#3: The Recruiter's Playbook for Hiring Manager Partnerships with Amy Miller

Amy Miller:
00:00

I always say you gotta make it us. It can't be you and me. It can't be me and them. It has to be an us.

Rhona Pierce:
00:07

That's Amy Miller. If you've ever logged into LinkedIn, you've likely seen her content. She's a senior recruiter at Amazon and a LinkedIn top voice with over 25 years of experience hiring in tech. In today's episode, Amy shares her insights on building strong relationships with hiring managers.

Amy Miller:
00:24

When you develop that us and you are you are working to solve the same problem, you can really have those critical conversations.

Rhona Pierce:
00:33

The importance of understanding the business problem.

Amy Miller:
00:36

That helps you determine what problem you're actually solving and then what kind of talent you need to solve the problem.

Rhona Pierce:
00:41

And how to stand in your power as a hiring subject matter expert. I know what good

Amy Miller:
00:45

recruiting looks like, and it's not this. Welcome to Throw Out the Playbook, the podcast for recruiters tired of hearing that hiring is broken and ready

Rhona Pierce:
00:51

for recruiters tired of hearing that hiring is broken and ready to do something about it. I'm your host, Rhona Pierce. 1st, let's hear about how Amy got started in talent acquisition.

Amy Miller:
01:03

Totally on accident. It was never the plan. I okay. I was working at office team. I had gone in and, like, registered back in the day in the nineties where you would just walk in with your little Charlotte Russe suit and your little paper resume, you know, on the ivory cardstock paper.

Amy Miller:
01:23

And I just wanted to be like a receptionist or something. I was like, can I just have a job where I'm not, like, making hamburgers? And they actually made me their receptionist at the office team. And so I'm handing out, you know, applications to people on clipboards chasing down my pens, and they said, you should be a staffing manager. And I said, y'all cry every day.

Amy Miller:
01:41

I'm not doing that. That's, no. Get me out of here. So they sent me to Labor Ready, another staffing agency. I can't escape.

Amy Miller:
01:51

I'm I'm trapped. I can't get out of staffing. And I'm working at Labor Ready as a temp. They hired me full time in advertising, basically, just pushing around paper. And I'm talking to my employment guide rep.

Amy Miller:
02:03

For y'all that remember when we used to put ads in papers, we had something called the employment guide. Yeah. I'm gonna show it my age here. And my employment guide rep, I've never forgiven him, Steve Siglin. He said, you would be an amazing recruiter.

Amy Miller:
02:16

And I said, what do recruiters do? Because I didn't make a connection. I didn't understand, like, staffing manager and office team was a recruiter. Yeah. So he introduced me to a woman.

Amy Miller:
02:25

She was running a boutique staffing firm in Seattle. She hired me. More to that story, but we'll get into another time. And here I am 25 years later, can't get out.

Rhona Pierce:
02:37

It's so funny every time I ask this question. It's never like, I went to school for recruiting, and here I am. It's I think I've only in all my years of hiring recruiters have probably high or spoken to like 2 or 3 people who like Yeah. Went to a boot camp or a school

Amy Miller:
02:54

for recruiting.

Rhona Pierce:
02:55

Everyone falls into it.

Amy Miller:
02:57

Right? And do you feel like that's been, like, a recent phenomenon? I feel like we've only seen that in maybe the last 10 years. I don't remember this being a thing even in, like, the early 2000, but I definitely remember 2010, 2015, 2020, for sure. I was part of helping build some of those internal boot camps at large companies.

Amy Miller:
03:17

Right? Like, we're gonna pluck you out of the finance department and make you a recruiter. So I don't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing in hindsight because now we're all laid off all over the place. It feels like a new phenomenon.

Rhona Pierce:
03:29

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It's always like, yeah. It's it's been in the in the recent years that I've seen that.

Rhona Pierce:
03:36

So in all of your 25 years, I'm sure you've had a lot of different experiences. Why do you think building strong relationships with hiring managers is so important for recruiters?

Amy Miller:
03:48

Oh my gosh. I mean, there are so many reasons. I don't even know where to start. I think the number one reason is it's gonna make your own life easier. Just from a purely selfish perspective, it really does make your job easier when you can be in lockstep with that business.

Amy Miller:
04:06

And I always tell my teams or people that I'm mentoring or just, you know, anytime this comes up, I always say, you've gotta make it us. It can't be you and me. It can't be me and them. It has to be an us. And when you develop that us and you are you are working to solve the same problem, you can really have those critical conversations.

Amy Miller:
04:29

Because let's face it, Hiring managers, as wonderful as they can be, most of them, most of the time, as great as they can be, they are not recruiting experts. They're just not. And so sometimes we almost have to save them from themselves. Like, yeah, you can't actually say I'm only gonna interview women. That's not something that you're allowed to say.

Amy Miller:
04:54

Shake your heart for wanting to diversify your team, but let's word that differently. And so, you know, we have to be able to kind of coach and educate and really help protect the business. But when you form that bond and you form that really solid business partnership, they're going to actually listen to you, and they're gonna respect your expertise that you're bringing. So there's there's ways to build that, and I'm sure we'll get into some of those details. But, like, far and away, number one reason, because it just makes recruiting better.

Rhona Pierce:
05:26

Yeah. A 100% agree with you on that. And you talked a little about this, but how do you go about building that trust and that rapport with your hiring managers, like, since the beginning of the relationship?

Amy Miller:
05:39

Yeah. I mean, I've definitely been known to, bribe folks with baked goods. So you might see a LinkedIn post popping soon or maybe, you know, after you get a chance to listen into this, you might go back, take a look at it. But, you know, I think, it is all about data. And I would also say, I I don't wanna go too far down the data path because I think it's also important to understand your audience.

Amy Miller:
06:03

What works with a sales manager looks very different than what works with an engineering manager and looks very different with what works with an HR or a finance manager and so on. So you have to really understand. There's almost like this business love language you have to tap into with your hiring partners. And I know for engineers, I'll just use that as an example. That's been my world for the last, you know, decade plus now.

Amy Miller:
06:30

It's about data, and it's about like, hey. The numbers actually show us this. If we do a, we get b. If you try to add c, it ends up going sideways to x. And so you have to almost prove it, but prove it through data.

Amy Miller:
06:44

And so, you know, if you're talking to a sales guy, you're probably talking about revenue. You're probably talking about, you know, improved cold calling rates. Like, you have to speak their language. And so it starts by really understanding what is important to this person and how do they measure success. Because I need to take that concept of how they measure it, turn it into a recruiting measurement, and then show it that way, and that develops the trust.

Rhona Pierce:
07:11

Amazing. That is so smart, really. Speaking their language and, like, understanding what's important to them and making it important to you and helping them. It's it's the art. I've always said recruiters have so much information about the company.

Rhona Pierce:
07:27

You would be surprised. They know so much just for recruiting and, like, good recruiters, I should say. The ones that aren't Oh, it's a caveat. Factional. Yes.

Rhona Pierce:
07:39

So I know, you're very passionate about hiring manager and candidate candidate experience. Right? Yes. I've also heard you say that good consulting looks like bad customer service sometimes. Can you explain a little about what that means in terms of interacting with hiring managers?

Amy Miller:
08:02

I will tell you. So I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you the story of how this quote came into my life. And it has become my mantra. It has become my motto. It has become my words to live by.

Amy Miller:
08:15

And it started with me literally in tears in my boss's office because I had just been screamed at. So backstory, I had just inherited a brand new team. So I've been in tech recruiting for a minute. This was back at at Microsoft, so this is many years ago, but I, you know, had a couple years under my belt. You know, I'm feeling pretty good, feeling pretty smart, thinking I've got this thing figured out.

Amy Miller:
08:42

And my boss is like, hey. I really need you to take over this new business. Like, they're challenging. They're you know, the director has some very strong ideas about what partnership looks like. We just really need somebody, like, that can really, like, get in and, like, not be afraid, so to speak.

Amy Miller:
08:59

Right? And the recruiter who had them before was amazing. Like, it wasn't because she wasn't doing a good job. They needed her to do something else. So when they were thinking about, okay.

Amy Miller:
09:06

Who's the next victim for this director? Oh, we know Amy. She'll do great. So so I meet with the recruiter who's, you know, giving away the business, and she's like, have fun. So she kinda knew what was going.

Amy Miller:
09:21

And long story short, this director had a very specific vision for how he wanted us to recruit, and that involved me attending mandatory meetings with his team, I wanna say, like, 4 out of 5 days, like an hour or 2 hours, almost every day, and we would literally project LinkedIn recruiter up on the big screen in a conference room and just scroll through. And the hiring managers would be like, oh, I like that one. I like that one. I don't like that one, and just kind of doing this random, like, I'm scrolling my Amazon gift card, you know, wish list and, like, picking out things I like and don't like. Okay.

Amy Miller:
09:59

Plot twist. You can't just order candidates online. It doesn't work that way. Right? So I'm like, this doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time, especially mine.

Amy Miller:
10:08

What are we doing? He wanted me to, like, make ticky notes, you know, marks on a piece of paper. Well, we looked at a 100 profiles, and we like 47 of them. And I said, this doesn't work. Like, I I I understand, you know, you want us to see what you think good looks like, but I'm not converting these people.

Amy Miller:
10:25

They're not interested. They're not calling me back. Like, we're just we're putting a lot of effort into something that has zero return. And he said, I don't care. Do it anyway.

Amy Miller:
10:35

And I said, no. And that was how the fight started. So he was very unhappy with me, told my boss, you know, get her off of my business. I don't like her. She's disrespectful.

Amy Miller:
10:49

She's all the things. And I'm in my boss's office, like, literally in tears thinking I've done it. I'm gonna get fired. This is the end of my recruiting career. And she says, Amy, I need you to understand.

Amy Miller:
11:01

You provided some good consulting here, and sometimes good consulting looks like bad customer service. And I had this, like, light bulb moment of like, oh, now could I have delivered the message more gently? Oh, for sure. But she was right, and I needed to kind of stand in that, like, I know what good recruiting looks like, and it's not this. So what we ended up doing is I came to half the meeting.

Amy Miller:
11:27

So he was mad half the time, and that's fine. And I spent 3 months gathering data. And so we tracked all of our effort from the, you know, 2 2 or 3 meetings a week we were doing. We tracked all of the effort that me and my sourcing partner, Paul, who is still a good friend of mine to this day, and we sometimes call each other, like, remember that guy? We have fun with it.

Amy Miller:
11:48

A decade later. But I tracked all that data, and 3 months later, I go back and I say, okay. Here it is. Here's a chart. Like, I had bar graph.

Amy Miller:
11:58

I had the whole thing. You know? I'm like, here's what we got. And we had 0 hires from the, you know, kind of joint sessions, if you will. And we made 6 hires from the actual going out and sourcing and reviewing applicants kind of profile.

Amy Miller:
12:13

And I said, so where would you like me to spend my time? And they're just kind of staring at the the chart up on the big screen like, really? And I because I'm kind of a closet jerk, I hit the button and moved to the next slide, and I had a pie chart with the same data. I'm like, tell me where you want me to spend my time. And the director this is the best part.

Amy Miller:
12:35

The director looks at his team and says, why are you making her come to the office 3 days a week to meet with you? This makes no sense. Let her go recruit. Sir. But we just went with it.

Amy Miller:
12:48

We're like, cool. Moving on.

Rhona Pierce:
12:51

Oh my god. That's amazing. And, like, it's just so many stories of how important

Amy Miller:
12:57

it

Rhona Pierce:
12:57

is to stand in your power as the subject matter expert in recruiting.

Amy Miller:
13:02

100%. 100%. And the way you deliver the message matters. Right? Because I came in, you know, John Wayne, guns blazing, like, I'm the new recruiter in town, and it did not land.

Amy Miller:
13:14

So I've learned to really soften that, and I've learned to approach it from what are we together as a team trying to solve for. Me and you are buddies. Me and you are partners. We're pals. How are we together gonna solve this as opposed to, you know, younger Amy coming in going, you don't know what you're talking about.

Amy Miller:
13:33

I do. Listen to me. Like, that did not go well at all.

Rhona Pierce:
13:38

We all have those stories. I have one where I literally told a hiring manager activity doesn't equal progress. Probably not the best lie to you.

Amy Miller:
13:50

I love it, though. I love it.

Rhona Pierce:
13:53

That one got me in a lot of trouble. So let's talk about intake calls. Everyone has a different name for it now and all of that. But Yes. Calls, the call that you have when you start a search.

Rhona Pierce:
14:07

Mhmm. So walk us through your ideal structure for an intake call with a new hiring manager.

Amy Miller:
14:13

Absolutely. So I have learned so many things over the years and and, like, borrowed and stolen so many resources from different places. And I have to I'm kind of laughing because my mentors I consider them my mentors. I don't know if they would like that. But John and Carmen Hudson, they would freak out if they heard me call it, intake session, but I still do because, like, it's just that's just what we've called it for 25 years.

Amy Miller:
14:37

Right? Like, leave me alone. That's what it is. Anyway, but something that I learned at Microsoft, again, going back to that, I learned so much about tech recruiting there, is the idea of, like, this 4 part, like, this quadrant approach. And the top left corner is going to be the business.

Amy Miller:
14:59

What what do they do? And then the top right is, like, what do they need? So you have this is what the business delivers. This is what the business needs to deliver. Then you build out your talent map and your recruiting strategy based on that.

Amy Miller:
15:12

So this whole quadrant thing, which I'm not able to visualize super well and explain super well, but just go with it, is really about starting from what do y'all do? And that is such an important first step, and I think a lot of recruiters miss that because we wanna immediately jump into, oh, hey. So you opened a role. Let's talk about your software engineer position that you need to hire for. No.

Amy Miller:
15:32

No. No. No. No. I don't wanna talk about that yet.

Amy Miller:
15:34

I wanna talk about what you're doing. Oh, you're building widgets. Got it. Okay. Tell me what does that look like?

Amy Miller:
15:42

So you're building 5,000 widgets a day. It's okay. And how does your team support that? Oh, you build the internal manufacturing system where they put in part orders and numbers. Okay.

Amy Miller:
15:51

Got it. And so you start creating this picture, which not only helps you as a recruiter kind of visualize the work that this new hire is going to do, but it gives you some snippets and some things that you can use to sell the job as well. And that's huge. That is such a missing element in so much of the recruiting stuff, I'm sure you and I get. When they're trying to recruit us, I'm like, what do you do?

Amy Miller:
16:15

Like, okay. You need somebody to recruit. Like, I do that in my sleep, but why is this interesting? Why should I answer this? Anyway so starting with what does the business do, I also then wanna understand how does the current team makeup look.

Amy Miller:
16:29

Because what you start to unpack there, and I've had this happen countless times, you start really peeling back the layers of like how this team is currently structured, what the bench strength looks like, who's ready for promo, who's loose and socket, who's an attrition risk, and then you sometimes even go, I don't think you need an engineer. I think you need a PM. Do we wanna spend this headcount this way? And so you can sometimes actually influence them to think about that headcount spend and that recruiting as differently, which again then leads to a better recruiting strategy, more targeted searching, and just a better long term fit. Because how many times have we been midstream knee deep in a recruiting process?

Amy Miller:
17:10

Hey. Here's 6 great engineers. Oh, gosh. You know, we've been thinking about it for 3 months, and we realized all on our own we actually need a PM. We coulda had that conversation 3 months ago.

Amy Miller:
17:20

Yes. So I encourage all of my sourcers, everybody I know who, you know, is involved with, like, that initial intake, get in and understand the business first. That helps you determine what problem you're actually solving and then what kind of talent you need to solve the problem. Second thing very quickly I'll mention as well. Once we get to that, we've we've absolutely defined the rec.

Amy Miller:
17:42

We know this is the right rec. We know this is the right job description. Because let's face it. The job description that ends up getting posted is not usually the one that they give me because sometimes it's a little work, little finessing. Right?

Amy Miller:
17:54

But once we've identified that, I'm gonna go back with labor market insights. And there's lots of tools that that can do this. I have a favorite I won't mention because they don't pay me to mention it, but I'll just say, you know, there's one I really like, and I will actually use that job description to run a search and bring it back and say, hey. Look. There's a 150 people in a local market that can do this.

Amy Miller:
18:18

This is gonna be tricky. Where are we flexible? How long are we willing to wait to find the right person? How much are you willing to invest in helping me with cold outreach and referrals and things? So I do kind of a dual approach.

Amy Miller:
18:30

The first stage is just help me understand what you're doing and what we're solving for. And then the second is here's a good overview of the market and what we're up against as we go out and try to find these people.

Rhona Pierce:
18:41

And, you know, after the years, anyone who's an experienced hiring manager has their ideas of who their ideal candidate is or what the ideal candidate profile looks. How do you deal with situations where someone has such a specific ideal candidate profile that it's might be unrealistic?

Amy Miller:
19:01

Oh, for sure. And that's where, like, that market mapping is so helpful. And I've done this live. In fact, this just happened, like, a week ago, maybe, last week, I think it was. And I love this manager.

Amy Miller:
19:15

One of my absolute favorites, somebody that I actually was their recruiter when they joined the company, so we're tight. Like, we're buddies. And this manager set up a meeting with my team and was like, look. We've had this role for 3 months. We've had some interviews.

Amy Miller:
19:28

They haven't, you know, netted us what we need. What can we do? And so I loved that she was actually taking a really proactive approach. I filled a little bags. I'm like, oh, we should have called this meeting, but we didn't, but it's fine.

Amy Miller:
19:41

So we're in this meeting, and we're trying to, like, kinda talk through what we've seen. And I said, you know what? We haven't done this for a while. And I grabbed that job description. I threw it in one of those tools.

Amy Miller:
19:53

Girl, when I tell you we got 0 results. And I was like, how have we even managed to get people to interview? Because this this is scary. What looking at? But it was great because we all kind of had this, like, moment of, well, wait a minute.

Amy Miller:
20:09

Are we wording things in a weird way? Are we asking for something that maybe there's a better way to there's an adjacent tool or some kind of different keyword or concept or something we should use. And so we started playing around with it, and within 10 minutes, we left that meeting with 7 very, very targeted profiles that the manager's like, I would get on the phone with that person today. Hey. Somebody wants to talk to you today.

Amy Miller:
20:36

You know? And so it just sometimes is a little trial and error to kinda play with the tools and play with the concepts and play with the must haves so that you can show them, I understand you have this persona in your head, and I get it. But you've already hired that person. They already work on your team. They're special.

Amy Miller:
20:53

We get it. We love them. Please promote them. But now let's talk about how we're gonna supplement that person's skills. You don't want an army of Amy's.

Amy Miller:
21:01

You want an Amy. You want a Bob. You want a Jill. You want a Rona. You want you know you know what?

Amy Miller:
21:05

You want, like, you want lots of different flavors and personalities and approaches and perspectives. And that's also sometimes needs to be explained.

Rhona Pierce:
21:19

Yeah. I I love this conversation. I this is one of my favorite topics Yay. Ever, and and I just love intake calls and how crucial they are. And I, I, I can be very, I get really mad when someone doesn't want to do an intake call with me.

Rhona Pierce:
21:37

I literally have stopped or lose anyone on my team. I've stopped searches. I'm like, unpublish. Yep. No intake call has happened.

Rhona Pierce:
21:46

Yep.

Amy Miller:
21:47

I love that. And that is so important. You hit on something so important. We have to be willing to walk away from bad searches. And I know I I understand.

Amy Miller:
21:58

I can make the argument as well on both sides. Right? If you're an agency, you're not getting paid until you fill it. How can you just not search? I'm not gonna get paid.

Amy Miller:
22:05

Right? So that's one thing. Internal, so many people think that internal recruiters don't have the power to say no. Oh, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying there's not gonna be a consequence or 2, but what pain do you wanna suffer?

Amy Miller:
22:20

Do you wanna have to explain why you're not doing a search, or do you wanna have to keep beating your head against the brick wall of that search? So that is such an important thing, and I hope if there's only one takeaway from this, I hope that recruiters develop that same backbone that you just talked about. It's so important.

Rhona Pierce:
22:37

Yes. And also have a good like, who your leader is, who your TA leader is, is very, very important. That's a whole conversation for a whole other day.

Amy Miller:
22:50

What makes a good recruiting manager?

Rhona Pierce:
22:52

So beyond the initial intake call, how do you maintain, maintain, like, clear communication with the hiring manager throughout the search?

Amy Miller:
23:02

So something else that I developed in the last few years, and, again, kind of beg borrowing and stealing from other business groups and other recruiters and all that. I've created nothing, but I sure do leverage a lot, what I've learned over the years. But something that has been really helpful is, we actually apply a prioritization matrix. So we have what we we have a p zero through p three, so there's 4 categories. P zero is, like, top priority, hair on fire, building will cave in if we don't hire this person, and that comes with certain expectations.

Amy Miller:
23:36

The hiring team meets with us at minimum once a week. We have a standing, you know, it could be like a Slack channel or something. So, I've done that before where we have like just regular daily communication, you know, updates and questions and things like that. We have SLAs on like resume reviews. You're gonna get back to me within 24 hours.

Amy Miller:
23:56

You're going to you know, fast track interviews within 72 hours. What have you? So there's some very specific expectations that are assigned to each of those priority levels. I let the hiring managers choose. Here's your menu.

Amy Miller:
24:11

Here's your options, what you can choose from. If you don't want to spend time with me every single week and abide by, you know, the expectations and the SLAs of a p zero, that's okay. But then it's not a priority for me. Right? I will make this as much of a priority as you do, mister hiring manager or missus hiring manager.

Amy Miller:
24:29

That's what I say. I will say that out loud to them. So by allowing them to opt in and understand, like, okay. This is how Amy sets up her workday and her team's work, They can't be mad at me, like you pick that off the menu. That's why I'm holding you accountable.

Amy Miller:
24:44

Do you wanna change it? Because we could do that.

Rhona Pierce:
24:46

I love that. I love that. Coming from my, project manager, my software project manager background, I might borrow the whole menu, like priority plus menu

Amy Miller:
25:00

Yeah.

Rhona Pierce:
25:00

SLA thing. I I like that.

Amy Miller:
25:02

I love that one. It's a game changer. And think about, like, anytime you've ever had to put in, like, a help desk ticket. Right? Like, what's the level of severity?

Amy Miller:
25:10

It's kind of along those lines. And so it works really well with engineers. Like, it's speaking their language again, right, which we kinda talked about earlier. It's like, oh, yeah. I understand.

Amy Miller:
25:18

This is like a level one ticket. Got it. I better get back to Amy.

Rhona Pierce:
25:23

I'm sure there's been challenges in this priority and, like, navigating that and staying on the same page. Can you tell me about a time, like, there was a challenge with being on the same page with the hiring manager and how you resolved it?

Amy Miller:
25:39

Yeah. So, you know, you touched on something so important, which is the solid TA leadership, right, and having a good strong manager that backs you up, a good strong partner that can help unblock. We need that same thing on the business side. And so, I think it's really imperative that we form relationships at the highest possible level. And so the example specifically that I think maps really well to this is, from a business group I was working with many years ago, not the one with the crazy director, but it's a different group.

Amy Miller:
26:16

And I had a monthly meeting with the VP that you know, he was not hiring. Like, he his he had directs who had directs who had directs that were hiring. So I'm way down, you know, in the weeds with his directors and managers, But he's a VP over this massive, you know, business group, but I still met with him once a month and gave him just a very, you know, high level overview of hiring, here's what's happening in your world, you know, pass through rates, blah, blah, blah. He had a manager just going absolutely rogue. And this manager refused to meet with recruiting, refused to work with us, only wanted to hire internal, and and that's a choice.

Amy Miller:
26:56

Right? I never, like, tell managers they can't only have internal open roles. There's sometimes good justification for it and that's fine. But what we found is this manager was actually moving people from their previous team in another country. So now, we're doing all of these, like, L one transfer after L one transfer after L one transfer, tons of money in relocation, tons of candidates passed over, even local internal candidates passed over because this guy was essentially rebuilding the team that he'd had in a previous life at the same company, and I flagged it to the VP.

Amy Miller:
27:31

And I said, look, it is not my business to tell somebody how to build their team, but I'm noticing some trends here. I'm not sure this is what's best for the organization through many lenses, not the least of which is diversity, by the way. Just wanna highlight this to you. If it's not a problem for you, it's not a problem for me, but I'm just saying this could be. When I tell you this man lost his head count in 3 seconds flat, okay, the VP was like, you're doing what?

Amy Miller:
27:57

And set him down and was like, this is not how we're gonna work. You can work with Amy like this, or we will just, like, reposition your headcount. And this manager was not happy with that, and so we ended up using that headcount differently. So very extreme case, but it goes back to, again, like really understanding the business problem we're trying to solve here. And that was a classic example of this person building a team of software engineers and not thinking about the balance.

Amy Miller:
28:27

And this particular team had this like triangle approach of like scientist, engineers, and PMs. And this person was so heavy on the software engineer because of the way they were building their team that it was actually creating some other downstream issues that we might not have caught sooner had I not raised a recruiting flag, which was also kind of interesting.

Rhona Pierce:
28:50

That's such a great story. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to it. And again, the I I I guess we'll say this a lot during this interview, standing in your power as the subject matter expert.

Amy Miller:
29:04

100%. 100%. Important. I'm not an expert on coding. I'm not an expert on any of this tech stuff.

Amy Miller:
29:10

I I always joke I'm the least technical tech recruiter on the planet. I could barely, like I still haven't changed the time in my car from Daylight Savings Time. I don't even I I can't. I I have to Google it every time, and I just haven't had time yet. And it's, what, been a month.

Amy Miller:
29:24

But, you know, but that's okay because I'm a recruiting expert. I am really good at recruiting.

Rhona Pierce:
29:31

Exactly. So we've spoken a little about data. Lots of people love it. I'm gonna talk about metrics that some recruiters love and others hate. But in your experience, how does having a strong relationship with a hiring manager?

Rhona Pierce:
29:48

Does it impact things like time to fill, time to hire, quality of hire?

Amy Miller:
29:53

What are

Rhona Pierce:
29:53

your thoughts on that?

Amy Miller:
29:55

So and I, you know, I have such a love hate with those metrics in particular. I really do. And I think where I struggle is I am all about it as long as it's a shared metric. I I will I will raise 10 kinds of heck if you try to hold me accountable for time to fill, but you're not equally holding the hiring manager accountable. Like, I will not have it because I can only move as quickly as the manager.

Amy Miller:
30:24

I can only be as effective as my partner because that's what they are. They are my partner. I need them as much as they need me, and we can't do this work without each other. So it has to be a shared metric. And I think that we also have to understand the the things that can skew it.

Amy Miller:
30:44

And and this is where this is where I struggle because I could close and reopen that rack and you'd never know. All of a sudden, oops, starting at 0 again. Only took me 3 months. Look how good I am. Oh, no.

Amy Miller:
30:56

No. No. We had it open for a year before you shut it down and reopened it. Right? And so you really have to be careful with all of these metrics to make sure that number 1, you're holding the right people accountable.

Amy Miller:
31:07

It's usually more than one person. And then number 2, your data is super clean. And this is one of my I don't wanna turn this into an ATS discussion. Good lord. Not not like I don't have enough of those every day.

Amy Miller:
31:20

But this is where, like, data hygiene in the ATS is so important, and it's also why I still, to this day, have my own spreadsheet. I track everything manually because it's the only way I can know with a 100% certainty and accuracy that these numbers are correct. And the things that I track the most, the the the the metrics, if you will, that matter most to me, pass through rates. I wanna know how many resumes that I actually have to look at before I got people I could send to the hiring manager. I wanna know how many people that I presented the hiring manager actually took action on.

Amy Miller:
32:00

I wanna know how many people made it through the interview process, and then, of course, got and accepted offers. So I track each of those steps very, very carefully, and I monitor pass through rates literally on a weekly basis. And I know any wild swings. We went really high here, really low there. I will compare different businesses to each other.

Amy Miller:
32:22

This team's doing amazing. This team's having some struggles. What's going on? Like, you can learn so much just by paying attention to those numbers and then start really peeling back the layers of like, what's driving that change? What drove that drop?

Amy Miller:
32:36

And frankly, if the numbers are too good, that could also be a flag in a weird way. Like, I know people kinda go, what do you mean? Why don't I want a 100% of my offers accepted? I mean, maybe you do, but I look at offer declines as like a lesson. I I made enough offers to the right people.

Amy Miller:
32:56

I'm gonna lose sometimes. Like if I'm going after the best of the best, these people have 5, 6, 10 offers in hand, of course, I'm gonna lose some. Right? So it's like those lessons once you start peeling back the data that are so so valuable and can help you refine your strategy too.

Rhona Pierce:
33:12

I love the whole shared metric, concept. That's that's how I roll. Some people love it and some people hate it, but it is shared. What's one piece of advice that you would give to recruiters who are struggling to build strong relationships with hiring managers?

Amy Miller:
33:33

Yeah. I mean, you could definitely try the baked good approach. I I've never met anyone who didn't love a cupcake, so I'm only partially kidding. I think so a valuable question. I probably don't ask as much as I should anymore because I've I've really been I've hired all my hiring managers, so, like, I already have, like, this built in partnership now, which is super terrifying as much as it is exciting because then they see a different side of me.

Amy Miller:
33:58

I'm like, remember when I made your offer? But no. I think starting the conversation or even resetting, maybe you're coming off of 3 months of just drama. Right? And that's what happened with me and this other director once upon a time.

Amy Miller:
34:12

Walk me through the best recruiting partnership you've ever had. I'd love to understand you've been hiring for a while now. So, this is of course assuming this manager is an experienced hiring manager. What did that recruiter do that was so valuable to you? And you you don't wanna like, I'm always cautious of setting up a negative.

Amy Miller:
34:28

I don't be like, what am I doing wrong? Because then they're just gonna hurt hurt your feelings. Yes. If you can position it as like, what does good look like? Give me some real world examples of recruiting experiences you've had that resonated with you.

Amy Miller:
34:42

Then you start understanding what's important to them. There's going to be some managers. I had a manager who answered this, I am not even kidding. My recruiter left me alone. I said, fair enough.

Amy Miller:
34:55

Here's how we're gonna solve that. And so we contracted that I was going to send an update email. I was gonna have very specific call to action. His admin would reply to that email with his answers, and we were good. And so, you know, sometimes you have to find an associate.

Amy Miller:
35:14

You have to find a proxy, right, for somebody who maybe isn't into it. But that's okay. We were able to solve it through that. And then eventually, we got a couple people on his team promoted. So I had what I always called his lieutenant.

Amy Miller:
35:29

Like, I'm gonna go deal with so and so's lieutenants because they were able to get things done, move the needle on things. And so you just kind of, sometimes you just have to respect that like this person ain't in it and that's okay. We're gonna find a different approach. But if I had not asked that question and if I had not allowed him the space to, like, full on say, I don't wanna deal with you, we would have never got there. And it wasn't personal.

Amy Miller:
35:55

It's just this person is, like, big time, like, techie way in the weeds of hardware design and just did not wanna deal with me.

Rhona Pierce:
36:04

So the real we've spoken a lot about what the recruiters should do in the relationship, but it's a it's a relationship. It's a two way street.

Amy Miller:
36:12

Yeah.

Rhona Pierce:
36:12

Hiring managers watching. What would you what are the top things you think that they should do to foster a positive and a strong relationship with their recruiters?

Amy Miller:
36:25

I think so I had a director once, that I worked with, and we only worked together for about a year. I mean, he he actually left the company for, you know, nothing to do with us, thankfully. I didn't chase him out or anything. But, you know, he had some other things, you know, that that pulled him away, but we only worked together for a year. And I tell you, he stands out even with that finite period of time as one of the absolute best partners I've ever had.

Amy Miller:
36:53

And the first time we met, he said, Amy, I want you to understand my recruiting philosophy. I said, light on me, I would love to hear this. He said, if your recruiter is not your best friend, you're doing it wrong. And I was like, woah. Did we just become best friends?

Amy Miller:
37:13

That was his approach. Right? And, obviously, we're talking on a professional level. It's not like I was going to dinner at his house or anything, but, you know, we we developed this really great rapport. We're still friends to this day.

Amy Miller:
37:23

Every now and again, you know, we'll text each other high or what have you. I mean, he's he's lovely. But he positioned our partnership in that way. Like, he and I were lockstep. We were friends.

Amy Miller:
37:36

We would have even when he wasn't hiring and it was just his teams doing all the hiring, he still maintained a weekly meeting with me because he just wanted to check-in and see how I was doing, see how things are going. It wasn't even necessarily like how many hires have we made. Could be like, how are you? Are my people being good to you? Are you getting what you need?

Amy Miller:
37:54

Are there rocks I can move for you? So approaching it from this perspective of, like, I want to be there to back you up and support you even when we're not directly recruiting together was so important. And I will also tell you, hiring managers, please understand recruiters get beat up all the time. Like, we are constantly being yelled at or being hung up on or being tracked on the Internet. If you are nice to us, we are, like, poor abused children who are just, like, so grateful for the kindness.

Amy Miller:
38:29

Like, I would crawl through glass to go find someone for this director. Like, he was that awesome. So it's really, like, be nice to us, number 1. That that's really all you have to do. But then I think, you know, all kidding aside, the next level of that is helping us solve the problem together.

Amy Miller:
38:50

And I say recruiting at its heart is solving business problems through talent. That's another motto, right? I live by that. So help us understand what the business problem is. Yes.

Amy Miller:
39:05

The rec is important. Yes. The hiring need is important. Of course, we have to know what we're looking for. But help us understand how it solves the problem.

Amy Miller:
39:12

Help us understand how it sells more widgets, how it builds more, you know, product, whatever it is. Like, that is such a game changer for recruiting, I think.

Rhona Pierce:
39:22

One last question. Yeah. If you had to go back to your baby recruiter self, what advice would you give yourself, about building effective relationships with hiring managers?

Amy Miller:
39:36

Talk less. I know that sounds crazy because I've spent I've I've probably talked 90% of our conversation. I'm a talker. I'll fill the space. What awkward silence?

Amy Miller:
39:46

Amy's here. She won't shut up. I think I tried to cover my insecurities and my lack of knowledge by talking too much. And I really should have shut up a lot sooner, asked more questions and listened more intently. Right?

Amy Miller:
40:08

Because it really did take a lot of trial and error. And even going back to, you know, the original story with the bar graphs and the pie charts and the fights, you know, I kinda came in guns blazing a little bit. Even 15 years into the into the industry and and being a fairly tenured recruiter, I was still taking that like, I know everything approach and I really should have been more humble and I should have kind of paused and say, well, wait, When you're asking me to do this, what is the expected outcome? What are we solving for? And had I taken that approach much sooner in my career, I probably would have gotten a lot further, a lot faster.

Rhona Pierce:
40:46

In this episode, Amy shared valuable advice for recruiters looking to build strong relationships with hiring managers. Some key takeaways, understand the business problem you're trying to solve and speak the hiring manager's language. Be willing to walk away from bad searches and stand in your power as the subject matter expert. Develop a priority matrix with clear expectations and SLAs for each priority level. Leverage your data.

Rhona Pierce:
41:13

Track pass through rates, and monitor data hygiene in your ATS to refine your recruiting strategy. Ask hiring managers about their best recruiting partnerships to understand what's important to them. If you want more actionable advice, like the advice shared in this episode, I write a weekly newsletter for TA professionals who want to take a more strategic approach to recruiting. You can sign up at throw out the playbook.com/newsletter. That's throw out the playbook.com/newsletter.

Rhona Pierce:
41:46

The link is in the show notes. If you're enjoying throughout the playbook, leave us a 5 star review. Reviews help other listeners find us. And by all means, click share and send throughout the playbook to anyone you think might be into it. Thanks for listening, and I'll chat with you next week.