specific to the industry, which can lead to more effective management and quicker problem-solving.
For instance, a manager with a background in retail will know the seasonal trends and customer behavior patterns that are unique to that sector.
At the same time, you may not like some of the habits they bring with them or their desire to mimic processes from a previous organization that don't jive with yours. Carefully consider how important industry experience is to success and whether the person seems to be adaptable enough to make a change.
Cultural alignment
Aligning a manager’s values with the company culture is will help with long-term success. During the hiring process, you can assess cultural alignment by asking questions about their values, work ethic, and how they handle certain situations.
When you provide a test assignment, part of its goal should be to assess how well their style of thinking will mix with the way your teams do their best work.
This helps ensure they will fit in well with your team and contribute positively to the company culture.
Finally, adopting a collaborative hiring process can also prove valuable as it allows multiple perspectives from within the organization to weigh in on how this person will gel with the org's cultural identity.
Track record of success
Evaluating a candidate’s past performance and achievements is a good indicator of their potential success in your organization.
Beyond, requesting references and testimonials from previous employers to gain insights into their work ethic and accomplishments, you’ll want to encourage the candidate to give a structured response that details that accomplishment in some way.
Below, I’ve created an example of the type of structure you should be looking for.
Achievement: Successfully led a cross-functional team to launch a new product line, increasing company revenue by 25%.
Details:
- Spearheaded a cross-functional team of 15 members from marketing, product development, and sales departments.
- Implemented agile project management methodologies to streamline the product development process.
- Conducted market research and analyzed customer feedback to identify key features and improvements.
- Coordinated with suppliers and managed budgets, ensuring the project was completed on time and within budget.
- Developed and executed a comprehensive marketing strategy, resulting in a 25% increase in company revenue within six months of the product launch.
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