7 Steps To Hiring Success

How does your nonprofit determine how to hire employees? Does it make those decisions solely on the quality of the candidate's resume and her interview performance? These are both important factors, but they should not be the only ones guiding your decision.

The first step to determining the factors that should play the main roles in your hiring process is to plan a meeting with your human resources department. You should use this meeting to develop a course of action that will lay out the characteristics your employee of choice will possess. After all, you can't expect to find a great employee if you don't know the exact qualifications for which you are looking.

Your plan of action will be determined by following these seven steps during your meeting with human resources:

• Determine why you need to hire a new employee, develop a list of important characteristics, and work with HR and the relevant departments to create a detailed job description.
• Rank the most important characteristics that your successful candidate will possess, from most to least necessary. This will allow your recruiter to use this list when writing online classified ads for the position.
• Determine who in the organization will interview applicants and discuss with this person which qualities they should evaluate most carefully.
• Assign questions and topics to the employee who will be conducting the job interviews. You should also consider developing scenarios and role-plays to see how candidates will react in certain situations.
• Write a list of questions you wish to use during the employee screening process.
• Determine whether it is necessary for your candidates to take a test during the interview process. For example, you may want to assign a writing task if you are hiring for a grant writing position.
• Identify questions you want to use for the post-interview assessment of the candidate. These should relate to the characteristics you have determined are most important in an employee.