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How to Approach Nonprofit Recruitment

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How to approach nonprofit recruitment depends on your organization’s needs, priorities, and growth stage. This statement is not meant to dodge the immediate and urgent question of “how do I recruit the best nonprofit professionals?” Rather, the statement helps you focus on developing an ideal persona of the job candidates that will help your particular nonprofit organization succeed. Let’s take that statement and look at each piece.

Nonprofit Employment Needs

Every business–profit or nonprofit–begins with a core group of employees. At the very beginning, this may just be the founder. Regardless of the starting point, when a nonprofit seeks to add talent to its organization, it should first consider the talent it already possesses. This will prompt a couple questions and considerations:

  • Are the people we employ in the right positions? It’s not uncommon for nonprofit job seekers to gravitate towards organizations or missions that resonate with them. This may mean that they take any open position, rather than wait for the right open position. Consider: Is there an existing employee who can fill an urgent talent need better than the one they currently fill? This preliminary consideration will help ensure that recruitment efforts are focused on adding the right nonprofit professionals.
  • How will the employee grow with the organization? Employee growth is mostly expected. Job descriptions offer it, and job candidates talk about wanting it. However, it’s helpful to include context and a timeframe to this question. One nonprofit may need someone to build a marketing department over the next five years, while another may need a nonprofit professional to “do marketing” and other operational work indefinitely. Consider: Will the organization offer a growth path for the position? Being clear and honest about the growth potential for a position can help organizations avoid employee turnover or frequent reorganizing of staff roles.

 

Improve your employee experience: Guide to Choosing the Right HR Software.

Nonprofit Talent Priorities

Not all nonprofit organizations are built the same. Just as mission, vision, and values will differ from one organization to another, so too will the priorities. As it relates to nonprofit recruitment, employers will almost always have to make trade-offs during the candidate selection process, and so it helps to prioritize selection criteria to develop a candidate persona in advance. Let’s take a look at a couple criteria for prioritization.

Experience vs. Education

This is a standard consideration for almost any open position, but for nonprofits, the stakes are often higher. It is common for nonprofits to operate on limited resources– the refrain “do more with less” comes to mind. But a couple dangers may exist here.

One is to under-prioritize experience–maybe with the intent to save on salary and utilize “on-the-job” training to fill experience gaps. This can certainly work, but it will require more time to ramp-up a new hire. For smaller organizations or lightly staffed nonprofits, this time investment in training can negatively impact other areas of operations.

Another danger is to under-prioritize education–perhaps done with the assumption that having done the work will always trump knowing how to do the work. Having a “doer” on staff is a great asset…as long as they are doing the right thing, in the right way. Effective applicant screening and candidate interviews can mitigate this danger by verifying that the candidate’s experience comes with quantifiable accomplishments and examples of how the experience matches an organization’s needs.

Nonprofit Professional vs. For-profit Professional

Using again the example of recruiting for a marketing position, an employer could prioritize recruiting a marketing professional, a nonprofit professional who can “do” marketing, or (the gold standard) a nonprofit marketing professional. This is not semantics. Thinking through how these different candidate personas align with the needs of an organization is vital to not just making a good hire, but in making the right hire.

Additionally, prioritizing the skills and experience that an organization requires will tighten the recruitment target and, in turn, produce better candidates and a more efficient hiring process. If a nonprofit truly wants to do more with less, a well-defined recruitment target is essential.

Nonprofit Growth Stage

A nonprofit organization in year-one will need to approach recruitment quite differently than an organization with decades of institutional history. Differences may include the amount of resources (people and capital), organizational structure, community of supporters, network of partners and advisors, and scale of operations.

It is important for an organization to account for these differences as it considers nonprofit recruitment strategies. Strategies are not one-size-fits-all, and any approach to recruitment should aim to leverage existing advantages and resources without requiring significant investment in new ones.

Recruiting Strategies that Scale

It is tempting to follow the lead of larger organizations and attempt to implement their recruitment strategies. After all, those strategies often produce great results in acquiring widely-known and accomplished talent. However, these strategies are not always effective when scaled down to smaller organizations. Trying to do so will create an unnecessary risk of over-investing in a process that under delivers on results. And it cuts both ways too, when larger organizations underinvest by using small-scale strategies in recruitment.

For example, a multi-regional nonprofit may contract with a recruitment firm to fill high-level executive positions. The needs and resources of this large nonprofit may allow for this investment as part of a recruitment strategy. However, a smaller nonprofit would have trouble justifying such an expense, even for a relatively high-level position. It would be better off tapping into its existing network of supporters, advisors, and partners to fill the position.

The goal should not be to hire the most qualified candidate at all costs, but to hire the best candidate for the organization at the right cost.

Defining Your Approach to Nonprofit Recruitment

The unique characteristics of your nonprofit organization will determine your best approach to recruitment. Developing your approach is first a matter of identifying your needs, determining your priorities as it relates to those needs, and creating an ideal persona of the job candidate that will help your organization succeed.

Finally, be sure that your recruitment strategy takes into account your organization’s growth stage–including its size, resources, and scale of operations. Your best approach to nonprofit recruitment should not solely focus on the desired hiring outcome (hiring the best), but also on the desired impact of hiring (advancing your organization’s mission).

 

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Feature Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Where To Find Hourly Workers

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Is there a pool going on in the break room, betting on how long the new guy will last? Do you increasingly find yourself glancing at an hourly worker’s name tag before addressing her by name? Did the lab you use for drug test screens send you an enormous fruit basket for Christmas?

If these questions hit a bit too close to home, you need a new strategy for recruiting hourly workers. High turnover eats away at your profits faster than an unsupervised kid at the free samples table. Absenteeism, workplace accidents, and customer service can all be improved if you hire the right hourly employees.

Finding good hourly workers that will stick around may seem like a mighty task. But if you adjust your strategy and know where to look, you’ll find them almost as easily as a shrewd customer finds a reason to demand a discount.

Getting Good Employees in Hourly Roles

Before you try to figure out how to find employees of a company that relies heavily on hourly workers, you have to get clear about what you’re looking for. When you’re looking to find employees to hire, emphasize finding a person with the right attitude. Technical skills are easier to teach than a winning personality.

Getting and keeping good hourly workers is doable when you put as much effort into attracting applicants as you do attracting customers. Adopting a marketing mindset to your recruiting efforts is an obvious strategy when you value the people who work for you.

Need help improving your recruitment content? Start by assessing what you already have, using ExactHire’s Recruitment Content Scorecard.

The hourly people you hire play a key role in your customers’ experience and your brand perception. If a product breaks, the customer blames the company, not the guy working quality control. Likewise, if a cashier is unhappy, your company’s image takes a hit in the eyes of the customer.

Using assessments during the screening process can help you target the right person. But be careful to use the assessments at the right time. If you require them upfront with the application, you risk alienating good candidates.

But where to find hourly workers with the right skills, winning attitude and pleasant personality that will translate to a positive customer experience?  As with salaried employees, the best hourly workers are already employed and not actively seeking work. You’ll need creative ways to source these candidates.

Beyond the “Help Wanted” Sign

Job search aggregators like Indeed may be one of the best websites to find employees, but don’t stop there. There are countless niche job boards for hourly work, so take the time to review which sites make sense for your organization. Additionally, consider investing in applicant tracking software that can automate your job postings and even optimize your job board spending.

When trying to find employees, websites aren’t your only option. Develop relationships with local institutions where your ideal candidates congregate. These include high schools, colleges, or even senior centers.

If you use recruiting software, such as an applicant tracking system, you can create a talent pool that you can dip into for future openings. You can also use the ATS to flag and block low-quality applicants from future openings.

The Challenge of Hiring Hourly Employees

Hourly gigs get a bad rap. The problem isn’t just low pay. Too many companies treat their hourly workers as expendable. Hourly workers often take abuse from customers and aren’t respected by management. Recruiters tend to make rash hiring decisions because they need employees now. Also, many hourly employees use a phone to apply for jobs and do not have email.

You can do a lot to retain your good hourly employees by providing them with what they value. Treating them with respect and rewarding excellence are key. The golden rule applies: treat hourly workers the way you would want to be treated.

An employer looking for employees within this demographic needs to develop a strategy to find the best hourly workers. When deciding how to find employees, consider Craigslist and other job boards, as well as nontraditional places such as senior centers and veterans sites. You can use an applicant tracking system to easily manage the deluge of applications you receive.

Smart strategies while interviewing hourly employees can also help. If I am an employer looking for employees, I always examine the application process from the candidate’s perspective. Hourly workers are more likely to use their phones exclusively. So make your application process mobile friendly and use texting to communicate.

Using Job Boards Like CareerBuilder, Indeed, Etc.

Choosing the right job board for hourly employees will help improve the amount of quality applicants you receive. Indeed and ZipRecruiter are popular for hourly workers because they effortlessly match jobs to the user’s experience. SnagAJob is also a popular job board for finding work in retail.

Other sites, such as CareerBuilder, require hourly workers to sift through endless links and thousands of search results. Hourly workers may find Glassdoor, while useful, is too cumbersome because it requires users to create an account.

Probably the biggest complaint recruiters have about job boards is the swarm of unqualified applicants that accumulate in their inbox. You can help hourly workers self-select when you provide upfront and detailed information about the job. Information such as whether you require weekends or overtime can help steer undesirable candidates away.

An applicant tracking system can help you sort through hundreds of resumes you’re likely to get. You can use the search function in an ATS to find and sort the best hourly workers. ExactHire ATS has a built-in function that allows you communicate with job applicants via text. There’s no need to reveal your personal cell number.

Hourly Workers in Retail as an Example

If you’re looking for an example of the perils of high turnover, look no further than the hourly retail workers. The recruitment and selection of employees in retail is a never-ending process, even during those rare times all of your positions are filled.

Recruiting strategies for hourly employees almost always focus on young hourly workers. But high schools aren’t always the best places to recruit for retail. When you’re tossing around retail recruiting ideas, don’t underestimate older hourly workers, veterans, the justice-involved, and moms looking for part-time work.

Many companies treat high hourly turnover as an inescapable reality. But you can stop the talent leak that is draining your profits when you rethink your recruitment strategy. There are plenty of quality people to fill your hourly roles.

The best hourly workers aren’t necessarily looking for new jobs. But they’re always looking for an employer that will provide the benefits that matter most. Flexibility, appreciation, and respect are low-cost ways to attract these hourly workers. You can find them by marketing to nontraditional sources such as senior centers and niche job sites like recruitmilitary.com.

For more information on how to leverage software to meet the unique challenges of finding and retaining hourly workers, access our 30-minute webinar…or assess your recruiting content with ExactHire’s Recruitment Content Scorecard.

 

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How to Use an Applicant Tracking System

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Of all the decisions you make about your business, whom you hire may be the most critical. The people in your organization produce your product, provide service, and interact with your clients and the public. Your company’s reputation and, ultimately, its success depend on your employees.

So how can you find the right employees for your organization?

Fortunately, you can cast a wide net in the digital age. Thousands of job boards and networks offer you access to millions of job seekers. Unfortunately, when you post that job ad, you get slammed with too many applicants. Many of those applicants turnout to be unqualified candidates. You’re not exactly sure where your ideal candidate is hanging out in the digital world.

But you know the perfect candidate is in the pile somewhere. How can you find them? And how can you improve your hiring process to weed out poor candidates and attract higher quality applicants in the future?

As with every other business decision, making the right choice often depends on working with the best data. An applicant tracking system offers you easy access to hiring data and screening tools that help you avoid interviewing candidates who are a poor fit.

HRIS 101: Using An Applicant Tracking System

A human resources information system (HRIS) does more than manage your applicant and employee information. The right software will help you easily manage your hiring process from start to finish.

From keeping track of job ads for all of your open positions across multiple online platforms to finding the star candidate hidden in the heap of unremarkable resumes, an ATS will save you time.

An HRIS applicant tracking system can help you find the best candidates out of the hundreds of applications you receive. An ATS can scan resumes for the skills and experience you’re looking for. You’ll see your best candidates first.

With everything on your plate, you may be thinking you don’t have time to learn how to use an applicant tracking system. In fact, the right applicant tracking software is easy to learn and will save you time as soon as your first log-in. Applicant tracking systems often come with templates to get you started quickly.

Free Applicant Tracking System Implementation Template

If you’ve ever implemented new software, you know there’s a lot that can go wrong. However, a good provider will know how to implement an ATS without disrupting your business. This starts by choosing a provider that takes the time to understand your current hiring processes.

With the provider understanding your hiring process, your hiring team is more likely to be on board with implementation. Then, your provider can show your team how the software can make your HR processes more efficient. A good HR software provider should also encourage your hiring team to provide feedback on their suggestions.

Choosing a vendor that understands your hiring process and can provide suggestions to improve your HR processes is a good start. But you also need to ensure that the software is designed to help your team realize efficiencies right away.

The implementation of an applicant tracking system can be stressful if it doesn’t come with free templates–or default configurations. Without well-designed templates, your team will spend too much time creating fields and reports instead of using the software to manage applicant data. But be careful. There is no “one-size-fits-all” ATS, so look for a provider that will help you customize the system to fit your unique hiring needs.

Applicant Tracking Software that comes with free templates, yet has plenty of options for customization, is the best of both worlds. You’ll be able to see results quickly. And as you get to know the software, you can customize it to suit your needs.

Finally, make sure your provider will continue to work with your team to ensure success beyond the initial ATS implementation. Installing your new ATS and testing it to work out the kinks is only the first step. Your new software won’t do any good if your hiring manager is still clinging to spreadsheets and a filing system that doesn’t make sense to anyone but him.

Applicant Tracking System Training

The best practices for implementing applicant tracking software will include training for key stakeholders. It’s important that the company you choose provides applicant tracking system training and support.

The training should be focused on each role within the hiring team. For example, training your HR administrator is going to be a little different than training you hiring manager.

An applicant tracking software’s ability to organize documentation is one of its most useful features. When you use an ATS, you get the benefits of a well-organized and digitized knowledge base to replace clunky Excel files and loose paper stuffed in manila file folders.

The basics of an applicant tracking system will funnel applicants through your hiring process so you can choose the best candidate. Over time, your software will collect more data. You’ll be able to use this data to discover the best strategies for attracting quality applicants.

You’ll be able to create custom reports to help you know everything from the most effective screening tools to which job boards netted poor quality candidates. For example, you’ll be able to see performance statistics for all the job sites you’ve used on one screen. You’ll know which online platform works best for your industry and area.

Recruitment Tracker Checklist

You can use your new ATS as a recruiter tracker and so much more. Applicant tracking software will give you the power to manage and organize your entire hiring process.

ExactHire HR software allows you to create users with differing security levels associated with their applicant tracking system login. Your administrative department can enter data and run reports, while your hiring team uses a robust search engine to find the best applicants.

When you use ExactHire Applicant Tracking Software, you’ll be able post your job ad to multiple job boards with a single click. You’ll also be able to track applicant activity for all those online platforms side-by-side, on one screen.

Sort candidates using built-in status codes or create your own. Store applicant data to create a job pool for future openings. You can even flag low quality applicants to prevent them from being considered for future positions.

Finally, robust reporting features are the secret for how to use recruitment software to make hiring more successful and efficient. In addition to easy-to-use, built-in compliance reporting, ExactHire software also features source reporting. Using this feature, you can discover the hiring strategies that lead to successful, long-term employees.

Conclusion

Your company’s future depends on the people you hire. Your employees play a part in everything from implementing your business strategy to working with your customers. In short, your company won’t be successful if your hiring methods fail to find good people. An applicant tracking system will give you the tools to control your hiring process and uncover the strategies that lead to great, long-term employees.

 

How to Develop a Strategy for Each Stage of the Recruitment Process

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What if your company managed its recruitment process exceptionally well? You would find and hire the right candidate on time and on budget. That new hire would evolve into a long-term, highly productive employee. If your company mastered recruiting, you would repeat this process over and over again.

And—get this—your entire organization would be twice as successful.

Data gathered by the SHRM Foundation found that companies that mastered their recruiting process enjoyed twice the profit margin when compared to companies with poor recruitment performance. It isn’t a surprising finding considering U.S. companies spend $140 billion to find and hire candidates.

Despite the investment and potential of the recruitment and selection process, too many companies treat it like a pesky maintenance problem. HR is expected to fill an open position quickly, as if the empty chair were nothing more than a missing cog in the wheel.

In fact, the employee selection process in HR management is an investment in the organization. The company should understand its employees are a key driver of the organization’s success. Then it can ask “what is the recruitment process” and “what are the steps of the selection process.”

Recruitment Process Steps

Articles on the recruitment and selection process often recommend breaking down the method of talent acquisition into actionable steps. These steps can be further managed using applicant tracking software.

The SHRM Foundation identifies five key steps in the recruitment process.

The recruitment process stages start with establishing recruitment objectives. With the objectives in hand, you can develop a recruitment strategy. This strategy will help you breeze through the next step, which is carrying out recruitment activities. With that third step completed, you’ll have the data you need for the last two steps: measuring recruitment results and evaluating recruitment efforts.

Talent Acquisition Process Example: Create Objectives

Your recruitment objectives should be the intersection of the company’s goals and an assessment of the labor market. The qualities you’re seeking in a candidate should align with the company’s mission. 

For example, if a construction company is angling to be more high-tech than its competitors, then it may look for workers comfortable using emerging robot and AI technology. An examination of the labor market will tell this construction company how plentiful these workers are. Using applicant tracking software, the construction company can customize an application to screen for these skills.

Knowing what you’re looking for in an ideal candidate and understanding how likely you are to find that person in the labor market will help you as you determine your other recruitment objectives.

Qualifications will likely come to mind when considering what is the first step in the recruitment and selection process. Next, you may set a timeline for having the position filled. While the position’s qualifications and timeline are essential objectives, HR managers can take their recruitment practices to the next level if they consider a few more goals.

As a recruitment process example, knowing how much the organization will spend on each new hire will help you coordinate with the company’s officers to plan for the highest return on investment. You’ll gain powerful allies when you help your company’s key decision makers understand how the resources expended to find and train new hires translates into actual dollars.

When talent retention is translated into dollar figures, you’ll recruit willing members to your recruitment team, starting with the position’s supervisor. You can work with this manager to update your position’s profile and assess how the role coordinates with the team.

The best recruitment process will help everyone who interacts with the new hire understand that finding the right candidate, supporting his success and encouraging him to stay with the company long-term is crucial to the company’s success.

Recruitment Process Step: Plan A Strategy

Once you know your recruitment goals, the next step is to devise your employer recruiting strategy to reach them. In this phase, you’ll create a recruitment process flow with actionable steps that will make your recruitment process a success.

You may find, while updating the job’s profile, that an entry level position requires knowledge of newer software. Your strategy can include applicant tracking software to create assessments to evaluate applicants’ competence.

If your open position requires a high level of performance, you may consider targeting applicants who are currently and successfully employed. If you have a tight deadline, your strategy may include generating many applicants in a short period of time. Software can help you track all of your applicants and help you ensure you’re complying with federal reporting laws to which your organization may be subject like Affirmative Action and EEO.  

Perform Recruiting Activities

The objectives you’ve already identified will help you access the types of recruitment process activities that will net the best applicants.

For high level positions, you may decide to use a recruiting professional. Such an expert will be especially helpful if your ideal employee is already employed. Industry events and old-fashioned networking can also help you find quality candidates who may not be actively seeking a new job. On the other hand, you may decide to use a local staffing agency for entry level positions. 

No matter what position you have open, job boards will help you cast a wide net. You can use applicant tracking software to post to multiple boards in one step. You’ll also be able to sort the applications by assigning a status to each one.

Measure Recruiting Process Results And Evaluate Success

Evaluate your recruiting process metrics as your search continues. Are you getting the number and quality of applicants you expected? If not, you may need to adjust your strategy. 

You can run applicant and job reports using applicant tracking software to access your progress. Ultimately, the success of your recruitment process will hinge on one result: a high-performing new hire that evolves into a long-term employee.

Formally evaluate recruitment process success annually. Then you can uncover which recruitment methods yield employees who are likely to stay with the company. Evaluating your recruitment process can have another benefit. Your results can convince decision makers that finding and retaining great employees can improve the company’s revenue.

You can make targeted improvements to the key problem areas you identify in your evaluation. For example, if you find that new hires are more likely to stay with the company for more than two years if they are referred by a current employee, you can create an employee referral program with incentives.

You may also find previous assumptions were unfounded. For example, you may have been favoring applicants with experience only to find the new graduates perform just as well and stay with the company longer.

Developing a strategy for each stage of the recruitment process does more than fill your company’s empty chairs. It significantly impacts your company’s success. A winning recruitment process strategy will find and hire the best candidates. It will also encourage them to stick with the company for years to come. Carefully planning and carrying out your recruitment strategy will help you make the most of a resource with boundless potential: your employees.

Want More Resources to Evaluate Your Recruitment Process? Download Our Scorecard!

Download the Recruitment Process Scorecard | ExactHire

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