I’ve noticed a trend at the last few sessions I’ve done where I talked about recruiting and how to get your team to buy into the fact that we need accurate job posts to fuel AI projects. The audience is on board. They understand how all the steps build on each other. As a recruiter, it’s easy to understand the value of running multiple machines vs one output that’s informed by many machines. That’s why people make so much money when they build integrations. They get stuck when it comes to change management. 

Hiring managers are usually the ones who won’t change, at least according to these recruiters. This is, unfortunately, not a new trend. I’ve heard this for several years. What I haven’t heard is how we, the HR and recruiting industry, get better at change management in the first place. How do we convince these recruiters to let go of the outdated recruiting practices? Considering a big chunk of our jobs is convincing people to accept new roles and all the change that comes with that, it seems like we should be really good at this. 

But we’re not. 58% of recruiters and hiring managers said they actively wish they could work without the input of their counterpart. More than half of people don’t even want to work with us, the expert in hiring, on hiring. In my experience, that means more bias, bad behavior, and weird candidate experiences. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to suggest that if we don’t trust each other to get the work done correctly, we’re definitely not going to trust that person to change the system, right? 

Most People Don’t Want To Change

To be fair, in my experience - most people aren’t great at changing their minds or reimagining something they’ve always done a certain way whether we’re talking about recruiting or how to make a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That’s not a character flaw. That’s a human reality. We only have so much mental bandwidth and few people would decide to do things in a different way on purpose. I’ll speak for myself: no thank you. 

Even some of the people most idolized for creativity built notable, reliable routines around other areas of their lives. Steve Jobs, for example, wore the same outfit every day to eliminate decision fatigue. In corporations, we see this kind of behavior at scale. People adopt processes because “that’s the way we have always done it.” It’s really easy to get a new job and buy into the institutional process. There’s no resistance if you’re not changing anything.

We also don’t love conflict. There’s conflict fatigue inside companies, which is a whole other issue teams need to address that influences so many organizational behaviors. That’s why it’s so easy to ignore a process if it’s not causing a specific problem. So how do you manage change in a more productive way - whether it’s a job post overhaul or something else entirely?

My Favorite Change Management Team Activities For Recruiting And HR

I’ve been invited to many hiring manager meetings and there are a few approaches that have been more successful than others in convincing them the change was worth it. 

• Run an A/B test. Results drive change. Try your way vs the old way with clear benchmarks for success. You might be surprised by the results.
• Focus groups. I like showing nameless examples side by side to allow people to react to a reality instead of an idea. This is a useful tactic when you’re not working with an expert. For example, if someone wants design feedback from me (I’m a copywriter), I say: “Come up with something I can react to. I know what I don’t like and often seeing something allows me to guide us in the right direction.”
• Education. It’s why and how. We’ve expected too much expertise from hiring managers when it comes to recruiting. If there’s a process they need to execute or a change that impacts them, education should be provided that answers why you’re making the change and how their role evolves. Tell them what good means. Provide research that informs the change. 

Change management isn’t just an organizational problem; it’s a recruiting skill to build. To convince hiring managers to trust new processes, we have to give them a reason to change and a way to participate in that change. Testing old ways against new ways, giving folks something concrete to react to, and educating them on both why and how can help. Change management is a skill we need to build on to really make said changes.