I want to tell you about Rachel the rookie, Rachel is a new recruiter. She's been on the job for about six months and is on the precipice of closing one of her first big deals. However, it's bad news Friday, is Rachel is about to learn her lead candidate won't be receiving an offer. In fact, the hiring manager is offering the role to a much more junior internal candidate. How can this be happening? She worked so hard on this placement, and has given it most of her attention this last month.

Not only will she not get paid for this placement, but for all of the other potential placements that she could have been working on. She has a knock her stomach. She's beginning to sweat this is a bad day. Eventually, every recruiter We'll have a placement fall apart in the 11th hour. Internal candidates counter offers unrealistic hiring managers. These are all pitfalls that can sack a placement.

And while they cannot be avoided all together, they can be mitigated with a strong methodology, beginning with the intake meeting. The intake meeting or alignment meeting or whatever name you want to give it is the critical step in the process where you as the recruiter get to frame the hiring managers expectations and shape how the search will be conducted. In this course, we will discuss four critical areas which you will want to cover in your intake meetings. These include the business case around the position, position information, compensation parameters, and the interview process. Before we jump into these four areas, it is important to understand why having a repeatable process for conducting intake meetings is essential to your success as a recruiter to begin with, it allows you to control the conversation. Your hiring manager customers will expect you to be the expert in these situations.

Furthermore, this is your opportunity to manage the hiring managers expectations. This is where you get to help the hiring manager understand how you will conduct your recruiting work in what they can expect from you in the process, for example, how many candidates they can expect to see and how quickly they can expect to see resumes. This is also your best opportunity to push back on any unrealistic expectations and to gauge the hiring managers commitment in working with you as a partner in the recruiting process. You will want to use a job order form to guide you through this call. Your professional success will depend on having a repeatable process for each step in the recruiting process and the intake meeting is no exception. Creating job aids are forms like a job order form will give you a set of tools that will help guide you through important conversations and ensure that you don't forget to capture any important information.

A customizable job order template is available for download as part of this course. We recommend that you pause the video, print out a copy of the form and prepare to take notes as we go through each section. Please pause the video, download and print out the sample job order form before proceeding. Let's look at the first critical area to discuss in your intake meetings with hiring managers. The business case around the open position. critical questions to ask here are Why is the position open?

And how long has it been open? Are there any candidates in contention right now? Are there any internal candidates or employee referrals and if so, how far away Are they in the interview process? Have any offers been extended? And if so, why have they been turned down? What other resources is the hiring manager using to fill this position?

The answers to these questions help you understand the business case around an open position. This gives you the critical context to understand at what point you are beginning to work on a new search. This helps you prioritize your recruiting work. Remember this, no two searches are created equally. And your success as a recruiter will depend heavily on how well you prioritize your work. The next thing you will need to do is gather the information around this specific position.

This includes basic items such as the title, the reporting structure, size of the team and key responsibilities. Typically, your hiring manager will welcome this part of the discussion and it's a good time. Be quiet. Listen and take notes. Once the hiring manager has described what they want this person to do, it is a good idea to ask the follow up questions such as when you review a prospective candidates resume. What specifically do you concentrate on?

The answer to this question often uncovers a whole separate train of thought, which can be valuable knowledge in sourcing candidates. Remember to ask which experience and credentials candidates absolutely must have, and which would be nice to have. It is extremely rare that you will find the perfect candidate who embodies all of the traits your hiring manager wants, and knowing where you have flexibility is critical. One of the most critical data points to gather at this junction in the conversation is to understand what you can sell about this opportunity. Why would someone want this job ask the high hiring manager the following question. If I were a good candidate currently employed and already in a good job, why should I consider this opportunity?

Make detailed notes based on their answer is this information will be critical in your attracting the best candidates to this job. Now that we have a firm understanding of the role, we'll transition the conversation toward compensation. In part two of our course on conducting the intake meeting, we'll continue our discussion on gathering compensation information and framing the interview process.