RECRUITING STAFF
The ability to attract, identify, assess, and select the best candidates for a job.
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.2 Tim 4:3
Skilled Characteristics
Good Eye
Has a good ability to identify potential staff with talent and/or potential
Process
Has a solid method for recruiting and selecting the best possible staff
Confident
Is not afraid of selecting strong and competent people
Team
Assembles a group of talented staff with a variety of skills and giftings
“Start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”
– Jim Collins
Unskilled Characteristics
Poor Staff/Turnover
Doesn’t have a good history for selecting quality staff
Clone
When recruiting staff may look for people similar to oneself or focus on one or two preferred characteristics rather than looking for diversity
Safe
May be overly careful or selective with bringing new staff on to the team
No Diversity
Doesn’t select staff with much diversity or different skills and giftings
Criteria
May not know what competence looks like, lack criteria, or assume one will just ‘know’ if someone is a good fit for the team
Patience
May lack the patience to wait for a better candidate to fill a staffing need
“With the right people,
anything is possible.”
– Richard Branson
Causes of Weakness
Fear
Fear of bringing in a new staff person who is more talented than oneself in a particular area
Inexperience
Inexperience with recruiting and selecting people
Afraid
Lack of courage to try bringing in new staff with diverse backgrounds or skills
Self-Doubt
Lack of personal self-confidence in recruiting
Narrow
Narrow perspective on what talent looks like
Impatient
Too impatient to wait for a better candidate
“Surround yourself with a trusted and loyal team. It makes all the difference.”
– Alison Pincus
Advice
Review the simple application steps below and choose 1 or 2 things you can do to spur yourself on to further growth.
Interviewing
INTERVIEWING: Define what the key ‘success factors’ for working on your team are. What characteristics of a person are important to you? What values and beliefs are important to you? What aspects of character are a must? What passions, interests and goals are important to you? What are the critical skills and experiene that your team needs? Develop interview questions that get to the heart of each of your answers to the previous questions. Try using behavioral based interviewing questions which require the candidate to tell a story from their past that demonstrates their answer to your question. For example, ‘Tell me about a time when you faced a conflict with a fellow teammate or leader and how you dealt with it and what happened.’ Or ‘Tell me about a difficult disciplinary situation you had with a student, what happened, how you responded, and what the result was.’
Recruiting
RECRUITING: Identify the key roles you need to fill on your team. What would the main responsibilities be for each role? What kind of skills and experience are needed? What positive impact would each role uniquely have on the team and on achieving the goals of your team? Use this information to create talking points about the types of people/roles that you are looking for. Use these talking points when speaking to large groups of potential candidates. Use these talking points in emails and newsletters and ‘help wanted’ postings on websites or other public places. Make sure to clearly articulate the vision of your team, as well as the main impacts of the role. You want to inspire people to join you because they feel drawn to your overall vision, the impact of the position to contribute to the vision, and because they feel they have the skills and experience necessary for success. Also, make sure your talking points include any benefits people would receive by working with your team. How much holiday and furlough time do you allow? How many hours per week do you expect them to work? How much ongoing staff development do you allow, encourage or provide? How do you encourage and support your staff? How much flexibility do you offer staff in work assignments, location, work hours, etc?
Think Long Term
THINK LONG TERM: Do you have a long-term view of the talent it’s going to take to produce both current and long-term results for each of the key aspects of your team or ministry? Do you have a replacement plan for yourself and for your other key staff and leaders? Do you use performance appraisals to help people grow and develop? Have you brought in someone who may have the ability to take over your job?
Diversity
DIVERSITY: How diverse is your team? How diverse do you want it to be? Do you have people with varying giftings such as apostolic, prophetic, administrative, pastoral, and team builder? Do you have staff with different personalities? For example, do you have directive people who can take action and get things done, idea people who generate enthusiasm toward new possibilities, relational people who ensure everyone is cared for and going ok, and detailed/organized people to keep you all on track? If not, you may want to look at how you can balance out the giftings, personalities, and perspectives represented on your team.
Partnerships
PARTNERSHIPS: You don’t always have to find full-time staff to perform all the tasks and responsibilities necessary to fulfill your team’s vision. Be creative and willing to think outside of the box at other ways of staffing your needs. Are there any part-time staff available? Are there people with other organizations who you could partner with? Are there local organizations or churches already doing some of the things you envision? Look for opportunities to develop relationships and partnerships with others to accomplish your goals. You don’t have to be fully in control of everyone and everything.