5 Qualities To Seek When Hiring

Here's what most employers want to believe about the hiring process: Out of countless candidates, the best-qualified individuals are weeded out, and the organization then has no problem picking between those applicants.

If only it were that easy.

The most experienced hiring managers know that hiring is a difficult art even in the best of economic times. When the market is not as robust, as it is right now, staffing decisions can be stressful, exhausting, leaving overworked managers to wonder if there is anything that can make it easier.

There is unfortunately no magic button that can make everything better, but there are some ways to make one of the most stressful aspects of the process -- reviewing qualifications -- simpler. In the revised edition of his book “Managing a Nonprofit Organization,” Thomas Wolf offers advice about the qualities a nonprofit executive should look for when reviewing the qualifications of prospective employees. The most important qualities are:

• Administrative skills related to the job to be performed;
• Management skills in working with others, especially when some supervisory requirements come with a job;
• Character traits that reflect creativity, flexibility, an enthusiasm for solving problems and an ability to work with others;
• An understanding of the need for authority in an organizational structure; and,
• Knowledge, sensitivity and enjoyment of the nonprofit field in which the employees will be working.