Talent Management System at

CWE

C e n t r e fo r Wo me n

a n d E n t e r p r i s e

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Rajiv Kumar Pandey

This document is basically related with the talent

management practices at CWE.

Centre for Women & Enterprise

The Centre for Women & Enterprise is a nationally known non-profit organization dedicated

to helping people start and grow their businesses. CWE has worked with more than 30,200

Massachusetts and Rhode Island entrepreneurs since 1995.

Andrea Silbert, graduated from Harvard Business School, is the co- founder of CWE. She

wanted to do help women because women really needed education and training as much as

access to capital. In particular, for economically disadvantaged women with limited formal

business training, it seemed that education was the essential ingredient. Education helps

empower women to become economically self-sufficient and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Furthermore, when coupled with training, education provides women the skills to launch and

build successful businesses.

Core Factors for Recruitment

There are some important competencies are required according to the goal of the organisation

that align other things accordingly and on the basis that organization find out the key role

which play major role to fulfil the decided goal of the organization.

It is a non-profit organization and maintaining it as such is one of the most gruelling tasks.

For that one should have unique characteristics and culture therefore it can assist the

procedure and framework what has been adapted for getting exact person having expected

competencies are as follows

- Commitment to serve CWE’s primary market, low-income women

- The scrappiness factor – frugality and resourcefulness in achieving extraordinary

results on a shoestring budget, willingness to roll up one’s sleeves

- Willingness to communicate openly and work cooperatively with the existing CWE

management team

- The ability to win support of both men and women leaders of business, government,

and non-organizations

Reason for Hiring

In 1995, Andrea felt to hire someone who could be a business coach and could spend 30

minutes with each client when they first came in because they had total four staff and they

were not enough to meet all the needs of the 600 clients. She wanted to hire executive

director and some of the related roles have been given

- Fund raising for CWE

- Visibility-building (through public relations, frequent speeches and public

appearances)

- Developing a network for potential corporate, non-profit and government sponsors

- Cultivating alliances with Boston area colleges and universities to run joint program

Selection Criteria

For selection of exact candidate from shortlisted candidate she mentioned some of the critical

decisions that needed to be resolved and keeping grant funding in mind. These are given

below

- Which of the candidate should be selected and based on what criteria I.e. the

scrappiness factor – a blend of creativity, frugality and pragmatism might be as

important in selling a start-up as actual fund raising experience

- How should she redistribute her sales and fund responsibilities when new director

came on board? Determining what tasks to delegate, what to share and what to keep

was an interesting challenge.

- How could she ensure that the development director cultivated the right fund raising

sources and academic allies, who would support CWE’s primary mission of training

low – income women to start and manage the entrepreneurial business

- How could she help the new director to quickly assimilate and earn the trust of the

members of CWE team

Responsibilities and Duties

Some key responsibilities of the director of development are explained which are prevalent in

CWE:

The director of development need to assist a strategy for fund raising and adding

people to the CWE board of directors and board of advisors. He should be able to leverage

the relationship of board members because it will help in raising funds.

Work environment at CWE

The commitment and attitude of other people on staff to CWE’s work are the primary

motivators. Through values and outlook, they all are very supportive. The new development

will have impact on their relationship and he should be able to acclimatise himself

accordingly because CWE has a tight knit group.

CWE programme

They have different multi week course as per the clients need. It will help them to assess

their personal and financial goal and explore the differences between self-employment,

entrepreneurship and franchising and to find out if entrepreneurship is really for them. It

forces women to think through whether they had the financial wherewithal to undertake an

entrepreneurial venture and what the commitment in time would mean to their families.

CWE students

They cover almost all strata of society but they mainly focus on lower income and

unemployed women. 35% students are from low-income women, 30% students are single

mothers, and 25% students are unemployed women and rests are from different backgrounds.

Learning from the Case

There are many learning took place about hiring the candidate for non-profit organization,

who is suitable for key position in terms of loyalty, morality, fidelity, integrity etc. which is

one of the toughest job. The candidate is having all required core competencies to meet the

expectation of the organization and assist it to develop as much as possible.