Recruit
Summary: The purpose of an intake meeting is to clarify the requirements and qualifications that candidates will need to possess, the roles and responsibilities of the job(s) on offer, and how candidates will be selected.
Intake Meeting
An intake meeting is an important discussion that begins the hiring process. The intake in question is the new staff person or persons who will be hired by an organization either to fill new positions or replace employees who are leaving. The purpose of an intake meeting is to clarify the requirements and qualifications that candidates will need to possess, the roles and responsibilities of the job(s) on offer, and how candidates will be selected.
In an intake meeting, the recruitment methods used, the compensation on offer, and the desired timeframe for hiring are also discussed. This type of meeting ensures that all stakeholders are aligned on the hiring goals and recruitment process.
Which organizational stakeholders are involved in an intake meeting?
An intake meeting is normally held to allow smooth communication between recruiters and the people looking for new hires. These stakeholders may include:
- Hiring managers: Hiring managers are human resources (HR) professionals in charge of job requisitions and hiring new staff within an organization. They are typically the people responsible for opening new positions and making final hiring decisions. Their role in intake meetings is to clearly explain the positions they have to fill, the requirements and qualifications candidates need, and the compensation on offer.
- Client company representatives: Many small enterprises don’t have dedicated hiring managers and may not even have HR staff at all. They will, therefore, send representatives to intake meetings to fulfill the same role as hiring managers.
- In-house recruiters: In-house recruiters are part of an organization’s HR department. In intake meetings, they work closely with the hiring manager to understand what open positions are on offer and the ideal candidate profiles needed to fill them. They also need to understand the hiring manager’s expectations regarding the number of staff needed and the time to hire.
- Recruitment service providers: Many organizations will either lack in-house recruiters or choose to outsource this function to service providers because of their specialization and professional experience. These service providers must understand every aspect of their client’s goals and use the opportunity of an intake meeting to ensure no misunderstandings occur.
What are the risks and challenges associated with intake meetings?
The benefits of intake meetings are clear. Yet, there are also risks and challenges inherent in intake meetings.
Hiring managers have a lot of professional experience and should be able to clearly outline the positions they need to fill and the qualifications they’re looking for. However, less-experienced company representatives may not have such clear ideas of what’s needed. Communicating these requirements may also produce misunderstandings that lead recruiters to go after the wrong people or misrepresent job openings. These communication issues can cause time and money to be wasted and produce negative experiences for applicants as well.
How do you measure the success of an intake meeting?
While everyone involved may leave an intake meeting confident that they’re in complete alignment, this isn’t always the case. However, measuring the success of these meetings is an important way to streamline the hiring process and save time and costly hiring mistakes. There are different ways to measure intake meeting success, which include:
- Summary email: It’s customary for the recruiter to send a summary email to the hiring manager after an intake meeting. This email should detail what the manager wants in their new hire and how this ideal person will be recruited. If there are any misunderstandings, the hiring manager should be able to highlight these within the summary email and help to clarify them.
- Follow-ups: It’s important to continue to follow up on the recruitment process to ensure it’s being executed according to what was discussed in the meeting. This can involve checking the content of job postings and examining where they’re being advertised so that they’re clear, accurate, and appropriately targeting the right potential candidates.
- Application management: The applications received for any position can be assessed for quality and relevance. An application management system (normally part of a human resources information system (HRIS)) may be used to speed this work along. If the applications received don’t show adequate qualifications or relevance to the desired position, there was likely some misunderstanding in the intake meeting.
- Hiring success: When intake meetings are successful, they speed up and improve the quality of hires. These metrics—time to hire and rate of candidate acceptance—can be used to measure how effective intake meetings are.
Andrew (Drew) joined the Remote People team in 2020 and is currently Director, Regulatory Affairs. For the past 13 years, he has been a trusted advisor to C-Suite executives and government ministers on international compliance and regulatory issues. Drew holds a law degree from the University of Otago, a PhD from the University of Sydney, and is an enrolled Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.
