Cassie Scarano, Commongood Careers

[Ed. Note: Cassie is the co-author of the chapter on "Finding and Keeping the Right People" in our forthcoming book, Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission.]

Hiring for any role, regardless of the function or organizational level, is a challenge and an opportunity. With increased competition for talent, demand for higher salaries, and specific required skills, hiring for technology staff within nonprofit organizations is particularly challenging.

There are, however, specific strategies and tools that will position you for success in the hiring process.

Needs Assessment
The first step in ensuring effective hiring of technology staff is to engage in a comprehensive needs assessment. Use a strategic and inclusive approach to understand the current and future technology needs of your organization. After determining the key stakeholders that should be involved in making the hire, gather their visions for the role by asking them questions such as:

• What hardware, software, communications, and technology-driven systems do we need to function across all of our programs and departments?
• What ongoing training and support systems are required to maximize the efficient use of these systems?
• What IT functions and infrastructure currently exist in our organization?
• What strategic changes are likely to occur over the next several months and years, and how will those changes impact our IT needs?
• What capacity gaps can be observed between our current resources and both our immediate needs and our projected future needs?

Once you have answered these questions, map identified needs across functional roles. What positions should exist and when, what are the specific roles and responsibilities of each position, and how will success be measured?

If you do not currently have technology professionals on staff who can help you answer these questions and bring experience from prior employment, ask for support from outside constituents. Perhaps a Board member is a technology professional or could connect you with technology professionals from their company.

In addition, the TechSoup Learning Center has a great resource designed to help nonprofits conduct needs assessments. Groups such as NTEN, TechSoup Global, NPower, and your regional nonprofit association may also be able to provide resources and guidance.

Once you have identified the gaps and determined your organization's needs, it's time to figure out how to best meet those needs.

A common mistake at this point in the process is jumping into hiring a new position. You should first, however, determine whether there are existing internal resources that could be re-deployed to support your technology needs. Next, identify any external supporters, volunteers, and/or consultants who could lend their expertise to your organization. Finally, after exhausting all other possibilities, it will be time to consider a new permanent hire.

Defining the Role
You've already taken the first steps in defining the role for which you're hiring -- conducting a thorough needs assessment and identifying the necessity of making a new hire. Now it is time to translate that vision into reality.

First, consider what specific skills and competencies will be required for success in the role. Remember to include both hard skills (specific knowledge and technical qualifications) and soft skills (behavioral characteristics, personality traits, and attributes of work style). For technology hires in particular, it's tempting to focus primarily on the hard skills, but experience has shown the importance of soft skills to success of technology staff within a nonprofit organization.

Once you've determined the competencies required, build every aspect of your hiring process around those competencies. Make sure you clearly communicate your needs in the job description, screen applications according to the identified criteria, and base your interview questions and reference checking around the required competencies.

Building each step of your interview process around the competencies will ensure that the process is as objective and needs-based as possible.

Writing a Compelling Job Description
Now it's time to write a job description that will drive candidates to your available position. Remember, this is a marketing tool, so the language you choose should be compelling, exciting, and appealing to the target candidates while communicating an honest description of the position and organization.

An effective job description will be at most two pages in length, and will include the following components:

• A job title that is short, descriptive, and highly appealing to the right kinds of candidates
• A concise and compelling overview of your organization, including mission and impact
• An overview of the position, outlining the broad responsibilities and leadership opportunities
• Details around specific responsibilities -- be careful that this section does not become a laundry list of mundane tasks
• Listing of required qualifications -- refer to the competencies you outlined previously
• Clear and easy application instructions
• An equal opportunity employer statement -- if your organization does not have a lawyer-approved statement, use the safe and simple "XYZ is an equal opportunity employer."

Recruiting the Right Candidates
Good recruiting is a marketing function that, when done well, will not only yield great candidates for your hiring needs, but will also increase your brand awareness.

Ideally, recruiting should be done year-round, even when you're not hiring for particular roles, so that you have a network of potential candidates you can approach as soon as you are hiring. In fact, approximately 75% of nonprofit jobs are filled by strong candidates before the search ever becomes public.

When you're recruiting for a specific position, make sure your efforts are both far-reaching and targeted and include: comprehensive advertising and posting of the position to on-line job boards and listservs (you'll need to budget approximately $1,000 for advertising the position); aggressive outreach to your organization's networks; and effective use of social networking.

Screening Candidates
Each step of the interview process should be planned in advance to ensure consistency and equity across candidates. In order to minimize legal liabilities, you should focus on methodically working through this consistent process, treating every candidate equally and carefully, and maintaining appropriate records in regard to information collected and decisions made.

Generally, a robust screening process includes the following steps:

1. Resume screen

2. Phone screen 

3. Initial in-person interview

4. Follow-up interview(s)

5. Reference and background checking

6. Offer negotiation and hiring

Too often, organizations have the outline of an effective hiring process, but it breaks down because they don't know how to ask good interview questions. The best interview questions should be:

• Relevant: focused on the required core competencies without relying on any "unknowable" or organization-specific information
• Behaviorally-based: asking candidates to describe past experiences in which they successfully demonstrated specific competencies
• Open-ended: allowing insight into a candidate's thought processes without "leading" the candidate into providing the answers you want or giving the candidate the opportunity to provide a yes or no response
• Probing: avoiding "cliche" interview questions and working to stimulate a candidate's capacity for critical thinking

Creating evaluation tools such as checklists or scales that directly relate to the required competencies can help you more clearly determine a candidate's fit with both the technical and non-technical requirements of the position. All of the information you collect utilizing these tools should be measured against the requirements in the original job description.

Ensuring Your Place in a Competitive Market
In order to be as competitive as possible in the fight for technology talent, it's important to define and communicate your employer brand, or what distinguishes your organization from the competition. Start by asking questions such as:

• Why is it better to work here than in a higher-paying private company or public agency?
• What sets us apart from other nonprofit organizations?
• What kinds of incentives can we offer, including financial, non-financial, and intangible?
• What makes us a great place to work? What do people love about working here?

When it comes to compensation, remember that you'll have to pay to get the best. Conduct salary benchmarking of comparable positions at similarly-sized organizations to gauge the market and figure out what your "ideal candidate" could be earning in other environments.

Consider the non-financial components of a compensation package, as well: what does your ideal candidate value, other than remuneration? A flexible work schedule, increased vacation days, or professional development and training opportunities can make your compensation package more appealing than that of a competitor.

Having the right background information, knowing what your target audience values, and being creative in developing compensation packages will help you compete in this tough market and allow you to add the highest quality talent to meet your organizational needs at every level.

Commongood Careers is dedicated to helping today's most effective social entrepreneurs hire the best talent. Founded by nonprofit professionals, Commongood Careers offers personalized, engaged services to job seekers and organizations throughout the hiring process as well as access to a wealth of knowledge about careers in the social sector.