A reader writes: I oversee a team that does hiring/staffing. I’ve worked in this role at this company for four years, and before that led recruiting operations elsewhere. I’ve never been a recruiter, but have worked alongside them for the majority of my career. I’m primarily focused on interview best practices, process, metrics, etc., but don’t actually interview candidates. The issue I’m running into is that even after four years, my team doesn’t fully trust my management, judgment, or expertise because I’ve never held their role. Despite shadowing their work, talking with more senior employees to understand the skills needed to advance, and my experience at multiple similar companies, I still hear comments from my team about I can’t be a real resource for them. (To nip it in the bud, I truly don’t think it’s a gender/age thing.) I’ve tried talking with the team in a group and in one-on-ones to get to the root cause. Invariably it comes back to, “Well, you just have never been one of us, so you don’t understand the nuances of the job.” If I was continuously giving bad guidance, I’d understand my team’s concern. But my boss, who worked his way up from their jobs himself, regularly backs my advice and agrees with my recommendations. Early in my tenure, I wasn’t worried about this. I figured this type of concern was natural, and over time as my team saw my expertise in action, they would come to trust me. But it’s been four years. Short of putting aside my regular responsibilities and becoming a recruiter for a few months, what can I do to effectively build the credibility I seem to be lacking? No, you don’t need to temporarily work as a recruiter. You’ve been doing this work successfully for years, your boss is aligned with your recommendations, and your team is being really weird. You really don’t need to have been a recruiter to effectively lead a team of recruiters, and I don’t think you should validate their belief that you do. Instead, consider saying this to them: “You’re right that I haven’t been a recruiter, and there are things about the day-to-day work of recruiting that you know better than I do. My role isn’t to be the team’s most experienced recruiter. It’s to make sure that we’re operating effectively, you have what you need to do your jobs, and we’re delivering what the organization needs. There are aspects of recruiting that you know better than I do, and I expect that. If you think I’m making the wrong call, tell me why. I will listen and I’m open to changing my mind. But four years in, we need to evaluate each other based on what we’re each actually doing.” It might also be interesting to ask, when making significant decisions, “What am I missing from the recruiter perspective?” Who knows what you’ll hear, but that might elicit something useful. (And if it doesn’t, that could be interesting to know too.) If this keeps coming up, you could also ask, “Can you give me a specific example of a decision or piece of guidance where you think my lack of recruiting experience caused me to get it wrong?” If they can offer something specific, great. You can look into it and learn from it. But if all they’ve got is “you can’t understand our work because you’ve never done it” … well, ultimately it’s not up to them who your company considers qualified to lead your team, and if they continue to make an issue out of that, at some point it becomes a performance and respect issue. The post my team thinks I’m not qualified to manage them appeared first on Ask a Manager.
