Winter 2023 - Building a Hiring Pool
For this quarter’s newsletter, I want to share some thoughts and ideas about building a candidate pool for new hires. In addition to being involved with many hires as a staff person, I recently helped Rethinking Schools hire their first Executive Director (see below to meet Dr. Cierra Kaler-Jones!).
In my fundraising work, I bring an organizing mentality and approach, which involves the full staff, board, and membership in engaging donors. Similarly, what I have found to be most important to successful hires is the involvement of those same leaders in actively spreading the word about open positions and doing everything they can to get the info out far and wide. Staff, board, and member leaders should be encouraged to share job announcements with anyone and everyone, starting with their contacts who are most likely to know candidates and be willing to spread the word themselves. Since you never know who knows where a great candidate might come from, your outreach should also go beyond those already in your own group’s orbit (this is helpful for diversity and inclusion factors in outreach as well). Hey, I just shared those ALIGN jobs with my baseball fantasy league! You can make it as easy as possible for people to participate by providing social media links and images, as well as writing sample text for them to use in their emails and other outreach - I’ve provided my basic version here for you to copy and edit for yourself.
Both job searching and hiring is hard, and it’s only gotten harder during the pandemic. I’d encourage us all to have an approach that centers the candidates and recognizes the effort it takes to apply for jobs, and also roots in an abundance mindset from the organization’s perspective. We want jobseekers and organizations to find the best fits. I know it can feel like we are in competition with each other, but we should see hiring for our organizations as part of hiring for the movement. We want other like-minded organizations to succeed as well in furtherance of our shared goals. To this point, hat tip to Linda Nguyen of Movement Talent for her great piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy on reshaping nonprofit hiring, including the encouragement to share candidate pools. Keep a list of organizations hiring for similar positions - you can suggest those openings to candidates who don’t make it through in your process and vice versa. The good news is, doing great networking for your open jobs helps your organization in other ways. It’s a great way to build awareness about your work, strengthen and create new relationships, boost your social media presence, and connect with donors and funders.
Since job boards, listservs, facebook groups etc. are still important and a good way to get the word out beyond those currently in your network (which is important for diversity and inclusion), I’ve compiled a list of job boards and listservs here that you are also welcome to use. If you have ideas for what should be added, let me know!
A few other notes on hiring not related to outreach:
Once you get to the interviewing stage, share your questions with jobseekers as part of an equity framework and reducing biases in hiring.
If you ask candidates to submit an exercise or new content, make sure it’s not something you’ll be able to use without them, and pay them a stipend for their time.
I like to keep a list of folks who are currently looking for work so I can pass on leads that have been shared with me. If you are currently looking for work, let me know so that I can keep you in mind!
And finally, if you’re in the hiring process often because of high job turnover, it’s time to look at your retention practices! Hiring is VERY expensive, and that should be factored in when considering pay and benefit levels. Looking at organizational culture, decision making, and other factors related to job satisfaction is crucial to retention.
Meet Dr. Cierra Kaler-Jones
I have been fortunate enough to do several fundraising and organizational development projects with Rethinking Schools over the last few years, including helping them hire their first ever Executive Director. Rethinking Schools is a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization dedicated to sustaining and strengthening public education through social justice teaching and education activism. Cierra has long been in the education justice space, working with the Zinn Education Project and the Communities for Just Schools Fund. She is also a teacher, a dancer, a writer, and a researcher. I’m so thrilled that she is in the role!
