HR Workforce Solutions
By Nonprofits, For Nonprofits
The same survey found that a whopping 85% of nonprofits don’t have a formal annual recruitment budget. Of the 15% of organizations that do have a formal recruitment budget, the media budget allotment was only $8,500 a year.
Maybe that explains why so many organizations rely on informal recruitment networks. But with only $8,500 to spare at most, where do organizations turn when they need to fill a position they can’t locally source from their pre-established informal recruitment networks? Even more difficulty emerges when the position a nonprofit is looking to hire for is highly specialized or needs a very select set of background and educational or certification experiences to support it.
A quick Google search of the term “specialty job listing site” returns more than 2.4 million results. For organizations looking to hire someone with highly technical training, there is the job site “37signals.” For those looking to hire someone with an accounting or other financial background, there is the site “Financial Job Bank.” And for nonprofits looking to hire skill sets most often found within the nonprofit sector, there are ASAE: CareerHQ and Opportunity Knocks.*
Other well-recognized specialized job boards include:
Another good way to look for potential applicants with specialized skills or certifications is by sourcing from your volunteer bank. (Hey, sometimes it’s best to rely on word of mouth!) If you are looking for someone knowledgeable in an area that you already have one or more volunteers in, consider asking them directly if they would be interested in submitting an application.
Similarly, your organization shouldn’t only be positing these specialized positions on specialized job boards. Consider posting on some of these sites as well. Even if you don’t directly reach the perfect candidate through general boards such as Craigslist or Indeed, many active job seekers know passive jobs seekers who they are willing to forward relevant positions to.
*Opportunity Knocks is a national online job board, HR resource, and career development destination managed by the Georgia Center for Nonprofits, one of UST’s 80+ Affinity Partners.
This is where the importance of having a well-written and well-defined job description (and by extension, job posting) comes in handy.* Including required experience, education, and other basic skill requirements allows potential candidates to self-screen before putting together a cover letter and resume package for your organization. In fact, even the simple act of requiring a cover letter (and throwing out all resumes submitted without one) can help your organization pre-screen employees based on their communication skills.
The same with including a salary range—a lot of companies don’t do this for a multitude of reasons, but applicants know what they need their base rate of pay to be. You don’t want to find the perfect candidate to only learn that you can’t afford to hire them after going through the entire recruitment process, do you?
After you’ve put together the full job description and have ensured that it will help potential candidates and the hiring committee quickly screen for the least likely candidates, it’s time to post. But where do you post the job description?
The easiest place to start is general job search sites, a short list of which you’ll see below.
Other places you should consider posting the job would be with your local community centers, churches, community colleges and universities, and libraries.
Have more suggestions? Share on our social media channels!
The next segment of this series will discuss finding candidates with refined or specific qualifications. Since many nonprofits often rely heavily on informal networks for hiring & finding new talent, these are sometimes the most difficult jobs to fill.
But what if the best person doesn’t submit an application? How can you reach the right job seekers with the right job postings? Well, there’s a song about how the best place to start is at the very beginning, so it’s important that you make sure you are posting job descriptions on the most appropriate sites.
There are so many different job boards though!
It’s a mixed blessing that you’re right. Even as the economy has improved and the unemployment rate has fallen (with the exception of February 2014), the area of source identification has remained murky when it comes time to recruit new candidates. For some positions, industry specific job boards provide the most active access to the ‘right’ candidates on a national, or even international, scale. But for highly localized job postings, where do you turn?
And where should your organization seek general skill jobs such as Admin Assistants or Receptionists?
Our newest series focuses on finding the best ways to identify candidate pools that are a good fit for your general positions, and finding candidates with more refined, specific qualifications.
On Thursday, February 6th, the Senate’s vote of 58 to 40 marked the end of unemployment insurance payouts for many of the long-term unemployed, including the 1.7 million Americans who had stopped receiving aid when the benefits program had originally expired this past December.
Had the proposal passed, the federal unemployment benefits program would have been extended by an additional three months, amounting to $6.4 billion. But, fearful of creating a disincentive for the long-term jobless, as well as perpetuating the federal financial deficit, the majority of Republicans voted against the bill.
While the proposal was officially dismissed, President Obama continues to search for new ways to promote equal opportunity for the long-term unemployed. In order to create an even playing field for such job candidates, many businesses have started implementing inclusive hiring practices and training programs—all in an effort to end discrimination against long-term unemployed individuals.
After promoting his hiring initiative, Obama has successfully gained the support of many big-wig companies, such as Ford Motor Co. and Apple. And although the extended benefits program has since expired, these new hiring practices can become a new symbol of hope for the long-term unemployed.
Read more about the Senate’s vote on the Democratic proposal here.
For job seekers in the West and South, where job growth is expected to be fastest over the next 11 months, the outlook is particularly rosy. And for the first time since 2008, less than one percentage point separates the jobless rates across the country’s four main regions.
With more than 2.6 million jobs projected to be created in 2014, even states that continue to feel the hardest effects of the recession expect to reap the benefits of employment acceleration. And as job growth continues its upward trend, 15 states have officially gained back all of the jobs that they lost during the Recession, further stimulating economists positive jobs outlook.
Although this has been recovered as the slowest recessionary recovery ever on record, it is expected that all states will have recovered the total number of jobs lost during the Recession over the next few years.
For more detailed information about which states will experience the fastest job growth in 2014, Stateline created this interactive state-by-state map.
Read the full-text Stateline article here.
But few nonprofits should actually be afraid of leadership development since often it indicates growth and mission success.
When your organization is open to examining your current organizational goals and is ready to actively assess your employees and positions to see if you have the employee talent to lead your organization forward, there are hundreds of resources for leadership development.
Thankfully, The Bridgespan Group has put together a Nonprofit Leadership Development toolkit, with videos based off of their own leadership development research, that can help you tie the skills and talents your organization will need into your strategic planning efforts.
UST’s ThinkHR hotline can also help you prepare for future leadership needs with expert job description builders, salary benchmarking tools and more than 200 on-demand courses for both management and employees! Visit the webpage here.
Learn more about the HR resources available to UST members by calling (888)249-4788 today.
But according to research done by the Social & Demographic Trends arm of the Pew Research Center, Millennials are forging an identity that is “confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat, and open to change”– which makes them perfect candidates for your next open Board seat. (Read the full report here.)
Creative and highly adaptive, many Millennials are defined by their upbeat energy, positive outlook and high level of inclusion. Conversely many Boards are getting a bad rap for being exclusive, untouchable, and far too opaque in their conservative decision-making.
According to advocates for younger board members, having Millennials on your board has many benefits and advances your organization in ways that may be overlooked by those quick to dismiss the young. These include:
Read more of the benefits of having younger board members on your Board.
Take the quiz to find out how Millennial you are.
Do you have younger board members at your organization? How did you find them? Tell us about your board demographic!
For those of us who help run the day-to-day operations of the UST program, there is a special thrill in hearing how each of our members is able to make an impact in their community through after school programs, health and human services, meal delivery programs, arts, literacy advancement efforts, animal advocacy, and so much more! We wanted to reach into our local community and get help illustrating (literally) all of the types of nonprofits UST serves. So we asked the children that participate in our local Girls, Inc. and Boys & Girls Club programs to help us by entering a calendar contest. And within a month, we received more than 100 incredible drawings!
The only problem is there are only 12 months in a year! So after a difficult selection process, we presented each of the winners with awards, and threw all of the participants a pizza party. Said Tristan from the Boys & Girls Club of Carpinteria to the local newspaper, “I was really excited I won because I never thought I was that good at drawing.” His entry in the Museums category is the winning image for May.
Founded by nonprofits, for nonprofits, UST is the largest unemployment trust in the nation, providing nonprofit organizations with 10 or more employees a safe, cost-effective alternative to paying state unemployment taxes. Since 501(c)(3) organizations are federally allowed to opt out of paying into the state unemployment tax pool and can instead reimburse the state only as they incur unemployment claims, UST member organizations can take advantage of this savings benefit while also being protected through their UST account reserve and expert claims management. And now through ThinkHR, they will also benefit from live HR advice when they need it.
ThinkHR Live now provides UST members with access to a live phone HR hotline with written follow-up on complex issues or researched matters, usually within 24 hours. All hotline representatives are certified professionals in human resources, and help employers to stay in compliance – an important part of any organization’s human resources practices.
In addition, ThinkHR offers downloadable HR templates with forms, documents, tools and checklists for every HR department; a job description builder and salary benchmarking tools; 200+ online employee training and compliance courses for both management and employees; and bi-weekly legislative and HR e-newsletters.
Over the first 8 weeks of membership, UST members will also receive a weekly email from ThinkHR with account tips and features to help them get the most out of their account.
Every year UST provides its members with new educational content and support. Often focusing on unemployment costs, unemployment claim management methods, HR-related procedures and case studies, UST’s informative materials and dedicated partner services like ThinkHR are designed to help nonprofits save money and build greater resiliency. Visit www.ChooseUST.org/ThinkHR to learn more.
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UST maintains a secure site. This means that information we obtain from you in the process of enrolling is protected and cannot be viewed by others. Information about your agency is provided to our various service providers once you enroll in UST for the purpose of providing you with the best possible service. Your information will never be sold or rented to other entities that are not affiliated with UST. Agencies that are actively enrolled in UST are listed for review by other agencies, UST’s sponsors and potential participants, but no information specific to your agency can be reviewed by anyone not affiliated with UST and not otherwise engaged in providing services to you except as required by law or valid legal process.
Your use of this site and the provision of basic information constitute your consent for UST to use the information supplied.
UST may collect generic information about overall website traffic, and use other analytical information and tools to help us improve our website and provide the best possible information and service. As you browse UST’s website, cookies may also be placed on your computer so that we can better understand what information our visitors are most interested in, and to help direct you to other relevant information. These cookies do not collect personal information such as your name, email, postal address or phone number. To opt out of some of these cookies, click here. If you are a Twitter user, and prefer not to have Twitter ad content tailored to you, learn more here.
Further, our website may contain links to other sites. Anytime you connect to another website, their respective privacy policy will apply and UST is not responsible for the privacy practices of others.
This Privacy Policy and the Terms of Use for our site is subject to change.
Hobbled by limited budgets for recruitment, historically lower pay scales, and fewer opportunities for internal advancement (the largest majority of mid-level employees come from other nonprofit organizations), nonprofits have a lot working against them when it comes time to hire. So what is a nonprofit to do when they need to source appropriate applications and hire the best candidates to advance their mission?
Let’s start by ensuring job postings are in the right place and reaching the most relevant candidates.
Rather than relying solely on word-of-mouth advertising through the nonprofit community, or on your informal network of connections, become active in sourcing candidates from the very field you want to hire for. You never know which job seekers are looking for the opportunity to leave the corporate structure in favor of an organization whose mission they are passionate about.