Insights

How to Say "No" to Candidates or Job Offers with Grace

Jul 24, 2024

Everyone’s favorite part of the hiring process is extending an offer to a terrific candidate and taking them out for a celebratory lunch after they’ve accepted. It’s decidedly less fun to contact the finalists who weren’t chosen. And on the candidate’s side, turning down an offer, especially after a robust interview process, can be difficult and awkward. This article offers tips for navigating this sensitive and challenging part of hiring...

Six Ways to Successfully Onboard a Remote Hire

Sep 10, 2023

By Emily Walsh Once you’ve locked in the right person for the right role at your organization, you might understandably breathe a huge sigh of relief. But another crucial task awaits: setting up your new hire for success from their very first day—perhaps even up to their first year. If your new hire is working remotely, the stakes may feel even higher. Maintaining a strong organizational culture with remote employees is daunting enough...

Five Equity-Driven Steps in Reviewing Resumes to Find the Best Applicants

May 17, 2023

By Kathleen Yazbak and Maleka Diggs Establishing a system for reviewing applications and resumes will help you/your organization improve your chances of including the most relevant candidates in your interview pool, including uncovering some hidden gems. This piece discusses key steps and shares a practical assessment tool to consider incorporating into evaluating candidate resumes. To ensure an equitable and smooth search process, it...

The Best Ways to Recruit Board Members for Nonprofit Organizations

Jan 17, 2023

In the nonprofit world, board members are critical to the organization's success. These key people help steer the nonprofit toward a sustainable future through ethical, diplomatic, and legal governance, as well as financial management. They are responsible for hiring and setting the compensation of the CEO or executive director and supervising activities of the nonprofit to ensure it’s fulfilling its mission in the best possible way....

How to Get the Most Out of Your Reference Checks

Dec 17, 2021

By Kathleen Yazbak, Viewcrest Advisors Checking references is a critical step toward making your final hiring decision and setting up your new leader for success in your mission-driven organization. Most hiring organizations underestimate the helpful information you can obtain from reference checks if you both ask and listen carefully. By speaking with former colleagues, you’ll have insights to add to your hiring decision that...

The Importance of Creating an Equitable Team Culture

Aug 18, 2021

Impact Opportunity had the chance to speak with the founders of The Equity Practice about their work and how managers play a critical role in determining work culture and mitigating bias in the workplace. What is The Equity Practice? Alli Myatt, Pr incipal and Co-founder, The Equity Practice The Equity Practice focuses on helping people move beyond conversations about race to take actions for racial equity. We do that to...

Best Practices for Nonprofits When Selecting a Search Firm

May 26, 2021

Several ingredients go into building strong nonprofit organizations. Given the potential of what the right people in senior leadership roles can accomplish, organizations need to invest both the time and resources necessary to attract and assimilate those leaders. When attracting senior leaders, organizations have the option to lead their searches internally (i.e., through personal networks, board, and staff) or to engage professional...

5 Video Interview Best Practices for Hiring Organizations

Apr 13, 2021

Virtual interviews, commonly conducted via video conference or other online communication platforms, are common for screenings and first-round interviews where the candidate and hiring entity are in different locations. This allows the candidate and hiring team to get to know one another while being respectful of the candidate’s time and other commitments, from family to their current work obligations, and without the costs associated with...

Managing a New Employee's First 90 Days

Feb 09, 2021

The important work of making a successful hire is not complete when the candidate accepts the offer. Rather, the process continues through the new hire’s first 30 to 90 days as they manage the transition into the new role. This article describes the process of ensuring a successful transition for your new team member. You may also want to review Michael Watkins’s Taking Charge in Your New Leadership Role, A Workbook —a comprehensive and...

Extending a Job Offer

Feb 05, 2021

Reaching the point of extending an offer to your first-choice candidate is exciting. Below we provide some guidance on extending offers as well as a template for writing the offer letter. The combination of multiple interviews and reference checks should give you enough information to make a hiring decision. Though you will likely want to call a candidate by phone to extend an offer live, you also need to put the offer, with full details,...

Sample Interview Questions

Feb 05, 2021

This is a collection of sample questions you can use when interviewing a candidate for your organization. This list should be customized to fit your organization's and the role's needs. Sample “beginning” questions: Let’s open up with your interest in this role and our organization – tell me more about that and why your feel your background and experience are uniquely suited to being successful here. Having read the job description,...

Important Steps to Creating Your Recruiting Team

Feb 05, 2021

From writing a job description to conducting interviews to extending an offer , a disciplined, rigorous search process will mitigate the risks of hiring new employees for your nonprofit or mission-driven organization. This article provides step-by-step advice from recruiting experts to help you hire with confidence. Who should be on your team and how and when should they be involved in the search process? This depends on your...

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