3. Show the candidate the essentials. Before the interview starts, point out the location of the rest rooms, as well as a place to hang up coats or stash umbrellas, if needed. If you expect to have a break during the course of the interview, show the candidate where they can get some air, make a phone call, or attend to any other needs.

4. Clean up your act. Interview spaces should be neat and tidy. Clear papers off of the interview table, erase white boards, and make sure that the room is generally clean. If the interview will take place in individuals’ offices, check to make sure they straighten up and keep any materials that are not related to the interview out of sight.

5. Practice the art of introductions. The basis for making good introductions is decorum and respect. A common rule of thumb amongst business associates is to introduce the person you don’t know as well to the person you know better, and then provide a bit of context. For example, when introducing the candidate, Jane Doe, to your colleague, Joe Blow, say, “Jane, I’d like you to meet our Director of Development, Joe Blow. Joe oversees all of our fundraising and corporate relations efforts.”

Follow these simple rules and you will master interviewer etiquette! Now about your table manners…we’ll save that for another blog.

Commongood Careers has definitely experienced the uptick in hiring in the last 6 months and we have also experienced the challenges of hiring in an environment where turnover is very low.  Jobseekers today tend to be more hesitant about making a transition – why would you leave the known to go to the unknown in a time of uncertainty?  And when they do consider a transition, they are looking at positions that would represent a upward move, are being extremely selective and doing significant amounts of due diligence on potential employers, and are seeking increases in salary and benefits.  Overall, we have seen candidates declining job offers at a higher rate than ever before.

What does this mean for organizations that are excited to finally be hiring again?  First, you need to make sure that your positions are scoped to be very appealing to the right types of candidates.  You have to recognize the dynamics at play and understand that jobseekers will be looking for career progression as opposed to a lateral move.  You need to ensure that your organization is stable, leadership is strong, and that the position is not at risk of being cut.  Finally, you need to be prepared to offer very competitive salaries and benefits in order to get someone to leave their current position.

Overall, even with such high unemployment rates nationwide, recruiting and hiring in the nonprofit sector is more challenging than ever, as organizations really only want to hire professionals who are actively employed.  So get prepared to invest in a hiring process that is longer and harder than you might have expected a couple of years ago.

The debate is out as to whether Twitter is useful or distracting for hiring managers and recruiters. There is anecdotal evidence that Twitter has been especially effective in the following ways:

Employer branding: Twitter can be a great way to build a brand for your organization as a great place to work. 140 characters can be a fun way to share information about your organization’s culture, rituals and milestones. You can also get your employee’s tweeting about what they like about working at your organization. With TwitPics, you can also post pictures of work gatherings and other images that represent your employer brand.

Network building. Using the search function on Twitter, it’s easy to research and connect with people who work in specific functional or mission areas. This can be a great way to source for candidates. Start by following them, re-tweeting their posts and even introducing yourself in a tweet. Reaching out to other Twitter users helps to build your following and expand your networks. You may be 140 characters from starting a relationship with your next hire!

Competitive intelligence. Do you tend to compete for talent with certaing organizations? Follow them on Twitter to stay abreast of what they are up to, including the positions they are looking to fill. There may even be ways to turn competition into collaboration, such as sharing candidates on similar searches.

Job posting. Twitter is a no-cost way to get the word out that you’re hiring. Tweeting your job posting (generally organization name and title, with a Tiny URL to the full job description)

Of course, if you are brand new to Twitter, take advantage of the many tutorials, glossaries and user guides available online. Soon you’ll have a firm grasp Twitter handles, hash tags, and abbreviations (everything from BTW to wOOt!).

If you or someone you know is a recent graduate looking to break into the nonprofit sector, here are a few tips from the team at Commongood Careers:

Tip #1: Know What’s Out There
Unlike corporations that may plan well ahead of their hiring needs and have the resources to recruit on campus, nonprofits recruit when staffing needs arise. Breaking into the nonprofit sector, you most likely will not have the luxury of setting up on-campus interviews or landing that dream job without stepping foot off campus. You’ll need to be proactive to find what opportunities are out there.

Begin by putting those research skills to work!  Find the organizations that inspire you. A great launch pad is idealist.org, a web site with information about over 75,000 nonprofits.  Also, Guidestar provides more in-depth organizational information, such as budgets, staff, and funders. Finally, familiarize yourself with the issues impacting the sector; publications like Stanford Social Innovation Review, Nonprofit Times, Philanthropy News Digest, and Fast Company’s Social Capitalist Award offer a window into what’s buzzworthy in the sector.

Based on this research, create a target list of 5-10 organizations that interest you.  Scour their web sites and find the job descriptions for their entry-level positions.  This way, you can determine exactly what they’re looking for in these positions and tailor your application accordingly. 

Tip #2: Work Your Way Up
Now that you’ve done your homework on yourself and the sector, it’s time to figure out how to put this knowledge. There are a number of nonprofit roles for recent graduates. Some examples of titles that may be good matches include:

• Program Associate or Coordinator
• Project Coordinator
• Special Projects Assistant
• Executive Assistant
• Business or Program Analyst

Tip #3: Gain Experience through Service
In addition to entry-level positions, there are a number of other ways to gain tremendous experience in the nonprofit sector, including:

Service Programs – Public service programs offer amazing (and often paid!) opportunities to get your feet wet and gain incredible experience in your field of interest. Some of the nation’s largest service programs include Americorps, Teach For America, CityYear, and AVODAH.

Fellowships – Similar to service programs, fellowships provide recent graduates with the opportunities to gain experience over a relative short amount of time, typically a year or less. Some popular fellowships are offered by Youth Service Oppportunities Program, American Jewish World Service, CORO, and New Sector Alliance.

Volunteering – Volunteering is a tried and true way to get your foot in the door, as well as network with nonprofit staff and hiring managers. From your list of 5-10 target organizations, research what volunteer opportunities they offer and sign up. Also, scour the idealist.org, Hands On Network, and Volunteer Match for interesting fundraising event volunteer opportunities.
Though challenging, making the jump from school to the nonprofit sector may be easier than you think.  A strategy based in defining your interests, researching organizations, and pursuing the right opportunities can result in a promising start to a fulfilling career in the nonprofit sector.  You may not be changing the world tomorrow, but you’ll be on your way to making a big impact, one footprint at a time. 

For New Profit Inc, a national venture philanthropy fund that makes portfolio investments in innovative nonprofit organizations, informational interviews are a part of doing business. According to Kathryn Price, New Profit’s Director of Operations and Talent, the organization has made a mission-driven commitment to meeting new talent.

New Profit Inc. makes approximately 10 hires per year, but receives inquiries from jobseekers on a regular basis. While they can’t hire everyone who is interested in their work, they try to meet with as many jobseekers as possible, and ultimately develop relationships with talented people they can consider for future positions. When New Profit or one of its portfolio organizations has a hiring need, the organization can easily tap these talent pipelines for candidates.

This past year, New Profit Inc. conducted about 60 informational interviews. The Talent Team helps to facilitate this process, and invites all staff members to participate in interviews.

“Conducting informational interviews reflects our spirit of wanting to be a good member of the community. It’s part of our culture,” said Kathryn, “Nearly everyone across our organization conducts informational interviews.”

As a result of informational interviews, Kathryn reports that she is better able to keep her finger on the pulse of talent that is interested in New Profit Inc. Whenever the organization launches a search, Kathryn has a talent pool that she can go to right off the bat.

In addition to building talent pipelines, informational interviewing has provided a great training opportunity to staff. According to Kathryn, staff gain an opportunity to be external facing and hone their ability to talk about the organization.

For organizations that are interested in conducting more informational interviews, Kathryn has a few suggestions:

• Interview every referral from every source if possible. You never know who is going to be a great candidate for a future position, or a valuable source of a referral.
• Dedicate a portion of staff time to conduct interviews. Assign individual staff as interviewers based on functional or subject-matter expertise.
• Keep interviews to 30 minutes or less. Talk about the interviewee’s career interests and backgrounds, but don’t conduct a full-fledged job interview.
• Encourage interviews to be a two-way street. If someone that you are interviewing is connected to potential partners, funders or board members, don’t be afraid to ask for introductions.

According to Carol Lee, Recruitment Manager for KIPP NYC, a formal employee referral program has greatly increased the organization’s success at filling positions quickly and with qualified candidates. Operating as a network of 7 schools that serve over 2,400 students and alumni, KIPP NYC typically has around 100 searches per year; about two-thirds of which are for teachers, and many have been filled through referrals.

KIPP NYC’s referral program is pretty straightforward: staff receive $1,000 for anyone they refer who gets hired. Employees provide a name, contact and background information, and then the recruitment team follows up on every referral. Staff are asked to make referrals for all types of positions, including teachers, principals, office managers, social workers, alumni services, human resources and technology roles.

To roll out the referral program, the recruitment team made a general announcement at a KIPP NYC-wide staff meeting, and then they followed up with staff in individual meetings. “We knew that our people had great networks, even more than they sometimes realized. By sitting down with individual staff for 15 minutes, we could help them identify who they knew who might be good for an open position, as well as their contacts who might know other outstanding candidates,” said Carol.

The program has been really successful. Last year, KIPP NYC staff referred 280 teacher candidates. Out of 63 teacher hires, 33 (52%) were referrals. Carol expects to top these results for the 65 teacher and 30 non-teacher roles that the organization plans to hire for next school year.

“We always knew our staff had great networks,” said Carol. “The referral program has allowed us to tap into those networks, as well as reward staff for sharing their contacts.”

In addition to receiving a cash reward through the referral program, staff gain a sense that they are contributing to growing the organization. “Each staff member feels empowered to serve as a recruiter and ambassador for KIPP NYC,” said Carol. “This contributes to the overall culture of KIPP NYC and creates a sense that we are all a part of growing our organization.”

For organizations interested in rolling out a referral program, Carol shared the following advice:

• 1-to-1 touches are really important. Keep recruitment top-of-mind with employees by building relationships with staff members, spending time at program sites and scheduling individual conversations to talk about general contacts, not just direct referrals.
• Start with smaller rewards if necessary. The first year that KIPP NYC offered a referral reward, it was a $100 AMEX gift card per successful hire, as well as $100 to the staff member who referred the most people. Offer a reward that is enticing to employees, but also one that the organization can easily fulfill.  If budget constraints are an issue, another idea could be awarding a raffle ticket for each referral, with a raffle for a few prizes held 1-2 times per year, with the prizes paid for by the organization’s credit card points.
• Don’t limit referral programs just to employees. Include board members, volunteers and other constituents in appeals for referrals. Make it fun and compelling for internal and external partners to be involved.

Obama touched upon a number of inefficiencies, as well as a set of procedures intended to remedy these inefficiencies. Many of these challenges and solutions apply to the nonprofit sector as well, such as (and with some paraphrasing and commentary added by Commongood Careers):

Make it easy for applicants to apply to your positions. For example, do not require applicants to complete essay-style questions in their initial application materials.

Screen a large number of applicants more efficiently. Create a set of screening criteria before reviewing any resumes, and then screen out unqualified applicants who do not meet the criteria.

Involve managers and supervisors in the hiring process. Include key internal stakeholders in planning position requirements, identifying required skills, and participating in the recruitment and interviewing process. Read our article on structuring roles in the hiring process for some great advice on this topic.

Make transitions easy for new hires. Design and implement a thoughtful and intentional on-boarding process. Read our article on on-boarding to learn some best practices.

Stick to a performance review schedule for new employees. Plan and schedule the first performance review for new employees within 6 months or a year of their start date.

None of this is rocket science, but all of this is important. Thank you, President Obama, for pointing out some best practices for the hiring process. We’re glad that you recognize the importance of every organization’s greatest asset: their people. With the right procedures for recruiting, hiring, on-boarding and managing staff, our organizations are better positioned to succeed.

KaBOOM! is a nonprofit organization that helps communities map their playspaces, build playgrounds, and prioritize more and better opportunities for play for their children.  KaBOOM! prides itself on having a positive, upbeat and fun organizational culture. Based in Washington D.C., KaBOOM! has grown from 12 to over 80 employees in the past few years. Its rapid growth can be attributed in part to the intentional presence of the organization’s culture, specifically the role of culture in connecting employees to each other and to the organization’s mission.

According to Kate Becker, Vice President of Program Management, employee engagement with the organization’s culture begins in the recruitment process. “When you walk into our offices, you quickly see what KaBOOM! is all about. Our space is open, colorful and even has playground equipment. As prospective employees take a tour, they experience the openness of the office and camaraderie between staff first-hand.”

This first-hand experience of culture continues in the on-boarding process for new employees. The HR team ensures that all new hires are presented with materials that represent the values of the culture, such as an internal publication entitled Fundamentals that outlines the history and purpose of KaBOOM!, as well as a toy plastic bucket to be used in an organizational ritual called “giving sand.”

“Employees are encouraged to write appreciative or inspiring notes and leave them in each other’s buckets as pieces of ‘sand.’ When a new employee starts, we try to make sure that they receive a few pieces of sand in their bucket,” Kate says, “This is a fun way to connect our culture of play to the work that we do, as well as live one of our beliefs of giving credit where credit is due.”

In addition to “sand,” employees are encouraged to share “ripples,” or as Kate describes, “stories of impact that we hear from the field. These stories have a big impact on day-to-day morale and remind staff of why we do the work we do.”

KaBOOM!’s strong culture has been intentional since day one; however it has evolved over time. “We’ve gotten more sophisticated about how we infuse culture in our employees. Much of this has to do with instilling the importance of culture at the senior most level of the organization, and then making it a strategic priority to communicate the importance of our culture across the entire organization,” says Kate.

As the organization has grown larger, the importance of culture has become even more important to building staff cohesion and employee satisfaction. Kate says that the culture has its greatest impact on the “day-to-day, whether it’s a team service activity or staff gathering to eat PB&J. It’s the maintenance and regularity of these types of activities that keep staff happy and engaged.” 

For organizations seeking ways to leverage culture in its employee recruitment and retention practices, Kate had the following suggestions:

1. Make culture an organizational priority. For example, encourage managers and their direct reports to carve out time for organizational rituals and activities. At a senior staff level, make decisions that support employee participation in the culture.

2. Strategize for the culture you want to have. Culture is going to develop regardless of your attention to it.  By determining what you want your culture to be – such as your organization’s values and personality traits – your organization can then build a strategic and intentional culture.

3. Think top-down and grassroots. An organization’s culture comes from many inputs. It’s important to involve senior staff to reinforce cultural initiatives, as well as encourage an inclusive adoption of the culture across staff. Solicit feedback from staff at all levels and include a variety of staff in the planning of cultural initiatives.

As the economy begins to pick up, employees everywhere (the ones who have tirelessly “done more with less”) smell the fresh air and think about what life might be like in a different role, or in a different organization.  Now that more options are opening up, people who were “just happy to have a job” are starting to realize that they’ve been stressed out and over-worked for a while, or that they feel that their professional growth has hit a plateau. (Are you one of the people sniffing the winds of change? Tell us what is driving you to change jobs or leave the sector.)

So what should you do to minimize turnover in your organization? It’s time for a pulse check.  Be proactive: connect with each of your staff members about his or her individual job satisfaction, and take action to show that you’re really listening.  But beware: how you handle this conversation is crucial—your staff may still be worried about their job security, so they must trust that something other than “everything’s great!” won’t get them fired.  Once you have a trusting, supportive atmosphere, her are a few crucial things to do during your conversation:

Find out what’s lacking, and then find creative ways to offer “more.” Someone saying they are leaving because of a “competitive offer,” is just like someone saying, “It’s not you—it’s me,” to end a romantic relationship.  Is it true?  Sure, it’s probably true some of the time—and in those instances there is nothing else that you could have done (besides offer more money) to make a person stay.  But most of the time it is simply the easiest, least hurtful explanation for leaving an organization—but it may not be the complete truth.  Sure, a competitive offer is great—there are few people who would say no to more money in their paycheck—but money’s power as a motivator is often greatly overestimated.  After all, you are working with a subset of people who have deliberately chosen to earn less money in order to have a career with a deeper meaning.  Everyone has their own motivators, and its up to you to understand what is important to each member of your staff—and thus what would make them happier and more effective in the job they have now.  Ask your staff what is missing from their role right now, and find creative ways to give them “more.”  Here are a few “more” things you can give them (besides money, of course):
• More freedom to direct their own projects, to prioritize what’s needed, and to work in their own style
• More flexibility to work their own hours, to work unconventional hours, or work from home
• More challenges that will help them develop professionally and also add value to your organization
• More input into and ownership of key decisions that affect their job and the strategic direction of your organization
• More balance by thinking hard about priorities and eliminating work that your organization can live without

Tune in to the dreams of your staff.   When you were in kindergarten, everyone asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up.  It was a question asked with the belief that you were just started on a journey—that you were on your way to becoming something else.  Now, if you go to a cocktail party, everyone will ask what you do—a question that assumes that you’ve “arrived.”  But while it is easy to think of people and positions as something static, most of us are constantly striving to improve ourselves and become better than we were before.  Do you know what your employees want to be when they “grow up” (to take their next job)?  What do they want to do next?  How can you help them achieve that goal?  Does it align with the needs of your organization? By tuning in to the dreams of your staff, you can better understand the challenges and next steps they are looking to take, and make sure that your staff are built in to the internal talent pipeline of your organization.

Share your future staffing plans, and get staff input.  For every position that you have, you should be thinking about a potential succession plan.  Make sure you include your staff in these plans (especially now that you know where each of them want to go), and share your thoughts with them.  If you have a staff member who you think might be great for another position in your organization after more training or more experience, tell him about it. Be honest and clear about where you see him fitting in to your organization’s future—what skills he needs to gain, what weaknesses he would need to strengthen, and what further experience he needs.  Hopefully, he will be flattered that you see this potential in him, and will happily work even harder to continue developing.  While you may have thought about him in the future of your organization, if he never hears of your plans, he may assume that there is really no future for him there—and may already be quietly looking elsewhere.

By being proactive, listening, and genuinely showing that you are truly committed to the growth and the needs of each member of your staff, you can minimize turnover at your organization.

Americorps positions, if used strategically, can be a great way to expand your capacity—provided that your organization devotes the necessary resources needed for Americorps members to succeed.  Each position should be considered as carefully as a new staff position, and its purpose should be thoughtfully aligned with organizational mission and goals.  As we wrote about last month, volunteers are people too, so one of the biggest mistakes a nonprofit can make is to add new Americorps positions without providing the necessary support for the people filling those positions to become impactful additions to your team. 

In fact, Rick Cohen, in a recent Blue Avocado column about the potentially hurtful effects of public policy programs on volunteering,  voices some legitimate concerns that some nonprofits might use Americorps positions in ways that will be ultimately detrimental to the sector.  To combat this, he argues, it’s important that nonprofits ensure that they leverage Americorps volunteers in an impactful way, and “structure their jobs as first steps in nonprofit careers.” 

So how can you ensure that your organization can leverage the talent provided by the Serve America Act? Assign a phenomenal manager to oversee the work of your Americorps volunteers. A dedicated resource with phenomenal management skills to manage your Americorps positions is important for several reasons:

1) Americorps positions are time bound, with built-in high turnover.  The time-bound nature of the Americorps program means that turnover is guaranteed to be high, as many Americorps members serve for only one year.  Much can be learned and accomplished in one year, but if there is no “bridge” from one year to the next, many of the gains will be lost after each member exits, leaving the next Americorps member to “reinvent the wheel.”  Without a permanent and involved manager to make sure that institutional knowledge and external relationships are carried over from one year to the next, each year can become a repeat of the last—your own personal version of the movie “Groundhog Day.”  A manager can ensure continuity and continuous improvement from year to year, so your impact can continue to grow and improve.

2) Americorps volunteers need appropriate training and guidance to be effective.  Like all employees, Americorps members need to learn how your organization works, your theory of change, and how they can contribute to accomplishing your mission.  Since the backgrounds and previous experiences of Americorps members are diverse, a manager who works with Amercorps volunteers needs to be able to assess, on an individual level, what support and training each person will need to be successful in their role.  Without appropriate training, Americorps volunteers will either be overwhelmed or bored, and, as a result, your effectiveness will suffer.  Great managers “get” people—they have an ability to understand what makes different people tick, what motivates them, and what challenges them.  With so many people stepping into and out of these roles on a regular basis, a skilled manager who can tailor their approach to the unique talents and challenges of each individual will ensure that each Americorps volunteer can contribute to their full potential.

3) Americorps volunteers, even more so than other employees, are at risk of burn-out.  Americorps volunteers are willing to work for very little pay in exchange for an education award and the chance to do something meaningful.  Many of them are willing to work above and beyond the hours required of them, and the nature of the work in the nonprofit sector ensures that there is always more work that could be done.  Newcomers to the nonprofit sector may have a hard time setting boundaries and creating manageable workloads.  A great manager can help passionate volunteers find balance, modify their workloads, and, of course, tell them to go home when they begin to work themselves into the ground.  The last thing you want your organization to do is to convince your would-be future executive director to leave the sector because they perceive nonprofit positions to be unsustainable.

4) Your Americorps members need to be developed as nonprofit professionals to become a key element of your talent pipeline. Americorps service is rapidly becoming the first step for many young people (and more experienced sector switchers as well) to beginning a nonprofit career (Want to know more? Check out our article, “The New Entry Level: Hiring from Leadership Development Programs”).  Hosting Americorps corps members in your organization is an opportunity to win a life-long champion for your organization and to develop a strong pipeline of talent.  To make sure this potential is realized, it is important that Americorps members are exposed to many different facets of your organization and your mission, and shown the ropes of nonprofit careers, both within your organization and without.  If you do it right, when you need to hire for a new position, you will have many passionate and qualified Americorps alumni ready to join your team—making your biggest problem which one you should choose.  A manager with a responsibility to make this happen can help facilitate professional development opportunities for Americorps members, serve as a mentor and guide for them in their next steps, and be a continuous point of contact between them and the organization until they are ready to return as full-time staff members.

So enjoy this summer: think big, think strategically, and think about making the next addition to your organization a phenomenal manager.

In January of 2009, Lester Strong was hired as the new CEO of Experience Corps, a national organization that places adults 55 and older as tutors and mentors for elementary students struggling to read in urban public schools . At the same time, the program was transitioning from being a program within a larger nonprofit to an independent 501(c)3.

Employees were experiencing a good amount of change during this period. New administrative systems were being put into place and job descriptions were shifting. So Lester decided to implement a compensation strategy to help motivate staff through this period of change.

“I knew that the scope of work was going to change when we became our own 501(c)3,” Lester said, “As a new CEO, I wanted to recognize the hard work that brought the organization to this place, as well as prepare the staff for the challenges that lay ahead. So I sat down with all of the employees and said, ‘Here’s a small bonus for the great work you’ve already done and, frankly, for the increased amount of work I’m going to ask you to do.’”

In addition to the bonus, Lester decided to set salary levels after 9 months as a freestanding organization. “Job descriptions were changing and we needed to wait to have a better perspective from which to make informed decisions about scope of work and salary for each employee. The bonus helped to motivate staff until we would have the opportunity to set salary increases.”

Lester reports that staff received this information very positively. They were happy to receive the bonus up front and recognized that this “perk” was a call to commit to the work ahead of them. According to Lester, “The next 9 months were really successful. Staff took on greater responsibilities and worked harder. During this time, we created a 5-year strategic plan and integrated new standards into our literacy intervention model.”

“After this ramp-up period, we evaluated people who had been with Experience Corps for more than a year and increased salaries predicated on their new roles.”

Even for organizations that are not going through a major transition, a small bonus can be an unexpected and welcome motivator to employees. Lester described this type of bonus as a “thank you up front.” 

As Lester learned at Experience Corps, a little bit of financial incentive can go a long way.

Whenever possible, define a position that is realistic and an ideal candidate profile that exists in more than a handful of people. Are you looking for a set of skills and competencies that often do not co-exist within one person? Recognize that if you go forward, your search may be challenging and may not lead to a successful hire without concessions being made. Consider recasting the position into something more realistic and test your job description with colleagues and peers to ensure that it is reasonable and clearly communicates the nature of the role.

Giving up the search for a unicorn (or needle in a haystack, if you prefer) doesn’t mean that you are compromising your position requirements or search standards. Rather, the process of defining a position realistically will force your organization to identify and prioritize which skills, responsibilities, and experiences are most important to making a position work. The result will be hiring the right person into the right role.

For more hiring missteps to avoid, and best practices to follow, check out our article Avoiding 10 Common Search Pitfalls.

To help your organization hire the right techies for the job, listen to the latest NTEN produced postcast led by Commongood Careers CEO and Founder James Weinberg.

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.

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, implienting 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 probli 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.