What Is A Hiring Manager? Roles, Responsibilities And How They Are Different From HR Professionals?

Written By Gursheen Kaur Sidhu Reviewed By Lucy Anderson Updated on : February 10, 2026

A hiring manager is among the most key aspects in the smooth functioning of an organization, as they are the team leaders or employees who supervise the entire recruitment process. 

From initiating the job requisition and listing the requirements in the job description to conducting interviews and providing joining letters to candidates, hiring managers perform the most essential tasks in the recruitment process. 

However, a hiring manager job description is different from that of HR professionals, as their responsibility involves recruiting high-potential candidates, while the HR team administers the entire employee lifecycle. 

What is a Hiring Manager?

What is a Hiring Manager

A hiring manager is the person responsible for recruiting or appointing an employee or filling a vacant position in an organization. 

Furthermore, they are responsible for listing a new position, screening candidates, conducting interviews, and ultimately providing the appointment letter to the new employee and completing the onboarding process. 

In simple terms, hiring managers are employees who supervise the entire talent acquisition process to ensure an efficient interview process and a smooth onboarding of the new hire. 

However, they differ from HR managers, as their responsibilities involve working closely with them to hire high-performing talent and enhance recruitment efficiency.

What are the Primary Roles and Responsibilities of a Hiring Manager?

Hiring managers are essential components in the organizational growth of a company, as they are the frontiers of recruiting suitable candidates by initiating the recruitment process. Besides this, the primary roles and responsibilities include: 

  • Creating an open job position and commencing the talent acquisition process: Hiring managers are responsible for evaluating the staffing needs and analyzing the need for a new hire. Furthermore, they initiate the recruitment process by listing the requirements for the new position. 
  • Working closely with HR teams for strategic workforce planning: To build strategic workforce planning and evaluate the talent requisition strategies, they work simultaneously with HR teams to close the position soon with the right candidates. 
  • Developing a detailed and precise job description: Writing a compelling job description is among their primary duties, as it will attract high-performing candidates to apply for the vacant job position. 
  • Ensuring legal compliance towards hiring, along with contributing to the pre-screening process: From adhering to regulatory standards and federal laws to removing any bias from the recruitment process, they are responsible for fair staffing, along with shortlisting candidates during the pre-screening process.
  • Working as the initial interviewer during the recruitment process: They fulfill the duties of assessing the candidates’ technical expertise, interpersonal skills, experience, and qualifications before providing them with job offer letters
  • Informed decision-making process for recruiting the best-suited candidate: After completion of the interview process, they provide insightful information and decide who to hire. Besides this, they ensure management approval after analyzing the best fit for the organization. 
  • Completing the onboarding process for the new joiners: They ensure the smooth onboarding of employees, along with answering their questions related to work environment, notice period duration, or any other queries.

How is a Hiring Manager Different From HR Professionals?

HR professionals

Both hiring managers and HR professionals perform talent acquisition duties, but HR’s roles and responsibilities differ from those of a hiring manager. However, to understand simply how a manager differs from HR, refer to the table below. 

Hiring ManagersHuman Resources (HR) 
Hiring managers are the professionals who supervise the entire staffing process and provide informed decisions for selecting the best-suited candidate. HR stands for the team that is responsible for the screening, onboarding, employee management, career development, and fostering a transparent & positive organizational culture. 
They are required to create a new position, evaluate staffing needs, pre-screen candidates, and ensure a smooth recruitment process. They are required to manage the complete employee lifecycle from recruitment to providing salary slips, conflict resolution, and relieving letters once they leave the firm. 
Serves as the primary interviewer during the interview process. Assist the hiring manager in the interview process and manage the learning and development of the organization. 
Responsible for developing job descriptions based on the required skills and finalizing who gets hired. Responsible for deciding and releasing the new joiners’ employment contracts after finalizing salary compensation. 
A hiring manager’s role ends after the shortlisting and onboarding of an employee.The HR professionals perform the duties of professional development of an employee, along with enhancing employee engagement and retention.   

How a Successful Hiring Manager Collaborates With Recruiters 

recruiters

Whether your firm will hire high-potential candidates or miss out on the best ones depends on the recruitment process and how efficiently your hiring manager can collaborate with recruiters and HR in the company

Hence, check out the best strategies below that successful hiring managers follow for efficient collaboration with recruiters and HR. 

  • Clearly defining the expectations of the new position: They list the new position after discussing with the recruiter and HR about the required core competencies, technical skills, core responsibilities, and experience level. 
  • Focuses on recruiting quality candidates: For optimal organizational growth, they define an ideal candidate profile to recruiters and HR, along with the techniques that can be applied for attracting the best and most relevant candidates.  
  • Delivers efficient and timely feedback: An effective hiring manager works towards closing out the job position early by providing clear and timely feedback and final decisions post screening of the candidate. 
  • Works towards reducing the new hire turnover rate: By setting clear expectations and ensuring seamless onboarding, they ensure the new employee doesn’t find a good reason for leaving the job, and reduce the new hire turnover rate.  
  • Enhancing transparency and data-driven recruitment: It’s essential for them to collaborate with the recruiters and HR team to identify and improve the results of the recruitment process, attrition rate, cost to hire, and time taken to recruit a new employee.  

What are the Smart Strategies to Win Over Hiring Managers 

While a hiring manager performs their responsibility of closing out a vacant position with the right applicant, candidates must know these smart strategies that assist in positioning themselves as the top choice among other candidates. 

  • Candidates need to do optimal research about the organization’s vision, mission, long-term goals, culture, and hiring manager’s requirements. 
  • Ensure that your job resume or portfolio is specifically tailored to meet the required expertise and experience as per the job description prepared by managers.
  • Applicants must ask informed questions to the recruiters related to expected salary compensation, working business days in a year in the firm, work culture, and more.
  • Prepare a few examples of problem-solving scenarios and how you can benefit the organization, as these are among the primary questions asked by a HR manager. 
  • Express yourself as a cultural fit for the company to impress HR managers and showcase a growth mindset willing to adapt and learn. 

How Does Managetrix Help Hiring Managers in Shortlisting Top Talent?

Managetrix

The process of recruiting skilled and high-potential candidates can be overwhelming, costly, and time-consuming. However, you can utilize reliable and trusted HR software like Managetrix for optimizing the HR workflow and automating redundant admin tasks. 

Furthermore, Managetrix offers affordable pricing starting at just $499, which assists hiring managers in gaining insights about the current talent acquisition process, scheduling interviews, and filtering candidates for shortlisting relevant ones. 

Besides this, it serves as one platform for all of your firm’s HR needs, as you can perform management of employees, their time, and their attendance, along with payroll processing, tracking leave, and performance management.  

The Final Verdict

A hiring manager refers to the individual who administers the entire recruitment process, from initiating job requisitions to interviewing the candidates to fulfilling the vacant job position with optimal cost-to-hire. 

In addition, the hiring manager writes a compelling job description after assessing the workforce demands. Besides this, they ensure a streamlined onboarding of the employees after shortlisting the relevant and high-performing candidates. 

FAQs

1. What is a hiring manager? 

Ans: A hiring manager is an employee who is responsible for creating a new position, initiating the recruitment process, conducting interviews, releasing joining letters, and completing the onboarding process.

2. How does HR software support hiring managers?

Ans: A reliable HR software significantly helps by automating administrative tasks, optimizing HR workflow, elevating the experience of candidates, and supporting data-driven decisions by providing real-time analytics.

3. Who is usually called a hiring manager?

Ans: A hiring manager is the person who supervises the complete recruitment process and fulfills the responsibility of initiating job requisitions to closing out that particular job role with the right candidate. 

4. What is the hiring manager salary?

Ans: The hiring manager salary can vary from $40,000 to over $110,000, depending on the years of experience, number of successful hires, and specialization of their roles.

5. How are hiring managers different from recruiters and HR professionals? 

Ans: Hiring managers supervise the talent acquisition process and create a new job role, while recruiters work towards attracting top talent, along with sourcing and screening candidates. However, HR professionals contribute to recruitment along with managing the entire employee lifecycle.

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