Category Archive for "non profit"
Hiring at Nonprofits: How to Stop Missing out on Top Talent in a Candidate-Driven Market
The last 12+ months have demonstrated significant description across virtually every job market, including the nonprofit sector. Many nonprofits, struggling to keep their operations afloat amid global pandemic turbulence and economic downturns, reduced their workforce. Others maintained existing staff but were unable to bring in additional resources during the market upheavals. As a result, most nonprofits across multiple mission verticals assumed a “do more with less” mentality as they waited out a prolonged stretch of hiring uncertainty. Staffing Industry Data Shows Hiring Trends Are on the Upswing Recent statistics suggest that the hiring waiting game may finally be over. Data released in The Palmer Forecast predicts a 45% increase in demand for temporary workers in Q2 2021 — with further signs of recovery ahead. Additionally, the U.S. The Labor Department reported that in March 2021, nonfarm payroll employees rose by 916,000, a significant increase over the original estimate of 618,000 jobs. Other industry reports predicted that staffing revenue in the U.S. will grow by 11% in 2021 to reach almost $135 billion — finally surpassing pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Hiring in a Candidate-Driven Market Challenges Nonprofits Competing for the Same Talent The recent hiring shifts in the nonprofit sector make it highly likely that…
Success at Work, Wherever Work Is
The global pandemic has forever changed the way U.S. employees work. Remote work was an established business model before COVID-19 became part of our everyday vernacular. However, the last 14+ months have reinforced just how successful a remote work environment can be — even for companies that once resisted letting their staff members work from home. A recent Forbes article, 5 Statistics Employers Need to Know About The Remote Workforce, outlined several compelling reasons why remote may have turned the corner from alternative option to mainstream method. Some statistics outlined in the article include: 74 percent of workers surveyed expect remote work to become a standard option 61 percent or staff polled prefer being fully-remote 97 percent of employees don’t want to go back to working in their office full-time The Forbes report also noted that having a remote work option currently serves as the biggest draw for attracting top talent. The article doesn’t indicate whether those polled were looking for full-time or partial at-home environments. However, it does show that today’s job seekers want at least the option of working remotely when looking for a new opportunity — or they will elsewhere. The Current Candidate-Driven Job Market Means U.S. Workers…
Hiring in the Remote Era: The Remote Interview Tools and Questions You’ll Need for Success
Remote Interview Tools: What To Consider For Success at Your Nonprofit Setting your nonprofit organization up for remote interview success begins with having the right remote interview tools ready before you even post the job opening. Most essential tools will fall under one of these three specific categories: Nonprofit organizations across every vertical have always leveraged remote interviewing and hiring practices to find top talent. Previous generations of nonprofit managers typically sourced nonlocal candidates as part of a relocation process to bring hired workers within commuting distance of the office. However, the last two years have redefined traditional work models, with remote workers becoming more the norm than the exception for many nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit Employees Have Embraced The Work From Home Trend The remote work trend was initially fueled by a global pandemic. Working from home was further accelerated by an unprecedented candidate shortage, where nonprofits leveraged a remote model as a recruiting tool in a heavily competitive market. Now, more than 26 months after COVID first reached the U.S., working from home has proven long-term staying power because, for many nonprofit organizations, it has a proven track record of success. As a result, today’s nonprofit managers no longer…
The 3 Non-Negotiable Attributes All Employees Want from their Workplace
The paradox of recruitment challenges persisting — and indeed worsening — during a period of stagnating market growth has never been more evident than today. Despite grim global economic predictions and the soaring cost of living, all kinds of employers are finding it harder than ever to attract and hold on to the right talent. As quickly as they are bringing new hires through the front door, disillusioned and disengaged employees are slinking off out the back. For some it’s because they are burnt out, still ill from COVID-19, determined to reset their work-life balance, retire early, or start fresh somewhere new and less expensive. For others, the salary gap is the issue they can no longer ignore. The rising costs of energy, fuel, groceries, mortgages, rent and just about everything else means they can no longer accept a pay scale that seems to be tipped the wrong way in the context of rampant inflation. Whatever the reasons, where in “normal conditions” the average staff turnover each year is 20%, today it’s running at 30%, which suggests that something is very wrong. Even those who stay, for fear of being without an income as the threat of recession looms, are…
Make Your Employer Brand Stand Out in the Talent Marketplace
Employer branding is gradually becoming more important in C-suite conversations, but it’s still a relatively new concept. Several years ago business leaders might have pointed to pinball machines in the office game room or catered lunches as examples of employer branding. In 2022 most are aware that such perks hardly constitute a comprehensive employee retention strategy or play any meaningful role in the battle to attract top talent. This evolution in thinking has undoubtedly been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which put immense pressure on leaders to not just communicate their values but also to demonstrate them. In the face of difficult decisions, employers suddenly had to decide whether their professed ideals and “north stars” were real and substantive or mere lip service. They gained a heightened awareness of the importance of organizational purpose, team cohesion, and employee experience. Now more than ever these attributes are critical drivers for candidates contemplating career moves amid the Great Resignation. As a result, they’re top of mind for executives looking for ways to differentiate themselves from competitors fishing in the same shrinking talent pool. Not coincidentally, they’re also elements of employer branding. Despite the confluence of trends creating a greater awareness of and need for employer branding,…
Large Numbers of Nonprofit Leaders Are Stepping Down — and the Competition to Find New Ones Is ‘Fierce’
Felecia Hatcher, now CEO of Black Ambition, stayed at her previous organization to help it navigate the challenges of the pandemic. Felecia Hatcher began thinking about leaving the group she co-founded, the Center for Black Innovation, back in 2019. After the birth of her second child, she wanted to find a way to travel less and still help young Black entrepreneurs. But then the pandemic hit, and her thinking changed. “There was no way I could leave then,” she says. The group had to make drastic changes, like turning its popular Black Tech Week into a virtual event. She and her husband had to care for a 1-year-old and were homeschooling their 6-year-old, adding more responsibilities. Mounting deaths from Covid-19 forced Hatcher to think about her own mortality. “If these are my actual last days, how do I want to spend them?” she asked herself. “What are the things I can put aside, and what are the things that are really hard that I could be approaching differently?” The murder of George Floyd changed things, too. Suddenly corporations that had ignored her organization just months earlier were now knocking down the door to work with it. It only added to…
It’s Complicated: Nonprofit Organizations and Wage Equity
The nonprofit sector has a long, complex relationship with compensation. With a workforce that in my home state of Minnesota is roughly three-quarters female and traditions of low wages these days, nonprofit workers are proving unwilling to accept second-class status. While the historical wage gap between nonprofit and those employed either by for-profit firms or the government is narrowing, nonprofits face mixed feelings from the public and funders about whether their employees deserve to earn wages comparable to business or government workers. The process of getting nonprofits out of the proverbial church basement means overcoming antiquated views of the helping professions where your compensation includes “psychic income”—reflected in such tropes as doing the “Lord’s work” and rewards “in the next life.” These outworn views, too, relied on sexist stereotypes that the sector’s largely female workforce didn’t need or merit higher salaries. Today, the public often reports positive feelings about the role and contributions of nonprofits but isn’t sure what to think about compensation. A public opinion survey conducted by the Charities Review Council in Minnesota presented four statements about how charity employees should get paid. The survey asked 800 people in Minnesota to pick a statement that best described their…
How to Prep Your Resume for Automated Resume Scanning
The use of automated resume scanning with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) has skyrocketed, with nearly 99% of large companies and half of mid-size firms using these technologies to screen applicants. While the practice certainly makes it more efficient for HR to find the right candidates, it can be a minefield for applicants when it comes to getting their resume “past the bots” and into the hands of an actual human. In fact, some 75% of resumes are automatically deleted or rejected by ATS platforms, eliminating candidates regardless of their qualifications. Do’s and Don’ts for optimizing your resume to make the first cut. 1. DO keep formatting simple. Software scans for keywords and other relevant data, but they cannot detect relevancy if the document is incompatible. Don’t let yours be one of the nearly 45% rejected due to incompatibility. Send only Word files (never a PDF) and keep it simple. Some colored text might be ok, and bold, italic and underline fonts, and bullets are fine, but use a standard typeface and a consistent font size. Leave the header/footer blank, don’t use tables or columns, and avoid using templates, all of which result in outright rejection or a jumbled mess the…
Human Resources Professionals Say Their Jobs Are Harder Than Ever, As They Try To Recruit And Retain Employees In A Hot Job Market
The job market has been wild. We went from firing and furloughs during the early days of the pandemic to fighting a war to find talent. With the new Omicron variant, we now have another curveball to worry about. To gain a sense of the job market, GoCo, a leading provider of flexible software solutions for HR, benefits and payroll, conducted a survey of human resources professionals, asking them about the “current state of retention, hiring and pressures on HR to fill vacant positions.” Spoiler alert: the study shows that companies that hesitate to increase wages, enhance benefit choices or offer retention bonuses to attract and keep good workers will have a hard time recruiting and retaining top talent. Nir Leibovich, CEO of GoCo, said about the findings, “HR is under tremendous pressure to fill job positions in one of the most brutal job markets of our time.” Leibovich continued, “It will be critical for companies to listen to HR professionals and leaders about what is working and not working in talent acquisition right now. This survey reveals some critical insights into how companies can retain top talent and bring in new people despite the current challenges.” Here are some…
4 Nonprofit Tech Trends to Watch in 2022
Nonprofits facing a sluggish recovery from the pandemic might find an opportunity to bounce back with a stronger lean on digital maturity. If 2020 was a shock to the system for nonprofit organizations large and small, 2021 offered an opportunity for rebuilding that many nonprofits tried to embrace throughout the year. But the recovery has been inconsistent, according to research from Independent Sector, with nonprofits serving significantly fewer people and pre-pandemic employment levels not expected to return to normal until July 2022. Given the nature of the recovery, organizations can use this moment to make changes to position them for improvement when the recovery returns in full force, and technology can play a key role in this. There are four main trends to keep an eye on. A New Focus on Digital Maturity Throughout 2021, a common theme emerged with nonprofits: Those that put an emphasis on improving their digital maturity — whether through their marketing, their program management, their data collection or their fundraising strategy — excelled, despite the continuing challenges of the nonprofit landscape. Salesforce’s Nonprofit Trends Report found that nonprofits with high digital maturity were more likely to exceed their goals for fundraising, program delivery, marketing and…
