Creating a hiring process

Following the 2020 election, Amethyst Operations was brought on to work with a small political campaign organization looking to fortify its operations and HR functions in preparation for the next election cycle. Specifically, the organization wanted to build a more robust and replicable hiring process to enable them to more efficiently scale up when necessary. When we began working with them, their hiring process consisted of candidates emailing resumes directly to the organization’s executives followed by a brief and haphazard interview or two. This process relied heavily on existing networks rather than extensive distribution campaigns to locate candidates. Immediately, we knew we would have to implement a new and equitable hiring process in an efficient and timely manner.

We encounter this exact situation quite often in our work with smaller nonprofit and political organizations. Often, organizations decide to scale without having a specific and strategic hiring process and often make this decision based on the organization’s programmatic needs without taking into consideration the organization’s operational capacity. This can lead to a variety of issues and challenges that include poor internal time and data management, inequitable hiring practices, and poor external reputation. Without a planned and thoughtful hiring process, organizations can often flounder and find that their hiring plans stall out when the hiring team loses capacity, is unable to make a united decision or becomes overwhelmed.

Similarly, hiring without intention can also lead to profound inequity. Small businesses and organizations often default to the idea that “hiring someone we know is easier,” despite the fact that this practice advantages certain demographic groups over others. Working to build an equitable hiring practice from start to finish allows an organization to widen their talent pool, provide all applicants with a fair evaluation, and potentially broaden their market reach through hiring.

While each hiring process will be slightly different for each organization, through our prior work addressing this issue with a myriad of clients, we have found a replicable process which is equitable and emphasizes several important milestones in order to reliably create a smooth process for both the client organization and the applicants.

Job Description

Before beginning the hiring process, an organization should have a fully formed concept of the role it is looking to fill. Central to this, is an accurate job description outlining – but distinguishing – the role’s tasks and responsibilities. Tasks are small, individual projects or repeatable activities that someone may be responsible for executing. Responsibilities are more broad and inclusive descriptions of projects or groups of tasks that an employee will be expected to perform. From these tasks and responsibilities, hiring teams can then decide the desired skill and qualifications to successfully accomplish them. In addition to tasks and responsibilities, a job description typically includes logistics about the role applicants will need to know.

At this point, we helped our client organization draft a job description based on the roles they would need to be filled soon. While we had yet to determine the specific logistics of the role, we developed a general idea of the role’s department, compensation and benefits package, along with the role’s start date. These details would be communicated more specifically at a later point in the hiring process, but general awareness would be vital to conceptualize the hiring timeline and create an efficient job posting.

Job Posting

In order to be effective, a job posting must be clear, thorough, and realistic. Beyond being a simplified job description, a job posting should effectively communicate the goals and objectives of an organization as well as the skills and qualifications desired from applicants. We knew not to assume an applicant would provide information we did not specifically request!

With all this mind, we drafted a job posting that was attractive, branded, and easily conveyed the following information:

• Description of the organization
• Description of important philosophies, characteristics or traits of employees at this organization (“An exceptional employee will…”)
• Responsibilities of the position
• Qualifications for the position
• Compensation and benefits for the position
• How to apply for the position
• Where to follow-up with questions
• An EEO statement that aligns with the organization

Receiving Applications

Like many other small or young organizations, our client did not have the operations capacity or budget to invest in managing an applicant tracking system (ATS). There was also the tendency to “stick to what we know” and continue historical practices around hiring, despite having access to modern technology that could help manage the process. As is often the case with small organizations using haphazard resources for hiring, our client was receiving applications through a designated email inbox – which was messy and time consuming.

To remedy this we recommended an affordable HRIS with built-in ATS capabilities. While simple, the incorporated ATS provides a critical hub to view and manage applications and keep track of individual applicants over the course of the hiring process. This also reduces the need for an inbox and a tracker or spreadsheet, which allowed the organization’s leadership to simplify their internal process.

Circulation

With the job posting crafted and an ATS acquired, we were ready to post the job. We performed a final proofread, trying to picture the process from a candidate’s perspective and making sure their experience would be as smooth as concise as possible. Satisfied, we submitted the job posting.

Once the job was posted, we transitioned to thinking through how we would circulate and share that job posting. While there is no fool-proof combination of job boards, some ways of circulating information about job opportunities are more productive than others. The HRIS/ATS we utilized for this organization included automatic distribution to a bundle of job boards, but considering the higher level of the role, we knew we would need to supplement this with more targeted circulation of our own. We utilized our existing connection with campaign alumni networks and listservs to share the job posting directly and encourage others to share in their own networks. In order to get the job in front of experienced political operatives, we utilized specialized job boards like Jobs that are Left/GAINPOWER (paid) and Arena (for free), always remembering to link directly to our original job posting.

Interviewing

While we had conceptualized an interview process before posting the job, we focused on locking down a fair and repeatable process in which all applicants would have an unbiased opportunity for the position. Working with the Executive Director, we settled on a thorough but streamlined interview process that would allow staff to easily move through a large number of candidates while still getting to know them.

We utilized the following stages for this interview process:

• Application Questions
• Resume Review
• Screening Interview
• Manager Interview
• Assessment
• Reference Checks

Developing interview questions is HARD. Building a written assessment is even harder. Knowing this, we first used the desired skills and talents listed in the job posting to formulate questions which gave the candidate the opportunity to give us stories or examples of times they have demonstrated those particular skills and talents. Next, we looked at which skill and talents we did NOT list on the job posting and developed questions to get at those. For instance, interpersonal communications skills would be vital to the role we had just posted, so we were sure to include a question that allowed candidates to discuss their personal communication styles.

Importantly, we also included some questions we thought might be obvious, such as “Can you tell me what you know about the organization?” and “Are you comfortable with learning new technology? In our experience, interviewees often will not offer up information without being asked specifically, so we wanted to make sure we would get all the information we possibly could from candidates.

Once we selected our final candidate (the candidate that is most likely going to receive a job offer), we carried out reference checks. We never recommend asking for more than four professional references, and in this case, we asked for three, which we consider to be the ideal number. We included the detail that the final candidate would be expected to share professional references in the initial job posting, and we were sure to ask for all references’ full names, email addresses, phone numbers, and the professional relationship between the candidate and each reference. We were sure to contact the candidate’s references quickly. As a rule, the sooner you reach out to the references the sooner you will be able to schedule a call. We made sure our list of questions took no longer than 20 minutes to complete and focused on gathering specific information about our final candidate rather than interviewing the reference about themself.

Offer

With a final candidate confirmed and references checked, we were ready to make an offer. A formal, complete offer letter is vital at this stage to formalize expectations for both the organization and the new employee. We had determined the title, salary, and manager for the role, but we revisited it at this point and confirmed no changes were needed. In the political world, roles are often cycle-based. With roles of that nature, it is important to denote the scheduled end date on an offer letter as well as clearly communicating this fact throughout the interview process. This role, however, was a permanent position, so no end date was necessary. We provided a thorough but succinct explanation of available benefits and associated enrollment dates and deadlines. We provided a two-week deadline for the candidate to respond with an acceptance or denial. This longer deadline was possible thanks to the off-cycle timing of the hiring process. The length of the deadline provided can (and should) vary depending on the number of qualified final candidates and the urgency with which the role needs to be filled.

Cleaning Up

With an offer returned and signed, it is always tempting to move on to other tasks immediately; however, there are a series of clean up tasks that need to be visited before wrapping up the process. We ensured all candidates we had contacted were notified they would not be moving on. When we have capacity, we also notify every candidate that applied as well. We closed the job posting to any more applications and removed it from any job boards where it was not set to expire automatically. Lastly, it’s always worthwhile to do some sort of reflection following the hiring process and assess what went smoothly and what did not. This reflection can take the form of an in-depth meeting or a simple email chain depending on the instance. Since this was the very first use of our brand new hiring process at the client organization, we solicited feedback from all involved staff and led a meeting reflecting on the process in order to ensure buy-in and improve future implementation. At this point, we could finally consider the process, “done!”

By spending time thinking strategically about the many steps and decisions that need to be made in an equitable hiring process, an organization can avoid a large number of pitfalls, simply by working ahead. With our experience and methodology, we created a hiring process that saved our client organization time and avoided all the following setbacks:

• Wasted time on internal disagreements about next steps
• Internal friction and conflict around decision rights
• Resorting solely to network connections
• Lack of communication around unilateral decision making related to hiring
• Poor external communication with candidates
• Over promising candidates on compensation and benefits
• Hiring an unqualified or overqualified candidate
• Unintentionally hiring a racially homogenous workforce, resulting in poor business or programmatic outcomes