Capacity Building

Many of our clients opt to pursue talent on their own but find that they need assistance along the way, from constructing a strategic approach to the search all the way through finalizing an offer with the candidate of choice.  For those clients, we build training curricula that meets them at their budget, need, and knowledge base.

Step-By-Step Training

Our training can be delivered in a series of up to six different 1-1.5 hour conference calls and/or webinars, with supporting materials for our clients to use throughout their search processes and will be available to them in advance and following each training session. These materials will allow knowledge and capacity to remain within your organization in the future. The trainings themselves will cover the following topics:

Overview of the Search Process:  We will describe how the search will progress and what you can expect at each stage of the search.  We will create tailored materials for your search committee to use throughout the process.  These materials will allow your search committee and staff to ask smarter questions and to better judge candidate and reference responses.  The discussion about building a professional process for your organization will also enable knowledge and capacity to remain with your organization for future searches. 

Scoping the Position:  We will teach you how to write a better, more compelling position description. Position descriptions should be several pages in length and are written after exhaustive consultation with staff, management and other stakeholders.  The position description should contain both the skills and experiences needed, but also paint a picture of the future of the program that will engage candidates’ imaginations and get them thinking about their potential future in the role.  It can be used not only as a tool to attract candidates, but also as a means to assess the new hire’s performance 12-18 months into his or her tenure. 

Building a Diverse Pool:  We will review your current research, networking, sourcing, and advertising strategy and make recommendations to ensure your approach is strategic and cost effective.  Unlimited and under-researched outreach only yields a larger number of unqualified candidates. Our suggestions will be most often websites, listservs, magazines, and journals that we have had success with in the past, or which come highly recommended from those we know and trust.  We try to take advantage of free opportunities whenever we can.  We will always focus our outreach in ways aimed at achieving a diverse pool of candidates. 

Making Wiser Choices:  We will teach you to scrutinize candidates through a three-tiered process of resume screening, telephone assessment and in-person interviewing.  We will teach you to find the strengths and, just as importantly, the weaknesses, in each of the top candidates.

Checking Your Instincts:  A common mistake organizations make is hiring a person for his or her interview skills and not his or her professional record.  We will teach you how to do thorough reference checks on each of your top candidates.  Telephone reference checks are typically done with peers, supervisors and subordinates, as well as with individuals not on a candidate’s reference list. 

Getting to Yes and Onboarding: We will offer guidance about the negotiation and acceptance stage of the search. Once a candidate has accepted an offer, the relationship is only at its beginning stage. We will talk about some ways to make sure that the relationship starts off on the right foot.

Advice, Counsel, and Capacity Building throughout the Process:  Throughout the training and your search, you will find that you will have additional questions specific to how your particular search is evolving.  We will provide you with ongoing assistance between the training sessions, remaining in steady communication and expecting timely and critical feedback at all times. We can also use these hours to conduct telephone conversations with your stakeholders to help you strategically plan what your new organization and its new staff might look like. 

Organizational Development for Virtual Nonprofits and Remote Operations:  Our team members are available to assess your organization's readiness to utilize various virtual best practices and will then create a custom program designed to meet your organization's needs and challenges.  Our programs not only include materials that can help managers and their teams to think through various challenges and best practices, but also include facilitated discussions around common issues like effective virtual communications, team building across physical and electronic barriers, standards for professional remote work environments, and creating efficient and effective organizational culture in digital workspaces.