How to Identify and Hire Fantastic Nonprofit Employees

Just like any for-profit organization, your nonprofit runs on the talents and contributions of its employees.

This is why it’s essential to handle the employee recruitment process with care—those who work with you will directly impact your ability to deliver your mission and produce positive outcomes for the community you serve.

In this short guide, we’ll discuss some ways your organization can identify and hire fantastic employees.

Keep in mind that to have a strong staff that drives results for your cause, your efforts will need to go beyond merely filling open positions.

You need to ensure you’re doing all you can to find skilled individuals who are also aligned with your organization’s values and vision. Let’s begin!

1. Create or revisit the job description for the open role.

A job description is simply a document that clearly outlines the responsibilities, duties, qualifications, and reporting relationships for a particular role at your organization. It’s an essential internal document that:

• helps everyone in the organization understand how the position fits into the structure and hierarchy of the nonprofit;
   
• justifies the pay and benefits for the position;
   
• lays the groundwork for an employee’s professional development and performance management; and,
   
• outlines the training and development activities an employee will need to succeed in the role.

In other words, a job description is an important tool for kickstarting a positive employee experience and ensuring that the work your new employee is doing truly benefits your organization.

Ensure that before you start your recruiting process, you’ve created a thorough job description for the position (or made any necessary updates to the existing job description). Then the job description can serve as a guiding light for the hiring and onboarding process.

Once you have the job description for the position ironed out, you’ll need to translate it into a job posting. A job posting is an external marketing tool to help advertise your open position to job seekers. It should be much shorter than the complete job description while still providing critical information about the role and the qualifications needed. In job postings, you’ll also need to provide a little bit of background information about your organization, so take the time to craft a compelling but concise description of your organization's story and cause.

2. Be strategic in how you source candidates.

When you’re ready to begin the process of searching for qualified candidates, be thoughtful about where you’re advertising your open position. You want to ensure that you’re sharing your job posting in places that will help you attract talented, diverse candidates looking for a role like yours. Different platforms also attract different audiences, so in order to cast a wide net, you’ll need to post your open position in a few places.

Here are some suggestions:

• Recruiting websites: Sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and Glassdoor are all useful for spreading the word about your open position far and wide. Note that in order to increase your job posting’s reach, you may need to invest a little money in using the site. Ensure that you budget for this ahead of time.
   
• Job boards: Many professional organizations offer a job board where their members can browse relevant open positions. For example, the National Council of Nonprofits has a job board that is searchable by keyword, title, organization name, and location. Consider reaching out to any professional organizations or associations that are relevant to nonprofits or the specific industry for your open position to get your job posted.
   
• Your nonprofit’s network: Word of mouth can be an effective way to let the world know about your open position and connect with qualified candidates. Try talking to your colleagues in the nonprofit sector about your open position and seeing if they have any contacts who they think would be interested.
   
• Your volunteer program: Your community of volunteers can be a great place to look for a new employee. After all, you already have an established relationship with your volunteers and a thorough understanding of their skills, experience, and interests. Plus, some of them may want to turn their volunteer work into a paid position!
   
• Social media: Use your various social media profiles to create short posts about your open position. Your posts can even link to your job posting or application form. Plus, social media is a great tool for making quick announcements about application deadlines.
   
• College career centers: Graduating college students are actively looking for jobs, and many rely on the assistance of their institution’s career center to find relevant opportunities. Reach out to local college and university career centers to share information about your organization and open role.

Choose a couple of platforms to post your position on at first and wait a few weeks to assess the number and quality of applicants you’re receiving. From there, if you decide you need more candidates to choose from, you can post your position on a few additional platforms.

3. Conduct thorough interviews.

After you’ve connected with qualified applicants and completed an initial screening of their application materials, you’re left with a shortlist of job candidates to interview.

An interview is an opportunity to get to know your job candidates better and assess their fit for the open role and your organization as a whole. It’s also an opportunity for the job candidate to learn more about your organization and what the job you’re hiring for entails.

Here are some tips for conducting better interviews:

• Create a welcoming environment. Candidates should feel like interviews are a professional conversation rather than a high-stakes interrogation. Do all you can to make your interviewee comfortable—greet them warmly, thank them for their time, and actively listen when they answer your questions. 
   
• Involve other interviewers. In some cases, you may find it useful to have a panel of multiple interviewers conduct your job interviews. This strategy allows you to gather several diverse perspectives on your candidate and involve relevant team members (such as department heads) in hiring decisions. 
   
• Prepare thoughtful, open-ended questions. The questions you ask during the interview should align with the job description for the open position and focus on both skills and cultural fit. You can also ask hypothetical questions that will help you understand how an employee might act in a certain situation. For instance, you might ask, “As a marketing specialist, what are some ideas you would offer to more fully engage our organization's members?"
   
• Assess cultural fit. Ensure that your interview will allow you to understand the candidate’s values, working style, and motivations. This will help you determine whether they are aligned with your organization’s working culture and your cause. 
   
• Evaluate soft skills. Soft skills are those that impact your ability to interact with other people in a professional setting. Watch for evidence that your candidate is a strong communicator, adaptable, and capable of solving problems. 
   
• Allow time for the candidate to ask questions. Remember, your job candidate will likely have some questions for you too. Ensure you leave plenty of time at the end of the interview to answer their questions as honestly and as openly as possible.

In every interview, ensure that you (or a scribe) take thorough notes. This will be especially helpful if the position you’re hiring for will require multiple rounds of interviews—instead of trying to remember everything you learned about each candidate, you’ll have recorded insights to rely on as you make your hiring decisions.

4. Assess skills and competencies.

The interview process should allow you to further whittle down your list of job candidates. From there, it’s time to get a fuller view of the skills and experience they’re bringing to the table.

After all, in job interviews, candidates may speak in hypotheticals or generalities. A skill or competency assessment allows you to dig a little deeper into how the skills on their resume translate to the real world and work situations.

While the specific assessments you require will vary depending on the role you’re hiring for, in general, you may want to conduct assessments such as:

• technical skill tests to judge proficiency in a relevant software tool or technique; 
   
• behavioral assessments to evaluate personality traits, working styles, and communication styles;
   
• aptitude tests to measure cognitive abilities like logical reasoning, analytical skills, and problem-solving; and,
   
• writing tests to assess general writing and grammar skills, as well as communication style.

There are several other ways to judge a candidate’s ability to successfully carry out the responsibilities of the role in question. For instance, you might ask them to submit a portfolio of sample work relevant to the position. Or you may have them participate in a role-playing exercise where they give a mock presentation or issue a fundraising ask to someone acting as a major donor.

5. Make a thoughtful decision.

When the time comes to make a decision about who to hire, don’t rush. To make sure you’re truly hiring the best person for the role in question, you need to thoroughly evaluate each of your options and involve multiple stakeholders in the decision.

Here are some additional tips for making the best decision for your organization:

• Review all the information you’ve gathered on your top candidates, from their resumes to your interview notes.
   
• Compare the information about your candidates against the job description for the role, ensuring that the candidate you select meets all the criteria for the role. 
   
• Conduct thorough reference checks to gain insight into candidates’ past work performance and skills. 
   
• Consider your organization’s long-term goals and how well you feel each candidate would help you accomplish those goals. 
   
• Think through the opportunities for growth at your organization. Consider which candidates you see as having a clear career path at your organization and sticking with your organization for the long term.

After making a decision, it’s time to let your chosen candidate know! Reach out to them to offer them the job and complete the necessary paperwork to make the hiring decision official. Then you can begin thinking through your onboarding process.

Who you have on your nonprofit’s team makes all the difference in just how well you can carry out your mission and drive impact for those you serve. Use the guidance above to optimize your hiring process and find the best employees for your organization!