Interview guide for recruiters: a full loop with a sourcing exercise and a mock intake

Recruiters interview well. They spend their days on the other side of the table, they know the standard questions, and most can tell a smooth story about a hard search. That is why a recruiter loop should lean on watching the work: building a search, running an intake with a hiring manager, screening a candidate and handling a close. This guide gives a hiring manager or talent acquisition lead a full loop for a mid-level full-cycle recruiter: five stages, who owns which competency, core questions with what to listen for, the work samples, example scorecard weights and the debrief decision rule.

The first call is covered in recruiter screening questions, which places the candidate's desk type and checks billings, placements and requisition load. This page picks up from there and runs to the decision.

The loop at a glance

An example for an in-house, full-cycle recruiter carrying 15 to 25 requisitions. Agency adjustments are at the end.

Each competency has one owner. The talent acquisition lead does not re-run the sourcing exercise, and the hiring manager in stage 4 does not ask about billings. The reasoning behind one owner per competency is in the interview process template.

Stage 1: the screen (30 minutes)

• "How many open requisitions are you carrying today, for which roles, and how many hires did you make in the last twelve months?" Listen for: numbers that hang together. Twenty requisitions and four hires a year needs an explanation, such as a hiring freeze or very senior roles.
• "Which parts of the process are yours, and which belong to a sourcer, coordinator or agency?" Listen for: whether they have personally sourced, screened and closed, or only managed the middle of the funnel.

Stage 2: hiring manager interview (45 minutes)

The talent acquisition lead owns desk management and closing. Keep sourcing questions for stage 3.

1. "Walk me through your requisitions this week. Which ones are in trouble, and what are you doing about each?" Listen for: a specific, current picture of the desk; a reason each slow search is slow (pay, location, an unclear brief, a slow hiring manager); and a planned action, not hope.
2. "Tell me about an offer that was declined or nearly declined. What did you know before the offer went out?" Listen for: pre-closing during the process, knowing the candidate's other options and decision criteria, and what they changed afterward. "It came down to money" with no earlier warning is a weak answer.
3. "Tell me about a hiring manager who was slow to give feedback or kept changing the brief." Listen for: data used to reset expectations, an agreed turnaround time, and escalation as a last step rather than a first one.
4. "Which recruiting numbers do you track for yourself, and what did one of them tell you to change?" Listen for: one or two metrics they actually use, such as submittal-to-interview ratio or time in stage, and a decision that followed.

Stage 3: the sourcing exercise (60 minutes)

A senior recruiter or sourcer runs this live, on a shared screen, with whatever search tools the candidate normally uses. Use a role the team has hired before, so the interviewer knows what a good market map looks like.

The brief

• Part 1 (10 minutes): a one-page job description with one must-have that is unrealistic for the pay range. "Before you search, what would you ask the hiring manager?"
• Part 2 (25 minutes): "Build the search. Show me where you would look and what you would type." Candidates explain choices as they go; nobody expects a finished list.
• Part 3 (15 minutes): "Pick two profiles from your results and write the first outreach message to each."
• Wrap-up (10 minutes): "If this search had produced nothing after two weeks, what would you change?"

What to listen for

• Search strategy: titles and adjacent titles, companies that employ this kind of person, and a plan beyond one job board. Strong candidates narrow and widen the search deliberately. A shared vocabulary for this is in boolean search strings for recruiters.
• Calibration: did they spot the unrealistic must-have in part 1 and say how they would raise it?
• Outreach: two messages that differ because the profiles differ, a specific reason for contacting this person, and a clear ask. Identical templates with the name swapped score low.

Stage 4: mock intake and mock screen (60 minutes)

This stage tests the two conversations a recruiter has most often. A real hiring manager from the business plays themselves; a recruiter from the team plays the candidate from a short script.

Part 1: the intake (25 minutes)

The hiring manager arrives with a vague request: "I need someone senior who can hit the ground running, ideally from a competitor." The candidate runs the intake. Listen for: questions that turn vague phrases into evidence ("What would they have done in the first 90 days that tells you it worked?"), a discussion of must-haves versus nice-to-haves, agreement on interview stages and feedback times, and an honest view of the market when the pay range will not stretch. The question set a good recruiter uses is in intake meeting questions; it is fine for the candidate to bring their own.

Part 2: the screen (25 minutes, plus 10 minutes of discussion)

The candidate gets the resume five minutes before and screens the role-played candidate. The script includes an overstated achievement that falls apart under one follow-up question, a pay expectation above the range, and a moment where the "candidate" volunteers personal information unrelated to the job.

Listen for: follow-up questions that test the overstated claim, a clear and early conversation about pay, motivation explored beyond "looking for growth", and a smooth move away from the personal disclosure without asking about it. In the discussion, ask: "What would you write to the hiring manager about this candidate?" Their answer shows whether their notes are evidence or adjectives.

Scorecard competencies and weights

Example weights for an in-house full-cycle recruiter. Set your own at intake and lock them before the first candidate.

Lawful questioning is a gate rather than a weight: a recruiter who asks a protected-characteristic question in a mock screen will ask it in real ones. The arithmetic for weights and gates is in weighted interview scorecard, and the scorecard builder checks that the weights add up to 100.

The debrief decision rule

1. Scorecards first. Every interviewer, including the role-playing recruiter and the business hiring manager, submits scores and evidence before the debrief.
2. Gate: no failure on lawful questioning. If the candidate asked something they should not have, the answer is no.
3. Floor: candidate assessment and hiring manager partnership at 3 or above. These are the daily job and are slow to coach.
4. Weighted total: in this example, 2.8 or higher on a 1–4 scale goes to references.
5. The business hiring manager's view weighs heavily on partnership. They are the recruiter's customer. If they would not want this person running their search, take that seriously and ask for the evidence behind it.

The speaking order and decision record are in the interview debrief template.

Adjusting the loop by desk type

Common mistakes in recruiter loops

• Hiring the best interviewee. Polish in the interview is part of the job, but it is not the whole job. Score the work samples, not the warmth of the conversation.
• No hiring manager in the loop. Recruiters spend half their time managing hiring managers; let one judge the intake.
• Unverified numbers. Placements and time-to-fill claims are easy to inflate. Ask for a breakdown, then check it in references.
• Treating sourcing as a tools quiz. Which platform they use matters less than whether they can find people outside the obvious pool.

Once you make the hire, how to onboard a new recruiter covers the first weeks on the desk.