Recruiter vs. Hiring Manager vs. Human Resources

You might have heard the term recruiter, hiring manager, and human resources. For some people, these three terms refer to the same job function which is to recruit and hire the best candidates for vacant positions in a company. However, do you know that recruiter, hiring manager, and human resources serve different roles within a company? 

Recruiter 

Recruiter is a person who manages a process of a recruitment, then it is a hiring manager who actually closes the deal. 

The role of recruiters mainly focuses on the foundation for hiring the right people. That is because they use their expertise to build a strong pool of candidates where hiring managers will look for their next hire, train hiring managers on interviewing techniques and keep them on track so that they get back to candidates in a timely manner, as well as recommend and implement effective assessment methods that help evaluate candidates objectively. Ultimately, recruiters make the job of a hiring manager easier and lighter. 

See also: Step-by-Step Ways to Recruiting Furloughed Employees

Hiring manager 

As mentioned earlier, a hiring manager is a decision-maker during a recruitment. They own the outcome of the recruiting process and when there is a bad hire, the hiring manager is the one who should investigate what went wrong. 

The duties of hiring managers include evaluating candidates and uncovering their potential skills, informing recruiters that they need to continue looking at new candidates because no suitable candidates has been identified yet, and impact the winning candidates decision to accept a job offer. 

Human resources 

Human resources (HR) is functioned as a gatekeeper in a company. HR is usually teamed up into several departments including recruiting, management, development, etc. For this reason, a good recruiter always forges a relationship with HR as soon as possible. HR teams tend to look at a particular candidate differently than a hiring manager. They are not as concerned with qualifications and instead focus on company culture and best fit. HR also has a better sense of the type of person they are looking to hire, thus their questions and interests are going to lie there. 

In short, a recruiter is a small team of people who focus solely on looking and leveraging the talent pool, while the hiring manager will be the decision-maker and the HR team is the one who will manage and develop the selected talents when getting hired. 

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