You might think that little hasn’t already been said about the relationship between recruiters and hiring managers. And most everything has already been tried to better that relationship.
But what one company did is a little different.
Flight Centre eliminated hiring managers’ role in hiring about two years ago, and gave it over to recruiters.
To put it differently: recruiters do it all. They don’t hand over the finalists to managers. They give them their employee.
Flight Centre mostly hires salespeople. Since it changed its hiring process, turnover has remained the same. Hiring managers, of course, have seen more of their time freed up. And what the company calls “wait time” is down from 40 days to 15 days. This is the time it takes for a candidate to interview, take an assessment, get an offer, and start.
There was reluctance to the change at first, but after seeing the results, according to Carole Cooper, an executive general manager in Brisbane, there is widespread acceptance and popularity of the policy.
Flight Centre’s top hire source is employee referrals. It’s a very social culture: think lots of friendships at work, and lots of partying.
The recruiter/hiring manager relationship is a global program for the Australian company, though “smaller countries allow their leaders to still interview,” Cooper says.