25 key questions Recruiters should ask the Hiring Manager!

Before a recruiter embarks on executing a mandate, they should be very well prepared with what is required of the mandate. As the old adage goes; ‘Measure twice before you cut’.  So for a recruiter to produce ‘near first-time-right’ outcome, it is essential they get detailed information from the Hiring Manager.

Listing down some of the key questions we have gathered by speaking to a number of high performing recruiters (users of Callify.ai). These questions are in no particular order, just choose the ones you have been missing so far:

What is the most important quality you are looking in the candidate you wish to hire?

1. What are the 3 top skills you need without which you will not hire the candidate?
2. What alternatives are you willing to consider, in case we are unable to find the candidate within our budget and timelines?
3. Is experience in the primary skillset important to you and why?
4. Are you open to considering someone from an industry different from ours?
5. What type of personality works well in your team? Extrovert, Introvert?
6. Are you looking at someone who is an Individual performer or a Team player?
7. What would be the day-to-day responsibilities of the candidate in your team?
8. What are the key accomplishments you expect from the candidate in your team?
9. Will the candidate interact with other stakeholders; internally and/or externally?
10. What is more important for your Written Communication skill or Spoken communications? Please give me an example?
11. What are the benefits of working in your team?
12. What growth path you can offer to the candidate in your team?
13. How would you define your management style?
14. What type of companies (competition) is the best fit for your team?
15. What type of people have not been successful in this role in the past?
16. What are the nice-to-haves for the role?
17. Would you prefer a local candidate or you are open to considering relocating a candidate?
18. What type of education level do you value?
19. What is the size of your team currently?
20. Would someone else also from your team interview the candidate?
21. What are the best days and times for you to do telephonic or in-person interviews?
22. What type of training do you provide to the candidate to get familiar with the role?
23. Are there any daily/weekly/monthly reports you expect from the candidate? 
24. What would the one reason for you to fire someone from your team if you had to?

These are some of the most striking questions we could come across. There would be more and more specific to the mandate. But our criteria of choosing these questions was that with answers to the above questions, one can get a very clear picture of the type of candidate the hiring manager will eventually hire; and surprisingly it is not almost never about inadequate skills.

Callify users use such question to create an impactful Job Overview script that they use to record while creating a custom call on Callify!