In the first installment of this series, we discussed how the current economic slump could bring you candidates that may look great on paper, but might not actually be what your organization needs.  The interview is one of the final opportunities that you have to figure out whether the candidate is all show, or whether they really can (and will) produce for your organization.  Below, I’ve outlined three things you should always do when interviewing for your ED position.  This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I would encourage all BOD’s to make sure that they do at least these three things, along with their normal interview routine.

1. Ask about accomplishments on resume

It’s important to make sure you know the full story behind all of the major accomplishments on a candidate’s resume – don’t just assume that because they put it on there, they really had full responsibility for it.  Ask detailed questions about the steps taken to reach the goal, who was involved in each step, and problems that arose and how they were solved.  I particularly want to emphasis the part on who was involved.  Often times when people claim their accomplishments on a resume or in an interview, they “forget” to mention that they were a member of a team, or that it was really their project manager or secretary that pulled together the details.

By asking specific questions, particularly about who was involved, you can get a clearer picture of what the individual actually did and whether or not they have the skills to back up their claims.

Learning from experience:  In my career, I’ve hired, worked with, and worked for many individuals that had excellent resumes; unfortunately, not all of them had been completely forthright in their accomplishments.  One individual that I knew listed that they had raised millions of dollars for one particular charity – what she failed to mention, however, was that she was the assistant to the person who actually did the fundraising.  She sat in the meetings and prepared the documents, but didn’t actually foster the relationships that led to such large donations.  Unfortunately, the BOD got carried away with the idea that they, too, might be able to raise millions by hiring this woman, that they didn’t do their due diligence in asking detailed questions.  The organization ended up with an ED that not only is unable to raise money, but is completely unfamiliar with the mission and daily management of nonprofit organizations.

2. Compare previous organizations

In the majority of the world (royalty excluded) titles are free.  When organizations are struggling to give their employees raises, they may offer a better title instead.  It costs the organization nothing, but can open a lot more doors for the individual.  Because of this, being a secretary or an ED at one organization means something totally different than at another, therefore, when you have a candidate at your table, forget what they used to be called at their previous organization and focus on what they have done and can do for you.

If you are a small nonprofit with a tight budget, you need to hire an ED who can multitask and isn’t afraid of entering in their own data, answering their own phone, or making their own copies.  When you’re hiring for this position, you don’t want to hire someone who has held great titles in previous jobs, but has never actually used a copy machine.  You need to hire what is appropriate for your organization.

Make sure to take the time to understand what type of organization or company your candidate comes from or has recent experience in.  Is your candidate used to having a secretary?  You might want to let them know that they will need to be able to do their own data entry.  Was your candidate the ED of a nonprofit that is broken into chapters?  Make sure you ask whether or not they were the ED of a chapter or the organization.  In some organizations, being the ED of a chapter is the equivalent of being a secretary; everything is done and decided by the “Mothership” and the chapters are responsible for making sure it gets carried out accordingly.  This person may have held the title ED, but they may have very little relevant experience in running a nonprofit.  What was the annual budget of their previous organization?  If the answer is much higher or much lower than your organization, you’ll want to address with the candidate how that might effect their management style.

3. Let them show-off their skills

I highly recommend that you give each candidate some sort of task to complete on the spot that will be similar to what they would need to do on a daily basis.  This will give the candidate an opportunity to show you what kind of a thinker and problem solver they will be for your organization.  Their response to it will also allow you to evaluate if that is the type of leader that you want to represent your mission.  Are they too aggressive or too gentle in their approach to a problem?  Are they creative in the way they solved it?  Do they have the ability to see an issue from all sides?  Did they consider such things such as legal or financial ramifications for their solutions?  Remember, you won’t be there everyday to manage this person, so if you don’t trust that they can do it completely on their own, then they might not be the right candidate for you.

Learning from experience:  I was conducting interviews for a project coordinator position a few years ago and had a stack of resumes from PhD’s and one MD.  The job was slightly more than a secretarial position, but the economy was so bad at the time that I was getting resumes from all over.  I brought in several candidates for a first interview and concluded the interview by asking the candidate to tell me, step-by-step, how they would build a mentorship program over the course of the next year.  I set up a blank Microsoft Word document on a laptop and let them use one of the offices to type out their plan.  One of the PhD candidates came to me halfway through the interview because he couldn’t figure out how to use the laptop.  One of the candidates actually gave up halfway through the exercise and left.  This exercise told me more about each of these candidates than an hour-long interview did.  When faced with a problem that they were going to have to solve on their own, each candidate showed whether or not they were cable of thinking outside the box, persevering, and had the experience to handle such issues.

These three things will allow you to learn a lot about a candidate during the interview process.  Remember, you can interview a candidate several times before hiring them – so take your time and get to know someone before making that decision.  It’s much better than trying to recover from having a bad leader.  Last, but definitely not least, don’t forget to do a thorough background check of the candidate.

Acronym Translation:

BOD – Board of Directors

ED – Executive Director

Photo Credit

So you’ve gotten your ad posted and the resumes are pouring in; now how do you narrow down the candidates to a manageable number that you can interview?

For every 100 hiring managers that you ask, there’s 100 different ways that they go about reading through resumes and narrowing down candidates.  Some people will automatically dismiss a candidate if they see a typo anywhere in the resume or cover letter; others consider the content and job experiences to weigh more heavily so will look past a few grammatical errors if the candidate seems really promising.  There’s really no right or wrong answer here.  The most important piece of advice that I can give any nonprofit is to stick to whatever process the Search Committee or BOD agreed upon in the beginning (this statement is greatly reminding me that my next series needs to be on what a healthy BOD looks like).

One great tool that should be utilized when you are evaluating resumes is the “wish list” that you developed to assist in writing your job-opening ad.  When you are reading through several (or even hundreds) of resumes at once, it’s easy to get off track or even get so blown away by a successful candidate that you don’t even notice that their successes don’t actually match up to your needs.  Sure, that candidate with a PhD in Physics and an MD sounds great, but that doesn’t mean that they know how to put together a budget, develop a program, or approach a potential donor.  These things may sound easy to some people, but I’ve seen lots of really smart people who can’t even balance their checkbook.  Using the “wish list” will keep you accountable and on track for finding someone that truly fits your organization’s needs and it insures that all candidates are evaluated fairly.

If you still find that you have more candidates with great potential than you have room to interview, than you can always contact those candidates and ask for more information or samples of their work if they didn’t already send some in.  I would recommend making these requests by phone.  Whenever I’ve called someone I was interested in interviewing for a position, I have found that the way the individual answers the phone, their responses to questions, and the amount of time that it takes for them to follow up with requests tells you a great deal about that person and their level of professionalism.

Additional things you can, and should, do when you are narrowing down candidates for an interview is to do a brief Internet search on the candidate.  Keep in mind that if you have a candidate with a fairly common name, you might have to narrow down your search terms or take any information that you get from your search with a grain of salt until you can confirm it’s the same individual; but this is a good way to find out if the candidate might not be a great fit for your organization’s mission.  For example, if your organization’s mission is to work with young teenagers on self-esteem issues, you probably shouldn’t hire an ED who has a picture of themselves scantily clad on their Facebook page.  This would drastically undermine the individual’s ability to be taken seriously as your leader.

You can also find out whether or not information on a candidate’s resume is true, which is not always the case.  I once had a stellar candidate that I was really excited about.  She had a great resume and I even interviewed her before I took the time to Google her (this is why I’m telling you to Google first, I learned from experience).  If I had only Googled her first, I would have learned that the reason why the last nonprofit she worked for had lost their grant money and went under was because she embezzled from it.  On paper, she sounded great and was able to represent herself well – she just left out a few things.

Again, there’s no right or wrong way to evaluate resumes.  Just be sure to look for someone that truly possesses the skills you need and don’t get taken for a ride by a smooth-writer.

Acronym Translation:

BOD – Board of Directors

ED – Executive Director

Photo Credit

So your organization is in need of a new leader, but how do you go about soliciting for the right candidates without becoming buried in a pile of resumes, especially in this economy?

Well, there’s no right way to do this.  As you’ll hear me say over and over again on this blog, it really depends on your organization.  There is truly no one-size fits all approach to nonprofit work and this is just one example of where finding the right fit for your organization is going to be dictated by the uniqueness of your organization.

First off, a warning:  It is a bad idea to post the same help-wanted ad that you used to hire your last executive (if you had one).  Even if your last ED was wonderful and a great fit for your organization, it is still a bad idea.  The reason:  Your organization is different now than it was the last time around.

My suggestion for finding a great fit for your organization is to have the BOD develop a “wish list” of where they would like the organization to be in the next five years.  If you have a strategic plan in place (which I would hope you do and are actively using), than this should be fairly simple and may not even require you devote any time to at a BOD meeting.

From your “wish list,” you can highlight the type of skills that a person would need in order to accomplish the tasks required to get the organization to that point.  Chances are the list will be long and will widely vary from volunteer coordination skills, to proposal writing capabilities, to being a technology wizard – you probably won’t find one individual who is an expert in ALL of these areas, but hopefully you’ll find someone who is an expert in the one’s that you need the most.

After you identify the skills that will be needed, look around your organization and see what skills the current staff (if there are any staff) already possess.  If you don’t have staff, make sure to look at dedicated volunteers and board members for skills they are willing to donate to the organization.

Be careful that the skill you are relying on from a volunteer isn’t critical to your organization.  For instance, if your organization uses a myriad of technology on a daily basis in order to accomplish their mission, but relies on a volunteer whenever the technology gets a “bug,” you could be out of commission for several days or weeks while waiting for a volunteer to find time to fix it.  You should only rely on specialized skills that are needed irregularly or for one dedicated project, if you plan on using volunteers in this capacity.

Another thing to keep in mind when creating your list of needed skills is to look at the ENTIRE needs of the organization from program management to fiscal management to human resources.  One major mistake I see smaller nonprofits make is hiring a subject matter expert to lead their organization.  While this doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing, the individual may lose sight of the whole picture in the midst of micromanaging one area of the organization or they simply may not be able to perform in the other daily management areas where they are needed.  For example, if you have a nonprofit that offers services to the homeless population, it’s great to have individuals employed or involved with the organization that can relate to the population being served, but it’s not necessarily wise to hire them as your ED if they don’t know how to write a proposal, have never managed a grant, and don’t know how to evaluate a program for its effectiveness.  Sure the people being served may think they are great, and they may be great for the whole six months the organization is running until they drive it into the ground.

Moving on….

After surveying the current skills of staff and volunteers, you should be able to narrow your list down (at least a little bit!).  This will help you to form the “bones” of your ad and help you to evaluate candidates consistently for your organization’s needs.

Other things to make sure that you put in your ad:

• The mission of the organization and population being served.  Why some organizations remain anonymous when they post for employees will always boggle my mind.  Don’t you want someone who has both the skills and is passionate about your cause?
• The staff size of your organization.  This may seems strange, but if you want to weed out former executives who are used to having personal secretaries do all their typing, this is a good way to hint that they might want to look elsewhere.
• Some basic expectations of the ED.  Aside from skills that the individual will need, you might want to list some expectations.  For example, if you want someone with fundraising skills, you might want to list that one of the expectations for the job will be that the ED raise over $500,000 in their first two years.  This information will, of course, be gone over again with the candidate at other times, but this is a good way of weeding out anyone who is questioning whether or not their fundraising skills are truly as developed as they need to be for the position.

After your ad is developed and the appropriate people approve it (the “appropriate” people will differ depending on your BOD committee structures), than you need to place it in a location where you are most likely to find candidates that meet your skill set requirements.  Posting your ad on your state nonprofit association’s website is always a good first place.  This is where people who are truly interested in nonprofit work usually look, so you will most likely get candidates who understand nonprofits and have an interest in the sector.   Other good places to post are on websites belonging to associations for the type of skills you are looking for.  For example, if you are a new organization that needs to gain a solid financial footing, you may want to post an ad on the website for the Association of Fundraising Professionals.  You may get some candidates whose experience lies solely with fundraising, but you may get a few that have several skill sets, but are particularly strong in fundraising.

There is no real wrong place to post your ad, but if you have limited resources and need to find solid candidates quickly, than I would suggest starting out with association-type websites.

Acronym Translation:

BOD – Board of Directors

ED – Executive Director

Photo Credit

Few can argue that one of the best ways to ensure that your organization will be successful is to make sure that you find great leadership from the start.  Unfortunately, that’s often harder than it seems.

With the economy being in such a slump, BOD’s are often under the mistaken impression that it will be easier to find an experienced person to take their organization to the next level.  And it’s easy to understand why – when ED positions open up, search committees are often slammed with hundreds of resumes ranging from secretaries to former CEO’s of for-profit companies.  It’s not uncommon for search committees to practically start drooling when they see former corporate executives’ resumes.  Usually the committee’s thinking process is that if someone has run a for-profit, than they should be able to handle a non-profit — and whoopee for us, they’ll do it for less money!

Now hold on their cowboy (or cowgirl for equality purposes)!  Before we begin shining the shoes of this former executive at his/her initial interview let’s stop and examine a few things:

Unless you are a major nonprofit organization like the American Red Cross and have the ability to offer a similar compensation package, you should question why a former executive of a for-profit is interested in your organization.

Here are a couple of questions to ask to help guide the Committee’s level of weariness on just such a candidate:

• Was the candidate laid off from their last position?
• Did the candidate retire from their last position?
• Would the candidate be taking a significant pay cut?

If the answer is yes to any of the above questions, than you should proceed with caution.  Now I realize that the questions above can be somewhat controversial, especially the one about whether or not the candidate is retired.  So please allow me to clarify why I think that these things should make a committee dig a little deeper before they fall in love with the individual.

First, if the candidate was laid off from their last position than it’s a no-brainer that you need to find out why.  Were they bad at their job or was the company just in a fiscal crisis?  If the company was in a fiscal crisis, how much responsibility did the candidate have in fiscal issues?  My opinion is to walk away if the candidate had anything to do with fiscal management and the company was losing money.

Second, if the candidate is retired than it’s not necessarily something that should cause a committee concern, especially if the candidate has some sort of personal attachment to the nonprofits’ mission.  However, the committee should be slightly weary if the candidate has no personal connection and never volunteered or worked in a nonprofit organization when they were employed.  This really has nothing to do with age, but everything to do with money.  I’ve heard stories more than once of nonprofit organizations hiring former for-profit executives who have retired and just want a little extra income to enjoy their retirement years.  Unfortunately, many individuals are under the completely mistaken impression that nonprofit organizations are easy to run and don’t really take much effort or time.  If you hire a candidate with this sort of mindset, then chances are your organization is going to go downhill quickly.

Third, if the candidate was making significantly more at their previous job and are okay with taking the pay cut, you should be weary.  Chances are that even if the candidate wasn’t fired or laid off, they are willing to take the pay cut for a reason and it’s important to find out why.  Often times, these individuals see your organization as a pit-stop on their way to finding a better job, meaning they don’t plan on being with you long enough to do much of anything besides consume your valuable and extremely finite resources.  They may look good on paper and have a lot of great connections, but it’s not really going to help you if they are giving notice in 8 months to a year.

Again, unless your organization is a multi-million dollar nonprofit, you should carefully examine the candidates experience and accomplishments on their resume.

We will explore how to do this in a later segment on reading between the lines in a resume, but the bottom line is that often executives in for-profit organizations have staff that make things happen and take care of the details.  The executive may oversee the project and get to claim credit for it, but it was really the lower level staff that entered in data, did the trouble-shooting, and worked with the outside vendors to make the project a success.  If your organization doesn’t have the support staff to handle these “smaller” tasks, than you really need to make sure that the candidate has the experience and willingness (and quite frankly, humbleness) to do it themselves.

So, what’s the bottom line to all this?  Your organization may be getting more resumes in the door, but it’s still going to be a lot of work to find the right person to lead you.

Acronym Translation:

BOD – Board of Directors

ED – Executive Director

Photo credit