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The pipeline imperative (or how to engage talent even when you’re not hiring)

June 03, 2009

It’s been established that nonprofits benefit from developing and engaging talent pipelines. Yet pipeline development is rarely done, for a slew of well-documented reasons, such as lack of current nonprofit leaders who champion these efforts, lack of nonprofit staff who are knowledgeable about and/or responsible for pipeline development, or lack of systems in place to nurture talent over time.

Today more than ever, the nonprofit sector may be missing a major opportunity to figure out pipeline development once and for all. We’re witnessing an unprecedented influx of talent to the nonprofit sector, including a surge of recent graduates, career changers, and older employees. At Commongood Careers, we’ve seen the volume of resumes for our clients’ searches triple or quadruple in many cases. Even organizations that are not advertising any positions are receiving unsolicited resumes and requests for informational interviews.

So how can we take advantage of building relationships with these talented people, and ultimately create pipelines we can tap down the road?

One example comes from Acumen Fund, a nonprofit global venture fund that addresses global poverty. For the upcoming summer, Acumen Fund had 10 intern spots open and received applications from over 700 candidates. They asked themselves, “What can we do to engage the other 690 candidates?” After a couple of emails and meetings, they decided to run an experiment: invite the non-accepted candidates to a private conference call briefing from senior Acumen staff. Not only was this a way to Acumen leaders to thank these candidates, but also offer ways to stay engaged with both the organizations and the social innovation space as a whole.

Sounds easy, right? Creative ways to engage talent like the approach taken by Acumen do not require tons of staff bandwidth, and result in laying the foundation for future touchpoints with talent that has expressed interest in your organization. Use these opportunities to invite these talented individuals to volunteer, donate, blog, or participate in your organization in other ways. Track these candidates over time, even if it’s as simple as adding them to an email list and sending them a quarterly note. Engaging talent early and often is bound to contribute to the success of your organization’s future recruitment efforts.

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Best Practices, Hiring Advice

Prioritizing diversity recruitment, once and for all

April 13, 2009

Improving racial diversity in nonprofit organizations, particularly in leadership positions, has been a priority of for years. Yet today’s nonprofit sector still looks really...well...white.

There have been many studies, reports, and coalitions devoted to identifying the reasons behind the sector’s lack of diversity. The most widely reported roadblocks include pipeline challenges (such as a lack of recruitment channels or networking opportunities), as well as competition for top talent from corporate employers who generally offer higher compensation.

The current economic downtown and increased supply of career changers as a result of corporate layoffs highlights this issue even more. If nonprofits aren’t prepared to capitalize on the influx of talent to the job market, it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity. And if there are still no inroads for people of color to nonprofit opportunities, much of the amazing talent that is now available will not find their way into the sector.

The time to act is now. A number of strategies to address racial disparity in nonprofit roles have been identified, such as getting senior staff to embrace this issue, shifting recruitment tactics away from just job postings, and creating career paths and growth opportunities that can compete with typically more higher-paid positions in the corporate sector.

On the surface, implementing these strategies does not seem impossible, especially during a time when there are overall fewer jobs and a greater supply of talent. But the reality is few nonprofits are able to invest the necessary dollars, time, and people to meaningfully address the task at hand. This is not to say that diversity isn’t a top concern. Rather, most nonprofits are unable to prioritize diversity recruitment, at least not to the degree in which they tend to prioritize other mission-critical initiatives.

(Note: at this point, we should state that we do not intend to discount the great strides a number of organizations are making to address diversity in the sector.)

To gain greater insight into this complex issue, we spoke with Rosetta Thurman, an emerging nonprofit leader of color and the principal of Thurman Consulting, an organization that works with nonprofits to increase their leadership and management capacity.

“There’s no silver bullet to solving the problem of racial disparity in nonprofit roles,” Rosetta said, “However, simply posting jobs on Craigslist and Idealist isn’t going to do it. We need to take some risks.”

Some tactics that Rosetta suggested include: going to meetings of professional organizations such as Hispanics in Philanthropy, investing dollars and staff time in a booth at the National Association of Black MBAs national conference.

She added, “It’s ok to be the only white person in the room.”

Our conversation came back to dollars and time. How can a nonprofit trying to spend as much on program costs as possible justify the expense of most recruiting activities?

“We pay for what we prioritize,” said Rosetta,”If we prioritize addressing racial diversity now, we won’t have to pay forever. We may only need to make that connection one time to start to build a network and create a pipeline of candidates.”

Rosetta then shared a story with me about her own experience coming to a nonprofit employer. When she interviewed for her first job in D.C., everyone she met with was white. In her second interview, she met with an African-American employee who discussed how the organization genuinely offered a diverse and inclusive workplace. It was that experience that cinched it for her. “It’s important to understand why the people of color choose to work at an organization. This cultural competency is a piece that the sector hasn’t mastered. Most people of color do come from a mindset of service, but it often looks different from other routes to the same careers. Organizations need to take the time to understand this, and then create a workplace that is inclusive of culturally-informed points of view about public service”

Bottom line: until nonprofits really focus on taking strategic action to improve diversity, there are a lot of good intentions, but not a lot of systemic change. Let’s be the generation of nonprofit leaders that commits to genuinely building diversity. It is only after making a serious investment in creating recruitment pipelines, deep networks, and viable career paths that we will begin to realize a more inclusive, representative, and diverse nonprofit sector.

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Hiring Advice, Workplace Diversity

How is the Economy Affecting Your Job Prospects?

November 19, 2008

Earlier this week, the Chronicle of Philanthropy hosted an online discussion about how the current financial downturn is affecting the job prospects of nonprofit professionals.

The discussion explored if the financial crisis is causing shifts in the nonprofit job market, and how particular people are being affected. On one end of the spectrum, people seem to be postponing retirement and staying at their jobs longer. Younger employees are concerned about their long-term prospects in the social sector.

The overall financial situation may also result in sector-switchers from the corporate world wanting to enter the nonprofit sector, which creates more competition for fewer jobs overall.

How is the economy affecting you in your job search and/or current position?

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Hiring Advice, In the News

James in the Boston Globe

January 28, 2008

Our very own James Weinberg was quoted in Maggie Jackson’s Balancing Acts column in last Sunday’s Boston Globe. Here’s a snippet:

Will portfolio work turn epidemic? Probably not, although its incidence is growing, according to recruiters, career coaches, and others who follow trends in work culture. James Weinberg, a recruiter for nonprofits, sees an uptick in those willing to work this way - and those willing to hire them.

More job candidates are asking Weinberg for part-time work, saying, “ ‘I’m trying to knit together a career’, or ‘I’d like to have multiple roles that will allow me flexibility,’ “ observes Weinberg, chief executive of Commongood Careers in Boston. Sometimes, executives work on a shared basis for several groups, splitting their time between jobs, he says.

Read the full article.

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Best Practices, Hiring Advice, In the News, Talent Issues

Good Reads: Forces of Good

January 28, 2008

Kevin “I like to read” Kovaleski here with a literature review. If I could make a diorama on this blog, I would.

There is an ongoing debate in the nonprofit sector on what makes an organization a social entrepreneur. Forces for Good, a recent voice on the subject, provides a fresh approach to this topic.

To make the distinction between social entrepreneurs and traditional nonprofits, authors Crutchfield and McLeod-Grant spent four years researching the management techniques of hundreds of nonprofits.  Their findings target the management techniques of twelve nonprofits that they conclude are examples of high-impact, socially entrepreneurial change agents.  In their analysis of these organizations, Crutchfield and McLeod-Grant posit that these groups do not measure success through revenue increases, brand recognition or organizational chart sophistication.  Instead these twelve social trailblazers measure success by the change they are affecting in the piece of the world that they are attempting to improve. 

While old-school nonprofit management looks to governance, organizational structure, fundraising and other internally facing strategies to build a strong organization, social entrepreneurs focus their energy externally through six creative techniques.  These techniques (such as one that advises nonprofit groups to cross sectors and include for-profit partners into the execution of the mission) challenge traditional nonprofits to rethink goals and strategies in the execution of their mission. By exposing limitations and even flaws in traditional thinking, Forces for Good identifies commonly held myths about nonprofit management that are indicative of an outdated system of thought.

The authors conclude that the twelve nonprofits in study focus on the end-goals of creating impact and improving society rather than focusing on building a secure, fiscally sound organization, as their traditional counterparts so often obsess.  The authors offer well researched and thought out examples of innovative approaches to management employed by these groups. The case for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking is also supported by the authors’ warning against reckless management based on wild idealism.  The success of the organizations featured in Forces for Good is instead a product of an unwavering management philosophy that postures mission above tradition.

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What We're Reading, Best Practices, Hiring Advice, Social Innovation, Talent Issues

The Growth Imperative: How Can Organizations Plan Ahead?

November 30, 2007

In a recent report titled “The Global War for Talent” published by Aberdeen Group, a global research organization, researchers suggest that companies that focus their efforts on future workforce planning have a consistent advantage in talent acquisition. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? But what about organizations that are growing at such a rate that future growth is difficult to predict? This is a common challenge of some entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations whose growth outpaces their ability to plan for growth.

To address this challenge, Commongood Careers has a few suggestions:

1. Know the skill sets you seek. Create a list of common skills and competencies required for hires, both for specific roles and for all employees. If you build these profiles today, you’ll be better prepared when a position opens up in your organization.

2. Be able to connect quickly with candidates who possess those skills. Smart organizations are always “recruiting” to some extent; keep track of and keep in touch with any potential employees you may meet even if you’re not hiring for an open position today. Then, when it comes time to fill an open position, you’ll have a few leads in mind from the start.

3. Elevate talent acquisition planning to a strategic level. Your organization wouldn’t launch a new fiscal year without a budget, right? Planning for new hires is just as important. Build hiring plans, even if they are just forecasts or estimates, into your yearly planning process. A little work on an organization chart in advance will help to avoid hiring “fire drills” down the road.

Other suggestions for how nonprofits can best plan ahead for hiring? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment to this blog entry.

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Hiring Advice, Sector Reports

Making “BA or Equivalent” Work

October 11, 2007

The social sector is known for valuing diversity of experience in its workforce and for working to have its staff mirror its populations served. Then why, in reading nonprofit job descriptions, is there so much emphasis on jobseekers holding college and advanced degrees when the skyrocketing price of higher education makes those options unaffordable to so many? Is a BA or other degree really required for someone to be successful in a position?

For several reasons, we believe nonprofits would actually benefit from stating “BA or Equivalent Experience Required” (instead of “BA Required, Masters Preferred”) in their job descriptions:

(1) It’s more legally compliant. Requiring a BA can be construed as discriminatory. Stating “BA or Equivalent Experience” in a job description helps an organization stay compliant with hiring laws.

(2) It nets candidates possessing a range of experiences, not just a specific educational background. This strongly supports our tried and true best practice of hiring based on core competencies—such as qualities and characteristics gained through experience of all kinds.

(3) It fosters a diverse workforce. To many, attending college is not a path taken, either by choice or by circumstance. For those not attending college right out of high school, they may be starting their professional career earlier than most, thus gaining more on-the-job training from an early age.

But what does “or equivalent experience” mean exactly and how can a hiring organization best measure this requirement, especially in comparison to an academic degree?

What’s important is that candidates being considered for an open position have the right competencies—skills, knowledge, technical abilities, and personality characteristics—to succeed at a job.

In some instances, a specific type of educational background is required. This is certainly true of practitioners in healthcare organizations, for example. We’ve also found this to be the case occasionally in the fields of finance and IT. Even in these cases, however, it is typically specific coursework or certifications that are required, not a degree.

We want to know what you think about this topic. What are the advantages and challenges of stating “BA or Equivalent Experience” in a job description? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

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Best Practices, Hiring Advice

How Entrepeneurs Recruit Talent

January 05, 2007

A recent article in Entrepreneur magazine reported that the greatest challenge facing entrepreneurial organizations in 2007 is the ability to hire and retain the right people. The article had two particularly effective suggestions for meeting this challenge: 1) soliciting referrals and 2) hiring interns.

We know first-hand the value of employee referrals. Out of all of the searches we’ve completed in the past year, nearly 50% of placements have come either from the Commongood Careers network or the network of the hiring organization. When we begin any search, we reach out to our professional and personal contacts to explore their interest in a given position or to find out if they know anyone who might be interested. Besides drumming up buzz about a specific position, this strategy also helps us stay in touch with our networks and develop a talent pipeline.

Hiring interns is another effective way for entrepreneurial organizations to build relationships with developing talent. When hiring interns, it’s critical to make sure there is a valuable role an intern can play in your organization. Remember, interns are typically looking for meaningful work experience and exposure to the mission-critical aspects of your organizations. A summer of taking lunch orders or shredding paper is not a meaningful internship. Interns are typically bright and ambitious; employ these talented resources wisely and you may be surprised at what they can accomplish.

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Best Practices, Hiring Advice, Social Innovation, Talent Issues