How to Hire Better Employees and Reduce Costly Turnover.
The hiring process is tiresome for all involved. Nonprofits leaders strive to find the best fit for their team but worry about how to make the determination with limited information. Job seekers turn in countless resumes hearing back from only a small few. How can we change up the process to more effective? Below are several tips to help you change up your system to produce better results!
Start with a detailed job description WITH your salary range.
Take time to think through what you need for the position. Resist the temptation to copy and paste the job description you’ve used for years for that position or Google a canned template. Ask yourself, What does this role need now? What skills and assets do we need to round out our team? Do we still need this role, or should we reconsider the position entirely?
After you know exactly what you need, write an impressive description that draws attention from the type of candidate you seek. It doesn’t need to be catchy or flashy, but it should be intentional. Always add the salary range. I’ll repeat. Always add the salary range. Don’t waste your time or the job seekers’ time by being mysterious about your pay. If you are embarrassed by how low the income is, maybe you want to wait to hire for that role until you can look at pay-practices for your organization. If you’re going to hold your cards close to your chest to try to pay the candidate the least possible, then it is time to reconsider how you show employees you value their work. Well-paid positions attract high-performing employees, but regardless, it doesn’t serve anyone to hide your range. Posting Salary ranges is an emerging industry stand and a best practice. Lastly, don’t fudge the numbers! If you don’t intend to pay $40 an hour, don’t list that in your post. New employees will feel duped if they try to negotiate to that dollar figure, and you respond with, “We can’t afford that figure.”
Post your job description on strategic job boards.
If you want to be inundated with job posts and get a large selection of job-seekers, then post on a larger board like Indeed or Ziprecruiter. However, there are many alternative places to post your job that might draw a pool of candidates that aligns better with your ideal. You may have to pay to post on smaller, more specific sites but think of it this way; you are paying to reduce the time it will take to shift through inappropriate candidates for the role.
Consider posting with your statewide nonprofit association, on industry networking sites, or with local universities.
Reduce bias in the process.
The hiring process is riddled with hidden-biases. It’s the reason that women are hired less for top positions or BIPOC job-seekers find more success when they “whiten” their resumes. Think through the ways that you can reduce bias in your process. Diverse teams are better teams, and a diverse workforce is a healthier workforce. The Havard Business Review in How to Reduce Personal Bias When Hiring, but there are other ways. Consider tasking a person with the job of removing names from resumes during the initial review process. Or follow the advice of a nonprofit leader who shared about this process on a social media group. She describes how their organization only requires an email address for individuals seeking the position. Once they have all the email addresses, they send out a question for a short writing response. Their process goes on from there, but the idea is that in thinking outside the box, they can hire more fairly.
Use a hiring matrix.
Lastly, hiring processes are incredibly subjective, leaving nonprofit leaders feeling lost regarding how to compare apples to oranges. Use a hiring matrix to help alleviate some of the stress. It also quantifies the process. With the Spark Group Hiring Matrix, a free resource, you will first determine the qualifications and characteristics you seek for the role and consider the importance of those criteria. Lastly, the document offers a simple and effective tool to use during interviews to help you evaluate candidates.
The hiring process can be tiresome, but with some intentionality and a few tweaks, you can create a strategy that fits your needs and enables you to hire the best candidate for your role. If you want more help setting up your hiring process, visit www.sparkgroupconsulting.com to set up a free 30-minute chat.
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