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Sherryl Nufer: Smart Interviewing Makes Great Hiring
Sherryl Nufer, a founding partner in Pareto Consulting, explains why Behavioral Interviewing is superior to traditional methods and how any size nonprofit can get better hires through more sophisticated interviewing, whether you hire once a year or many times a month. This is from April 13, 2012.
Heather Carpenter: Your Job Descriptions
Heather Carpenter is co-author of the book “The Talent Development Platform” and she’s got advice for your often-rushed-through, lifted-off-the-web job descriptions. (Hint: Stop doing that!)
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of a cute ryan al gia if i just got a whiff of the possibility that you missed today’s show. Smart interviewing makes great hiring cheryl nufer, a founding partner in peredo consulting, explains why behavioral interviewing is superior to traditional methods and how any size non-profit khun get better hires through more sophisticated interviewing? Whether you’re hiring once a year or many times a month, this is from april thirteenth, two thousand twelve, and your job descriptions once you’ve made the hyre it’s time for job description. Heather carpenters, co author of the book the talent development program, and she’s got advice for your often rushed through lifted off the web job descriptions gotta fix that on tony’s take two social media videos responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com here is cheryl nufer if smart interviewing makes great hiring, i guess now is cheryl nufer cheryl is a founding partner of peredo. Consulting, providing small to medium sized organizations with business tools that are often available only the large for-profit corporations sounds like she’s sort of stole the tagline for this show. She’s, a strategy and organization development consultant with more than thirty years of experience, and i’m pleased that her expertise brings her on cheryl nufer welcome. Thank you so much, tony it’s really a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you thanks, snusz what’s wrong with traditional interviewing? Cheryl well, we have a top ten list of what goes wrong in interviews, but really, they’re too big and the first one is that it’s? Hard to believe, but a lot of interviewers don’t really know what they’re looking for in a candidate, and so they just figured that the more people they interview, the better their odds it’s kind of like vegas, and they don’t know when they see it. The second big problem is that they ask risky questions when i say questions. Yeah, what is that? Yeah, i don’t know. Just wait. Typically think about what we call illegal questions. Is that a problem? But risky questions, questions that back-up candidate can prep for that. They can anticipate that they can prepare a candid answer for which may or may not be the truth. So the data on which to base your hiring decision is a lot. So those sounds like questions like what’s your strengths and your strengths and weaknesses, like those types of questions are risky that’s exactly right? Because people can anticipate them. Yeah, common ones we here are what you just said there, but it’s also questions like, what would you do in a situation? For example, if you were faced with an angry donor for this job is going to require a lot of long hours. Will that be a problem for you? Or my favorite is tell me about yourself. Why should i write? And these are risky because they’re predictable is unmentioned. Secondly, they solicit the candidates opinions and, you know, i don’t want to sound harsh, but the candidate doesn’t know a lot about what’s required for success in the job interviewer does interviewers opinion it’s most important and then laugh so you can say that? Not sound harsh if i say it, it sounds harsh coming from you. It just sounds very matter of fact unprofessional. And final thing is that they also asked the candidate to hypothesize, so if you ask me, what would you do in a particular situation? They can tell you just about anything now? Is that what they would do if they were faced with that situation? Your organization, they may or may not so again, all of these risky it’s interesting that you call very typical questions risky, but i understand. I understand why. Yeah, well, it’s all about making it’s all about collecting data to make a decision to predict how someone is going to perform in your organization and risky your your database here, your hyre decision. Alright that’s so that’s the interviewing that we’re all most familiar with, we either do it or we’ve been through it. Or both. Why don’t you just started acquaint us with behavioral interviewing? Okay, well, behavioral interviewing is not just about the interview. It’s really a business process, just like your financial processes review hr processes and it has a set of steps. And so it starts off with identifying and defining the skills for success. And then you create a line of questioning that’s based on those skills you put that in an interview guide, follow the guide. After you interview you right, candidate based on the data you collected, and then all of the interviewers get together and share their example of make a hyre or no hyre decision. So, first of all, it’s, a repeatable process. In terms of knowing what you’re looking for, i think that’s a really big difference what we talk about is looking for a balance skills well and what we’re looking for doesn’t that come from the job description? Well, not necessarily, but good question, because a lot of organizations job description are nothing more than a list of responsibilities that they will fulfill once they’re hired, but what i’m talking about is a list of skills that are required to be successful in executing those responsibilities. And so we look at those in terms of technical skills, which are really job specific and things maybe like marketing the iranians fund-raising sales and then another set of skills that we call professional skills. You might also call the sauce skills and these cross jobs and these air things like planning and team work and initiatives and judgment, integrity, those kinds of things wei have a saying that a lot of organizations hyre on technical skills when they have to fire someone. Cheryl, we have to take a break when we come back. We’ll continue this and start exploring why behavioral interviewing is better than what we’re all accustomed to please hope. Everybody stays with us, we’re talking smart interviewing makes great hiring what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people x somebody’s a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealised took two or three years. For foundation staff to sort of dane toe, add an email address their card, it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts, tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell, you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other. Ninety five percent. Dahna welcome back with my guests, cheryl nufer of peredo consulting, you’ll find peredo consulting at parade o p r e t o hyphen h y p h e n but don’t spell hyphen just put a hyphen in consulting peredo hyphen consulting dot com. Cheryl, why is this method behavioral interviewing superior to what we’re all accustomed to? Well, that has to do a lot with the questions that you ask, i said before the other questions, key behavioral questions are based on principle that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, so if we can figure out in an interview how a person behaves in the recent past in situations that are similar to what they face in our job, then we have a pretty good idea how well behaved if we hire them. So this is the opposite of stock investing, investment advisors who will say past results or no indication of future returns, right? Okay, but past behaviour is predictor of future behavior. Yeah, because we are creatures of habit. So there is a great formula for creating a behavioral question that your listeners could start using right away. So what you do is you start with the phrase something like give me an example of the time in the past, or maybe describe the past situation, and then what you do is you go back to those skills i was talking about a minute ago, the rooms that are important for success and you plug in burbage that describes the skills so let’s say we were talking about initiative, then we’d say something like, give me an example of the time in the past when you went above and beyond job requirements or a time in the past when you anticipated a potential problem and you made contingency plans. So what you do is always in behavioral interview issues asked what people did in the past versus what they would do in the future, which is a hypothetical. So this sounds harder to fake, but i have to tell the whole story. Now you have to tell a whole story, and it is very difficult to fake because they’re hard to anticipate. And a good interviewer should be asking specific follow-up questions. I mean it’s, easy to just ask the behavioral questions, but it’s an interview are you start listening for what you want. You want a real situation? You want to understand what they said or did in that situation, and you want to know what happened, what kind of results this is scaring the heck out of me if i’m in it, i’m nervous that’s a good thing i have my own business, so i’ve never run into this well. So what if i don’t have a story about initiative? Alright, i’m under pressure. I can’t i can’t think of one well, that’s a common thing, and our goal is the interviewer is to bring out the best in the candidate. So what? We can dio that’s good that’s, that’s reassuring it’s too, because when you’re comfortable, you’re going to share more information with me so i would prompt you with questions such as what about in this specific job? Or i may rephrase the question where someone doesn’t have work experience, i’m my nasco and to think about project that they did in college or maybe a summer job so anything that i can do or i can say, you know, we can come back to that question and give you a few minutes to think about it if you’d like. There are a lot of ways to handle that it’s not uncommon for someone to freeze up. Yeah, okay, i pulled listeners before the show. One of the questions i asked is, do you feel you’re hiring? Process is efficient and you’re hiring the right candidate, and about seventy one percent said yes and about twenty nine percent i said no, so we want to help the other third, but that two thirds may not be may not be as efficient and hiring savvy as as they think. That’s, right, that’s recorders almost sorry even if they have a good track record of getting good can bring one good talent. Beauty of a behavioral approach is that up? You don’t necessarily have to interview a lot of candidates and pick the best of the lot if you know what you’re looking for and you have a good screening process and you interview the candidates and their experiences match the criteria success. Technically, you could hire the first candidate you interview, which reduces your cycle time, and it also keeps you from potentially losing a good candidate because you’re hiring cycle is too long. Have you seen organizations do that either? For-profit or non-profit don’t they don’t they typically say, well, she was very good, but maybe we’ll find somebody better, absolutely, and that they are not confident in their process. There’s something in there got that says, you know, i’m just not confident in the data, my process for evaluating it and that’s where a good process really builds confidence to make that decision when you see that good step, okay? Andi yeah, these air interesting ondas you said very these type of questions very hard to anticipate that they’re going to come. How does the interviewer prepare? You talked down a little bit, going a little more detail on and then shortly we’ll get to how many interviewers there should be, but but but how do we prepare as an interviewer? So as an interviewer, well, basically you identify the skills that are required for success in the job. Based on those skills, you develop a line of behavioral questions using the formula that i shared with you. Typically you will type those up in an interview guide or just list if you have multiple interviewer shall divide that list up among all of your interviewers, so that there are no gaps in your questioning and there’s no redundancy safe, so everyone has their game plan they interview based on that. So that’s the primary way that you would prepare a search would review the resume common things, write what you want you want it certainly want to be prepared. So if it is a a siri’s of interviews interviewers, they don’t ask the same questions then no, they don’t that’s really a waste of time, and you have so little time in an interview. You want to make sure to use it wisely. Now they ain’t me ask multiple questions about a specific skill, but they typically don’t ask the same question because if they asked the same question, the candidate will probably give the same example and that’s kind of silly. You still tell the same story twice, exactly, and you would expect that so it’s not the interview each ball that’s the interviewers fault for not being prepared. On the other hand, what if all the interviewees stories, anecdotes come from just one of their jobs or something? Or just too? And they’ve got, you know, thirty years of experience or something like that? Well, that would absolutely be a red flag either there bread through depth of experience is not what it means here on their resonate, or perhaps there’s something that they just don’t want to share with you so that’s something that you may, if you find when you bring your interviewers together, that the same stories were told to everybody, then you could either make a no hyre decision or you could make a decision to have a follow-up phone interview where you would try to clean examples from some of their other work experience. Okay, so you’d like to follow up interview to be by phone, but the first one to be in person is that right? What i’m talking about here is typically you would do a phone screen organisations and then bring the candidate in for face-to-face what i was saying is, if you feel you can’t make ah hyre no hyre decision, you know, you always have the option to follow-up again by phone and asked more questions, okay, okay, um and so since we’re talking sort of around this, what is your advice around having just one interviewer or having a siri’s of interviewers, or even having a panel. Okay, well, we would always recommend more than one interviewer, if at all possible, and you can is that just to eliminate bias of one person, it could eliminate buy-in it? I can get you more data because if you have two interviews that you have more data on which to base a decision, there are two ways of doing what we call a serial interview, which is cheryl interviews candidate hands candidate off tony who interviews to hands it off to joe, and then when you separately and then after all the interviews, you come back together and share your example and make a decision. There’s also the panel interview where you have multiple people interviewing the candidate at one time and you can do multiple panels panels are great ways to involve more people from your organization and getting exposure to candidate. You just don’t want the panels to get too big. You know what is to become a panel? Interviews khun b scary. I’ve heard stories from people who were interviewed by five people or so that’s pretty intimidating it’s very intimidating i’ve been interviewed by many has six at one time. I know a lot about interviewing and that that was a nerve ng me, what we recommend is either two or three. When it gets above three, it can not only be intimidating, but it’s difficult for the interviewers to kind of it should be choreographed. So you should have someone out of the panel who is kind of the host and is kind of orchestrating this interview. There’s not anarchy, everyone’s firing questions at the candidate and it really doesn’t set the candidate up. Cheryl nufer is a founding partner of peredo consulting. You’ll find them on the web, but peredo pr e teo hyphen consulting dot com we’re talking about smart interviewing, making great hiring, cheryl. Is there an advantage of serial interviewing over the panel or or the other way around? Well, there is an advantage in the advantage is that when you’re in a panel, if you conduct one panel interviews, all three of you are hearing the same stories, the same situation in a serial interview it’s more likely that you will hear different stories, or sometimes the same story told different ways, and so you know, that sounds bad, but it can be bad if in fact there are vast differences in the story, like your fourth step in the supposed be the results. So if the results were different in the same story across to different interviews that’s about sign that’s a red flag may be the results keep getting better and better. Three interview that’s a great way to start catching a candidate who may be fabricating for people actually do that. Is that true? Absolutely, they do. I’ve heard rumors to that effect, but i always hoped it wasn’t so another question i asked listeners before the show is our hires in your office typically interviewed by more than one person and seventy one percent said yes, fourteen percent said no, so most people are doing the multiple interviewing and then fourteen percent said depends on the job. Um all right, is there a job where the solo interview makes sense or no, you really just don’t like that at all or there’s a situation, i guess i mean when just one interviewer makes sense. Here’s what i would say in some more straightforward job, maybe some entry level jobs it could perhaps the appropriate that i say it’s no more appropriate in bigger organizations bigger cos you have a really small organisation. You have to hire the right people. You i have no where to hide them. You have no one to cover for them hyre abad a bad fit so i think it’s always good in a small organization, if possible, to have a second set of eyes and get that second set doesn’t have to be somebody that the person is going to report to, right? It could be a colleague. I mean, taken officer just four or five people. They’re going to be hiring of fifth or sixth, like a cz you’re saying that’s a big percentage of the staff, it doesn’t have to be somebody that that person would report to write absolutely not. And in a small organization of horrified people, i mean everyone’s wearing multiple hats, they really have to depend on each other. So everyone has a big stake in making sure the best person has brought onboard, so it could be a appear. It could be someone that maybe is performed well in a similar job in the past. You’re absolutely right. It could be just as long as they’re good interviewers they would be appropriate? How do we gauge technical expertise? We’ve been talking about behavior? Well, you can use behavioral questions to get that technical competencies, but technical skills are a little bit easier. For example, if you were hiring someone for fund-raising you can actually have them bring in and explain fund-raising approaches that they’ve used in the past. I mean, i would ask a lot of follow up questions to make sure that what they brought us, something they actually did. There are tests that you can use for certain technical skills. You can also do simulations, so for example, if you were hiring someone for a sales position, are fund-raising position you could actually have them come in and do a presentation to a team of you, and so you were potential donors and see how they would handle it. So there are a lot of ways to get technical. Wei have just about a minute left, cheryl, what potential problems should people look out for us if they’re goingto implement behavioral interviewing? I think the biggest problem is asking a behavioral question and assuming you’re going to get a behavioral answer, so you have to be able to sort out hypothetical responses through a good line of follow-up questioning about the situation there. Action in the results. Okay. Situation, obstacle action and results. Cheryl nufer is a founding partner of peredo consulting, which provides small to medium sized organizations with business tools that are often available only the large for-profit corporations. Cheryl, thank you very much for being a guest has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. And i hope that this information will help your eye. I think it will help listeners. Thank you very much. A pleasure to have you. Thankyou, tony. Stick to and your job descriptions coming up first. Pursuant, they have this tool. Billboard it’s integrated management for your multi-channel engagement strategies. All right, s o jargon jail. I plead guilty for that. You, khun. I could throw myself in there. Let’s. Break it down. You communicate in lots of different ways. Email landing pages, micro sites, donation forms mobile, all the social networks best to manage them all separately. No, don’t separate. Integrate! I thought that myself that’s, that’s not pursue it. Language. I thought of that billboard is integrated management and the all important analytics that go along with all these. Tools so you know which channels move more people and which don’t from mayor you learn you improve, continue that it oration, that innovative process of learning and improving based on the analytics, and you’ll raise more money. Check out billboard it’s at pursuant dot com. My video this week is the next set of non-profit technology conference videos. They’re all about social media there’s a panel of three on visual social media, another panel on email deliver ability so that those e mails that you sent through billboard actually arrive at people’s inboxes video strategy and embrace embracing emerging technology and social media. They’ve been on non-profit radio if you’ve missed them or you want the videos because you like to watch the videos, then the links are under my video at tony martignetti dot com, and that is tony’s take two for friday, twenty fifth of september thirty eighth show of the year. I’m very pleased that heather carpenter is with me. She is a phd was a non-profit manager for ten years. She’s, now assistant professor in the school of public non-profit and health administration at grand valley state university. She teaches grad and undergrad courses in non-profit management, financial management, fund-raising technology, leadership and human resources management. The book that brings our two non-profit radio is co authored with terra qualls, and it is the talent development platform putting people first in social change organizations published by josy bass this year on twitter she’s at heather carpentier, which is at heather carpenter. But take off that last are heather carpenter. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, tony it’s. A pleasure. You’re calling from grand valley university. Where’s that michigan. Right war in grand rapids, michigan, which is on the west side of the stage. Okay. Okay. That was the summer there in grand rapids. It was really nice. We have a great summer. A little harsher winters, but yeah. No, but you do have harsh winters. Yes. Okay, heather, our job descriptions he’s often get very, very short shrift, don’t they? Yes. Yes. Well, having worked in non-profits for many years and done h r and operations, i know how busy we get. And often, when people leave organizations, we scramble and pulled together what we have on dh and send out a job description that is often outdated and hasn’t been updated in a few years, or sometimes, i think, even pulled off the web. Yes, yes, you’ve seen that, yes, ok, not that you’ve done that when you were leading your non-profit i understand, but i think it’s, i think that’s, also a pretty common practice. Why do we need to focus more on job descriptions? Well, job descriptions are really an important part of helping an employee to understand there roles and responsibilities within the organization. It also helps to track employee and volunteer performance and success, and this is, ah, a living document, right way need to keep these current as job responsibilities change. Yes, we recommend that non-profits update their job descriptions, actually, on an annual basis. Okay, okay. Do you do you think that poor job descriptions lead tio? I don’t know hyre turnover or lower morale? What consequences do you think result from not having accurate descriptions? Yes, i i agree with your assertion, we’ve found that couple of things can happen with outdated job descriptions, one that’s for a new hyre they might not really fully understand the role let’s say hypothetically speak about how when organizations lose employees and they have someone coming in, and they used a job description that’s out data from the labs it’s not clearly showing the response the accurate responsibility so the person might get burned out pretty quickly, finding out they have a lot of additional latto responsibilities, or maybe they don’t even have the adequate qualifications for for the rial responsibilities. So the job or, if someone’s been in a position for a few years, there’s what we call the pile on effect where often more and more responsibilities added, but that’s not actually reflected in the job description or in compensation, so so employees can get volunteers burn out that way, and then sometimes people become overqualified for the job or might be over, claude will decide. When they come in, the job description is accurate. Does this apply also to organizations that are mostly volunteers? Should should be job descriptions for volunteers? Oh, yes, absolutely, we believe that that will our book applies to not just paid staff volunteers as well, and we actually have sample job descriptions are bored board positions and key volunteers, as well as from common staff within various non-profit organizations like your executive director, development director on bury the book is loaded with lots of resource is sample job descriptions but goes way beyond that just dahna job responsibilities and forms, you know, and we’re just taking one piece of the book and talking about job description, but there’s a lot more to it, and the thing is just loaded with but templates and resource is yes, thank you. I really wanted it to be as practical as possible, having worked in the nonprofit sector for many years, ourselves it’s more of a workbook where organizations can pick and choose the chapters that they need the resource is from, but it is a whole platform if an organization decides to go through the process for from everything from understanding the organizational. Learning and professional development culture to actually assessing stats, professional development and creating a professional development goals and abducted tied to the strategic als of the organization. Yes. All right, all right. So where do we start this job? Description process. I mean, i know who it starts with its doctor, the supervisor. How does that what is the what the person need to do to get started? Well, the supervisor should really look at the position itself and often there’s different philosophies on job descriptions. And our our philosophy is that the organization, the supervisor, should build the job around the position and not the person because people change andi really, to really get an understanding of what is needed to advance the organisation for words. So we have something called a proficiency mapping cool and are in our book where supervisors can really identify the called common confidences that the knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics needed to perform the job and then rape those competencies on different proficiency levels. We use the profession into level scale created by the national institute of health, and they’ve been doing this type of job description, worked for many, many years. And really getting understanding of what level that the position and the responsibilities to need to be at when we talked earlier a few minutes ago about outdated job descriptions common, another problem with outdated job description says they’re not often at the level that the position needs to be on a smaller non-profits with great to have people who could do lots of different responsibilities, but sometimes we have very high expectations that someone in entry level type job might be more responsibilities, say, manager or leading the organization through some sort of process when that’s not necessarily the right level for that job, you have these five proficiency levels fundamental, novice, intermediate advanced and an expert yeah, and we provide definitions and also example words and responsibilities at each level. I like to tell you i jump pretty quickly from fundamental toe expert on i think, if i’d done something once, that makes me an expert, so i don’t know if that fits within your construct, but like one time i’m not the expert the first time, but after i’ve done it one time i consider myself an expert. Andi that’s cost that’s cost me a lot of money in like home repairs and things, but i can’t get around it that’s, that’s but that’s, probably not talking, doesn’t fit within your your definitions well, generally the expert and advance our our our director level positions on responsibilities. So at the executive director, we would hope a most size organizations that the person the person holding that position would have advanced on expert level. But we understand that at the lower level positions the coordinators, entry level positions that they’re more at the the novice and the intermedia level. And yes, i mean, we’ve found that it’s helpful, starting with the supervisor to create these confidences and proficiency levels on dh, then down the line, wei have employees assess themselves and not do a real comparison over the competencies profession? Okay, yes, we’re going to get that so so after the supervisors part, then then what’s next in creating these optimal job descriptions, the next step is really getting documenting the employees responsibilities, and they don’t see what the supervisor has done. But if you do have someone in that particular position just making sure that all the responsibilities are are documented because the supervisor might not have a buy-in of everything that’s employees doing. But obviously, if it’s a new position or if the job description has never been done before, then they would have the supervisor job. Do the proficiency mopping. Ok, ok, but but the next step now is the is the is the employee e-giving their input into what their responsibilities are around the competencies and the proficiency levels. Yeah, the next up, it’s. Just the employees identifying their their responsibility. Okay, a faster proficiency levels. Quite yet just for the job description itself. It’s really making sure that all the responsibilities are identified and the supervisor is really the one that making sure that all the proficiency levels are identified. All right. Ok. Ok. And we mentioned these competencies. Can you give us some examples of competencies? Sure. Before you do that, i want to tell you about the process that we took to to identify ten core confidences for non-profit managers like holly. And i actually did some some national surveys and looked at literature around training needs of non-profit managers and a what their confidence cesaire needed. So this is really backed and research that we identify the ten course set. Of common confidence ease that non-profit managers possessed. They’re very general there everything from advocacy to communications, marketing, the financial management to fund of elopement way also have human resource is way also in the book go through the process of have helping organizations create their own sub confidence ease, because since the time core competencies are very general, we know that each organization is different in their culture and each position and as well as department, it’s organization, house, apartment, that they have their own core competencies that are important to that organization. So we’ve also provided some examples of different size organizations and the sub confidence juices issues that they have so well, for example, intercultural confidence. He is a very important sub competency for many organizations. Uh, two working, working well under pressure are working with certain population. Uh, so we we worked with various organizations and their different types of missions required different confidences. So we worked with homeless organization last semester, and they, you know, they require their staff tohave competencies and understanding about people who have housing, have challenges. Okay, let’s. See, we have just about a minute before before we take a break. And then we’ll continue. I should do this. We haven’t mentioned the board should be job descriptions for board positions. Definitely we have. We have a sample job description for board chair board treasurer for secretary on various board general boardmember on there’s a there’s. A lot of resource is not just in our book, but out there on the web as well for creating and managing board job description. That’s an important piece we’ve we’ve done this process with all volunteer run organizations where it’s just the board teo organizations that have paid staff, maybe they’re smaller, they have all the board do their job descriptions and then the one to two staff members that they have so it’s important that it’s not just a staff process that boardmember look at their job descriptions and revised them. Okay, let’s, go out for a break, and when we come back, heather, of course we’ll stay with us and we’ll keep talking about your job descriptions, and then we’ll move to mapping, mapping you, thies competencies and proficiency levels to the job description. Stay with us what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests. Check this out. From seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address their card. It was like it was phone this email thing. Is fired-up that’s? Why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life, it sze you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell, you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent lively conversation top trends and sound advice that’s tony martignetti non-profit radio and i’m lawrence paige, no knee author off the non-profit fund-raising solution. I know i say it every time. Maybe maybe you listeners get here. Tired of hearing me say this, but i wish lawrence would pronounce his last name. Panjwani. He’ll be so much more beautiful than paige. No. Ni lawrence. I’ve said this a large his face. So no it’s, not like i’m going behind his back. And pandiani will be so beautiful. Lorenzo lorenzo panjwani okay, okay. Heather let’s move now. Tio mapping what is this? What is it? What is that? The mapping process that comes next? Well, this is the mapping process is really about revising the job description and making sure that it matches up with the responsibilities really, that are needed. We advise organizations to separate job responsibilities by the confidence categories, so we often see job descriptions that have the whole long list of job responsibilities, but were our processes to separate them by category? Cory so that it’s clear on the difference competencies that are needed with that particular job. We also have the manager identified proficiency levels based on the job responsibility, action, words. And so this is where? This is the revision process, the different levels and making sure that the wording really matches up with the proficiency level. So we might have a position that is hyre up that it needs to be or lower and can be a giant. Now you mentioned job responsibility, action words. What defined those for us? Well, the action words are provided in the proficiency mapping scale. So as we talked about before there’s five perfect into levels from fundamental awareness novice, intermediate to advance and experts and each of these i have a different level and we have action words that are associated with each level. So as i mentioned about the higher level positions we have the dance level there’s there’s, some facilitating, leading liaising managing and the expert level. We’re synthesizing. We’re training were troubleshooting. And so these hyre level action words are associated with hyre level job responsibilities. Okay, yeah. And that’s me. Well, i like to focus on the expert. You know, like i said, i would skip over novice, intermediate and advanced. I go right from fundamental to expert one one one one time. So i’ve gotten used to use those expert use those expert examples that’s where hyre just in my mind that’s where i belong let’s see? Okay, so in this job in the in this revision process now it’s, the employees and the supervisor working together, uh, well, family it’s the supervisor making sure that the job description is aligned because as much as we’d like to be an employee involved in the process, the next step in the talent of altum platform, which i don’t have time to talk about here is the individual professional development assessment and that’s where an employee actually haserot their confidence season proficiency level so it’s really helpful that they don’t see realign job description before that, that there going off of what they i think that they’re expertise is and their proficiency level is. And then that way you could do an accurate, um comparison. So what the job requires? Okay, well, you might be surprised we might have time to get to assessment a little bit. Way might be surprised. Um, now so the mapping there are there was, i think six steps on don’t really have you know, we don’t have time to go through all six of them, but help help us. Understand an overview of the process a little more detailed, and then we have so far. Yeah, so, as i mentioned in the first step of separating the job responsibilities by competency category, you’ll see then if there’s gaps and if you’ll have competency categories that you’re not covering it’s amazing how many organizations that we’ve worked with through this process, where they are missing confidence, ease for specific positions, like operations manager or or the executive director where often maybe, you know hr is a part of the operations manager job, but it’s not really accurately included are reflected in the job description or the job responsibilities or information technology is often a part of someone’s job, but not necessarily included, so it really helped helps organization to identify gaps with responsibility and say, well, we don’t have anything in this competency category. So let’s, let’s talk about what we need to include, i see, okay, it strikes me that this whole process to is going to i guess you said it, but just is going to make sure that you’re not bringing in let’s say, entry level people and having expectations that are unreasonable for them in terms. Of responsibilities and competencies exactly. We we also talk about degree levels as well and compensation. We worked with quite a few smaller non-profits that, like tio, take all the responsibilities that we provide his examples, and and use them to hyre their new entry level staff at the masters level were like, whoa, you know, let’s think about it’s entry level, do they really need a masters? Or do they even need a bath? Kottler for that regard, so this really helped to think through the position responsibilities that you need for the organization and ok, if i really need all those responsibilities and maybe it’s two positions, not one or i’m i think i’m being unrealistic with how many responsibilities that i’m requiring in this in this position. So having those those sometimes difficult conversations about what’s realistic for the organization since restoring tio, we’re talking about the possibility of entry level employees what’s your feeling on starting people at at low salaries? Well, i’m a little biased because i advocate for living wages because i teach graduate students in a lot of them are often on the job market, either during their degree program are afterwards and it’s really disappointing to see them have to take very low wage starting jobs also research so that it costs between seventy five, to one hundred for fifty percent of employees annual salary when they leave. And so what i’ve seen with my students and former employees is that bill, if they’re not getting adequate living wage compensation, then the leave within a few months and that actually costs the organization a lot of money organizations, i don’t think we often realize how much time and effort it takes latto post the new position to interview the people to do the training and that’s that’s money, and what will when in fact, we could pay a living wage and a good starting salary for entry level employees and have them stay longer even if they stay a year to that’s that’s better than the cost of done, leaving within a few months because they find a better opportunity that pays better. Excellent! We’ve got to leave it there. Unbelievable! You were right. We didn’t have a chance to talk about assessment. You are right, but you got it by the book it’s talent development platform she’s heather l carpenter, phd and you’ll find her on twitter at heather carpentier carpenter and take off that last are thank you very much. Other thank you. I’ve been a real pleasure next week. I just don’t know, because i’m recording this a couple of weeks ahead. It won’t suck, i promise you that if you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com where in the world else would you go? I told you i was coming back pursuant full service fund-raising you’ll raise laundry carts more money. I’m not talking about those one person metal things that you pushed down the street to go to the local laundromat or your stuff him in the in the back seat of your minivan, i’m talking those big plastic monsters on the loading docks at hotels and jim’s with sheets, and the towels are spilling over the sides, but instead of sheets and towels filled with money pursuing dot com, our creative producer is clear meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer shows social media is by susan chavez susan chavez dot com on our music is by scott stein bourelly next week for non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder pregnant mark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s, when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist. I took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe. Add an email address their card it was like it was phone. This email thing is fired-up that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were and and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell, you put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sabiston. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.
