Hiring and Onboarding for small Nonprofitsand Emerging Leaders

by Floyd RumohrEdited by Jenny Clarke

NIMBLE CONSULTING FOR NONPROFITSEdition: December 2012 Copyright © 2012

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Contents

Preface ............................................................................................................ 3

What this Booklet Is and Isn’t ............................................................ 3

Who is it for? ...................................................................................... 3

Introduction .................................................................................................... 4

Hiring Process Stages .................................................................................... 5

Purpose of Interviews .................................................................................... 7

Hiring Manager ............................................................................................... 8

High Inquiry Interview Questions ................................................................. 9

Focusing Questions ..................................................................................... 11

Multiple Perspectives ................................................................................... 12

Evaluating Candidate Responses ................................................................ 13

Onboarding .................................................................................................. 14

References and Additional Resources ........................................................ 15

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Introduction

This booklet is compiled from the Rumohr and Clarke Nonprofit Blog and is intended as an introduction to basic principles of human resource management that can challenge the small nonprofit environment. Please visit the blog to post comments, questions, or case studies!

What is this booklet?

• Introductory: to encourage curiosity about the topics and further inquiry.

What this booklet is not

• A comprehensive guide: while hiring and onboarding are explored in this guide, other aspects of human resource management such as benefits, separation and release, and other topics are beyond its scope. Please consult Additional Resources & References for more information.

Who is it for?

• In-service early career nonprofit professionals.

• Entrepreneurial start-up founders with a great idea and little to no human resource management experience.

• Any nonprofit administrator or board member who has not studied human resource management and wants a “crash course” about these two essential processes.

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Introduction

Hiring. Yikes. Like it or not, executive, program, development, or artistic directors have to do it at one point or another. It doesn’t have to be a headache.

Marla Cornelius, Senior Project Director at CompassPoint, a nonprofit consulting firm, said in a New York Times piece that “There’s no such thing as a period of time when you’re not challenged by staff issues as the leader of a nonprofit. And since many nonprofits don’t have a dedicated human resources staff person, managing personnel just sucks you in and takes over your life.”

This guide is intended to mitigate the life-dominating forces of the hiring process and build the human resource capacity of small and midsize nonprofits through the following topics, most of which have at least one accompanying video in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library:

• Hiring Process Stages: six stages of the hiring process used during a national search for a director of development are described.

• Purpose of Interviews: asking questions of candidates is a necessary part of the process. This is a brief reminder about the role interviews play for those new to hiring.

• The Hiring Manager: a position description is provided for the responsibilities and role into which many nonprofit leaders and managers are plunged.

• High Inquiry Interview Questions: get candidates thinking deeply instead of responding with memorized responses to anticipated questions.

• Focusing Questions: learn how to focus questions to get the information you need in 1) skills and experience, and 2) working style and organizational compatibility.

• Multiple Perspectives: avoid common hiring mistakes by engaging different perspectives in the interview process.

• Evaluating Candidate Responses: fairly evaluate and capture candidate responses by examining the scoring and grading systems used in a national search for a director of development.

• Onboarding: what is it? why do it? what are its benefits?

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Hiring Process Stages

Let’s face it. Hiring is an ancillary requirement of nonprofit leaders and managers of small and midsize organizations. Most are too busy doing other things to give it much thought.

As a result, common mistakes like hiring versions of the person doing the hiring or recruiting someone because of a charming personality can occur. In the worst cases and in the absence of a human resource professional, which is rarely seen at all but larger nonprofits, misjudgments in hiring can catapult a new hire into sudden departure with staff and board wondering what went wrong. Worse yet, havoc can result from a new hire who is a bad fit.

So how can a small or midsize nonprofit appropriately identify, attract, and retain appropriate talent? Thinking of each new hire as a small project might help. It requires planning just like any new mission-driven project or idea and generally has six stages:

1. Collaborative Planning: hiring teams can include executive, program, development directors, and board members with whom the new hire will interact most closely. Essential questions for the team to explore include: what do we need to know from the process? what questions are we going to ask? who’s going to ask them? how many interviews are needed? who will assume the responsibilities of a hiring manager? and how will we evaluate the responses?

2. Screening: these days, initial screening of cover letters and résumés can be done via e-mail but the speed of our virtual reality should not cheat application evaluation. Standard criteria such as amount of experience, degrees or certifications, and specific skills should be used to evaluate each cover letter and résumé that comes in. Collaboratively agreeing on criteria during planning will help identify the best candidates for a first interview.

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2: Screening

Standard Criteria4 Amount of experience

4 Degrees of certifications

4 Specific skills

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3. Interviewing: as with screening, a set of standard criteria and questions should be asked of all candidates in order for the process to be credible and fair. Questions requiring a yes/no response can be helpful in the beginning of an interview to help candidates feel comfortable especially when nerves are at their highest. By contract, high inquiry questions are those that stimulate a broad range of responses; penetrate the dimensions of experience, skills, organizational compatibility; and provide indicators of future performance such as in: “What do you think are the critical job challenges for this position and what in your background will help you succeed in meeting these challenges?” A second or even a third interview could be required and something to consider during planning.

4. Finalists Selection: these are the top contenders — the best performers so far in the process. Reference checking, academic credentials verification, and salary requirements should occur on or before this stage so inappropriate candidates are not advanced through the process. Finalists can be brought in to meet members of the board, search committee, executive director, or any other stakeholders to provide insight.

5. Negotiation and Offer: some verbal back-and-forth might be required at this stage. A written offer in the form of a welcome letter might include start date, salary, benefits package, probation policy, initial steps of the onboarding plan, and any other appropriate information.

6. Onboarding: smooth transitions into a new position and organization are rarely accidental. They require leadership and planning. Designating someone on the team to be the hiring manager will facilitate this essential process and help ensure that the new hire sticks around.

Watch Hiring Process Overview Video: Title 3.1 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

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Purpose of Interviews

Interviews are a necessary part of the hiring process and can be subject to interviewer bias.

“Many studies show that unstructured, face-to-face interviews are biased; interviewers prefer candidates who are likeable, similar to them, and physically attractive – even if these qualities are irrelevant to performance” reports Pfeffer and Sutton in the New York Times.

Is a well-intended employer supposed to hire someone they don’t like? Not exactly. Likeability, charming personalities, excessive self-confidence and other personality traits could bias an interviewer from really seeing and hearing the information needed to make a credible assessment. A candidate should not be hired just because that person is liked. This may sound obvious but it is a common hiring mistake.

A good interview process elicits information that can help predict future performance based on past behaviors. Generally-speaking, interviews should draw-out information that helps the hiring team predict the degree to which each candidate:

• Has the skills and capability to do the job

• Will perform at the organization

During a search for director of development at a youth services organization in New York City, the hiring team wanted to find out how each candidates’ past behavior and conduct might influence performance at the organization given its current challenges and priorities. Interviews focused on what each candidate actually did on a day-to-day basis, how they behaved, and what they accomplished. This approach was taken because past performance is one of the best indicators of how a candidate will perform in the future.

Focusing on the skills, capabilities, organizational compatibility, and indicators of performance required by the position at this time in the organization’s lifecycle will increase the chances that the new hire will succeed and decrease the likelihood that hidden bias will sneak into the process.

Watch Purpose of Interviews Video: Title 3.2 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

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The Hiring Manager

Most nonprofit directors and managers are responsible for hiring to some degree.

At these times, the hiring hat will become a priority and might even feel like a burden, especially if an unexpected absence occurs and when responsibility for developing staff is hoisted into all of the other duties.

Most for-profit companies figured out a long time ago that it’s a big job. Many of them have dedicated human resource professionals who, among other things, manage the entirety of the hiring and onboarding process. Small and most mid-size nonprofits don’t have that luxury.

As a result, nonprofit program, executive, development, and artistic directors often find themselves in the lead hiring role. The responsibilities of which are numerous and time-consuming:

• Arrange for and facilitate all planning meetings.

• Draft position descriptions.

• Advertise and list the position.

• Communicate with candidates and members of the hiring team.

• Arrange for and prepare all interview materials.

• Participate in interviews and document the process.

• Assess candidates.

• Check references.

• Recommend finalists to the executive director.

• Onboard the new hire.

The above responsibilities could be shared among hiring team members to lessen the load on any one particular staff person. Alternatively, an outside consultant could be retained in the role of hiring manager resources permitting. However each task is accomplished and whomever does it, each is as important as any other and time-pressured nonprofit professionals should be cautious of temptations to speed by or eliminate. Prioritizing is essential to the role but omitting any one of the above could result in bigger problems down the road.

Staff, board, or committee meetings can provide opportunities to discuss these essential tasks that build human resource management capacity.

Watch Hiring Manager Video: Title 3.3 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

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High Inquiry Interview Questions

Questions are here, there, and everywhere on both sides of the interview relationship. How and what kind of questions should we ask during the hiring process?

Teachers are among the most skilled interviewers, even though we might not immediately think of them that way, because they regular ask questions that elicit essential information from students.

But great teachers do more than just draw out information. They get students to think, which is just what a good interview should do. Having been in my fair share of classrooms and interviews, I’ve seen the same effects on students and job candidates from two kinds of questions commonly asked by teachers.

Broadly speaking, the two kinds of questions have different purposes. High inquiry questions are those that stimulate a wide range of responses that enable:

• Abstract thought

• Self-assessment

• Comparing and contrasting

• Predictions

• Inferences

Low inquiry questions:

• Converge toward one correct response

• Elicit the meaning of a term

• Reiterate a statement that has already been made

• Supply an example of something

Low inquiry questions reinforce “correct” answers whereas “high inquiry questions stimulate a broader range of responses and tend to stimulate high levels of thinking” (Hassard). Low inquiry questions can be helpful in the beginning of an interview to help candidates feel comfortable especially when nerves are at their highest such as:

• How did you hear about this position?

• What do you know about this organization?

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By contract, high inquiry questions get candidates thinking deeply and penetrate the dimensions of experience, skills, organizational compatibility, and can provide indicators of future performance as in:

“What do you think are the critical job challenges for this position and what in your background will help you succeed in meeting these challenges?”

The above is a high inquiry question because it asks the candidate to:

• Infer what the actual challenges might be.

• Predict the degree to which he or she will succeed in meeting the challenges.

Such a high inquiry question requires wait-time – a few seconds for the responder to think about the question – and has been shown to increase logical, abstract, and speculative thinking in students (Rowe) (Stahl) (Llewellyn). Again, I’ve seen these same effects on adult candidates during interviews for nonprofit positions. Instead of repeating memorized responses to anticipated questions, for example, candidates thoughtfully responded if appropriate wait-time was provided after each question.

Asking high inquiry questions and providing appropriate wait-time requires patience on the part of interviewers. And even a little courage. Sometimes interviewers can jump in because their own nerves get the best of them or because silence is uncomfortable. Asking a clarifying follow-up question if you see that the candidate is stuck can be helpful. But don’t start talking because you get nervous for them. Silence can be golden and filled with nonverbal information as important as any of the spoken words.

Watch High Inquiry Questions Video: Title 3.4 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

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Wait Time

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Focusing Questions

Focusing questions in an interview process can help draw out essential information from candidates while effectively using limited time.

During a search for a director of development at a youth services organization in New York City, the interview design consisted of two interviews each with a different focus:

Interview #1 Interview #2

Focus: Skills and Experience Focus: Working Style and Compatibility

Sample Questions:

• What tools, if any, do you use for time management and tracking critical tasks?

• What accomplishments are you most proud of? Why?

Sample Questions:

• What is your personal working style?

• Would you say you are more of an independent worker or collaborator?

Interviewers:

• Executive Director

• Consultant

Interviewers:

• Program Director

• Program Managers (2)

The questions for each interview were focused to elicit appropriate information from each candidate in about an hour and a half. Necessary information was shared in the time allowed for the most part. Pressure can mount if expectations of each interview transcend the time you have or if too many spontaneous questions arise. These kinds of distractions can cause increased stress levels in interviewers who have other job functions and candidates who might cross each other while waiting to be seen. Worse yet, a line of interviewees could form in the waiting area!

Focusing questions also helps to determine how many interviews will be needed. Our case study reflected in the above table consisted of two interviews each with a particular focus.

Reasons behind the various people involved in the process are described next.

Watch Focusing Questions Video: Title 3.5 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

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Multiple Perspectives

An empty position often leaves small nonprofits and emerging leaders thinking I need to fill this position now!

From that vantage point, the well-intended nonprofit leader will see many candidates who seem to fit the bill: attractive, confident, professional and immensely qualified on paper. You like them. You really like them.

“It is just at this moment that the biggest hiring mistake is possible,” says Lou Adler, recruiter, author, and CEO of Power Hiring, a consulting company in Southern California. “What typically happens when you like someone is that you tend to go out of your way to reinforce what you like about that person-even if it’s subconsciously. You tend to support your conclusion and don’t look for facts to preclude it” (Society of Human Resource Management).

A co-dependent hiring storm is created: an open position with urgent functional needs and a pool of likeable candidates. Each circumstance serves to fuel a belief that both are true. As a result, many time-pressured nonprofit administrators enthusiastically jump-in to hire the candidate liked best before thoroughly examining skills, experience, and compatibility with the organization.

Adler recommends training yourself to “wait 30 minutes before drawing any conclusions” in order to become more objective and tame overactive emotions (Society of Human Resource Management). While waiting is a great way to avoid impulsive decision making, nonprofit administrators often have another resource that engenders discipline in the hiring process: board members, staff, and outside consultants.

Multiple perspectives help to avoid common mistakes like hiring a version of any one person doing the hiring or enlisting a candidate because that person is well liked. In addition, they:

• Build credibility: the degree to which the judgment and conclusions resulting from the process are trusted and believed by others. If only one person is involved in hiring, then it is possible that several like-minded clones could appear and diminish organizational performance over time. In this case, how trustworthy is the hiring process at a nonprofit or within one of its departments?

• Reduce the effect of personal bias: one person cannot see and hear everything. Multiple people involved in planning and interviewing discourages any one particular bias, either positive or negative, from dominating the decision-making. Biases can sneak up in unforeseen ways and, in the worst cases, be the culprit behind discriminatory practices.

• Invest stakeholders in the process: staff, board, and others with whom the new hire will work most closely become acquainted before the new staff member’s first day. Relationships invested in each other’s success are one way to build a high-performance team from the get-go.

Different perspectives do not imply that authority for hiring rests with a committee. While the information gathered is more credible than going it alone, every organization will have to determine with whom or what (in the case of a committee) accountability rests.

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Watch Multiple Perspectives Video: Title 3.6 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

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Evaluating Candidate Responses

Imagine it: you’re finally able to make those home improvements you’ve always wanted. The interior decorator measures the living room using her foot and the architect uses a tape measure. How will that work out, I wonder? Inconsistencies in measurement are likely to result in mismatches — both in home repairs and during interviews.

Inconsistencies arise during the hiring process when interviewers ask different questions of different candidates, which can render the process unreliable as in the case of our home repair analogy: a foot for one measurement and a tape measure for another. The interior designer may report that the living room is 10' wide but that measurement is only valid if her foot is consistently available!

“The only way to measure a candidate is to measure every single candidate with the same yardstick,” said Nancy Newell of Nth Degree Consulting during a panel discussion at the 2010 Society of Human Resource Management Conference. An interview question is the “yardstick” used to measure candidate responses. Newell says that each candidate should be asked the same question, or be measured by the same yardstick, if the evaluation process is going to be credible (Lorenz).

During a search for a director of development at a youth services organization in New York City, the interview design consisted of two interviews each with a different measurement scale:

The executive director and search consultant scored responses by each candidate to twelve questions for the first interview. Three program staff awarded each candidate a letter grade for the whole of the second interview. The letter grading system was used for the second interview because it required less training time since most people are familiar with an A through E grading system from school.

Spontaneous questions arose on both sides of the interview relationship but candidates were not evaluated based on their responses to those questions because that would have altered the “yardstick” and reduced the credibility of the evaluation process. Several follow-up, clarifying, and idiosyncratic questions added fluidity to the conversation and were included among a subset of broader questions asked of all candidates.

The important thing to remember is the yardstick principle: if a question is important enough to ask of one candidate then ask it of all. Otherwise you could end up with a candidate that just doesn’t fit.

Watch Evaluating Candidate Responses Video: Title 3.7 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

1. Weight is the importance of each question characterized by the maximum number of points possible for a particular question.

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Interview #1 Focus: Skills and Experience

Interview #2 Focus: Working Style and Compatibility

Measurement Scale: 100 points for twelve weighted1 questions

Measurement Scale: A-E grade for eight unweighted1 questions

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Onboarding

After a rigorous hiring process, you and your team have settled on the candidate with the skills, capabilities, working style, and organizational compatibility to succeed at your organization. Now what?

This is just the moment where many nonprofit leaders and managers make one of their biggest hiring mistakes: the new hire arrives on his or her first day to a full in-box and no plan for the person to get acquainted with the organization’s people and practices. Onboarding, which is a process of inward transition for new team members, sets-up the new hire for success and is an essential part of the process particularly when we consider that:

• HALF of senior hires fail within 18 months

• HALF of all hourly workers leave within 120 days

The above findings from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) are compelling in the nonprofit sector even though they derive from for-profit companies. In addition, SHRM reports that departing senior hires cost up to 150% of annual salary and hourly workers up to 75% of annual wages.

Let’s think about it from the perspective of one nonprofit staff member. The annual salary of the director of development in our case study at a New York City youth services nonprofit was $80,000. Potential costs to fill the

position could be as high as $120,000 using the SHRM findings as a mathematical basis.

In addition to reducing turnover costs, effective onboarding results in:

• Higher job satisfaction

• Organizational commitment

• Higher performance levels

• Lowered stress

How high are turnover rates at your nonprofit? A revolving door could be the symptom of a dysfunctional modus operandi. If so, then perhaps it’s time to take a look at human resource practices that include onboarding, professional development and training, and even organizational culture – especially true of small nonprofits that may have a small staff with vital roles and functions.

Watch Onboarding Overview Video: Title 4.1 and Using the Onboarding Checklist Video: Title 4.2 in the Rumohr and Clarke Video & Template Library.

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References and Additional Resources

• Philanthropists Start Requiring Management Courses to Keep Nonprofits Productive by Stephanie Strom, New York Times, July 29, 2011.

• Trust the Evidence Not Your Instincts by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, New York Times, September 3, 2011.

• The Art of Teaching Science: Inquiry and Innovation in Middle and High School by Jack Hassard. Oxford University Press, 2005.

• Wait Time: Slowing Down May Be a Way of Speeding Up by Mary Budd Rowe. American Educator 11. 1987.

• Using ‘Think-Time’ and ‘Wait Time’ Skillfully in the Classroom by Robert Stahl. ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education. 2008.

• Inquire Within: Implementing Inquiry-Based Science Standards in Grades 3-8 by Douglas Llewellyn. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2007.

• Avoid the Top Two Hiring Mistakes by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). December 2002/Reviewed January 2004.

• Interviewing Do’s and Don’t’s: Lessons From SHRM 2010 by Mary Lorenz. The Hiring Site. July 15, 2010.

• Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success by Talya N. Bauer, Ph.D., SHRM Foundation’s Effective Practice Guidelines Series, 2004.

• Why is Onboarding So Important? by House of Change Coaching & HRM Consulting compiled from Implementing and Managing Onboarding Programs, Recruitment Round Table 2006, Corporate Executive Board. Source corroborated by Daphne Dreissen, August 4, 2011.

• All Aboard! Does Your Onboarding Process Lead to Employee Engagement or Buyer’s Remorse by David Lee. Reprinted from Insights, Fall 2006.

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Floyd Rumohr

Floyd Rumohr is a partner at

Rumohr and Clarke Consulting,

which focuses on emerging

nonprofit leaders and small

organizations.

He is the founding executive

director of Stages of Learning (1994-

2010) described by New York City

Mayor Mike Bloomberg as among

the “most effective arts education

programs” serving the city. Floyd is

a member of the Society of Human

Resource Management and has

hired, onboarded, and developed

human resources for organizations

with as few as two staff members

and as many as forty.