Kicking Myself In the Groin By Forcing Managers to Make Offers...

I'm HR.  I get that.  I also get the fact that as a HR professional, most of the world expects me to lock down control of everything my department touches, like a security checkpoint that just found a secret compartment in Mick Vick's water bottle.

But other than compensation information and personnel files, I'm not really in the mood to lock down control of anything.   

Case in point - making offers to candidates. 

Lots of HR/Recruiting departments take control and make all offers on behalf of managers.  I'll do that from time to time, but I like to handle the details and prep the hiring managers to make their own offers.  My logic behind this is that I want the future employee to seek out their manager when they have questions and issues.  In my opinion, it's the best way to set up the manager to have an open door policy and have the ability to resolve issues/concerns/needs their employee might have in the future. 

Plus, HR making all the offers has that Darth Vader/Death Star feel to it to me.   Need a pencil?  HR made the offer, so they probably control the pencils.  Go ask them.  Pretty soon you're mediating the request for the new printer.   

Based on that philosophy, my team tries to proactive source, screen and present final candidates to managers so they can concentrate on running the business, while we run the early stages of the talent acquisition process.  Once they make the call on who they want to hire, we get the offer package together and presto!  All they have to do is call the candidate, make the offer, and then press send on a pre-packaged offer packet that's emailed to the candidate.

At that point, it generally goes one of two ways.  The managers who are communicators take the opportunity to sell the position and the company, and they close the candidate.  Sweet.  Just like we drew it up... The managers who struggle with the art of communication, and might be a little intimidated with the whole compensation thing, generally stumble through it and hopefully emerge without needing to be medicated.  For the ones that struggle, I can see the probability of closing the offer folding like the New York Knicks under the direction of Isiah Thomas.

But yet I persist in forcing the less experienced managers to get repetitions in making offers to candidates.  Call me a masochist, but repetition is the only way it gets better.  And isn't speaking to employees (both potential and real ones) part of the gig for managers?

Or I could just centralize operations to the Death Star and start making everyone request all items from HR via paper forms...

Comments

[Lisa Rosendahl]

We are paper-based and make all the offers. Things that make you go hmmmmmm. . . .