As we enter a new year, your nonprofit is likely in the thick of goal-setting for fundraising, marketing, and more. However, achieving goals like increasing your capacity or improving team effectiveness is only possible with talented employees—and the best way to source the most ideal additions to your team is through recruitment. Yet, many nonprofits struggle in this area—according to ... Read More The post Gauging Your Nonprofit’s Recruitment Approach: 4 Tips appeared first on marketing for the modern nonprofit.

As we enter a new year, your nonprofit is likely in the thick of goal-setting for fundraising, marketing, and more. However, achieving goals like increasing your capacity or improving team effectiveness is only possible with talented employees—and the best way to source the most ideal additions to your team is through recruitment.

Yet, many nonprofits struggle in this area—according to a recent survey, 74% of nonprofit respondents reported persistent job vacancies.

Fortunately, it isn’t difficult or expensive to launch—or improve—a dedicated recruitment program. You just need to know where you stand to strategize and allocate resources effectively. In this guide, we’ll explore how to evaluate your nonprofit’s recruitment effectiveness so you can secure your future with the best talent by your side.

1. Set a Baseline 

Start by establishing where your nonprofit’s hiring efforts currently stand. Even if your nonprofit doesn’t have a recruitment strategy yet, this step can help you determine your capacity for full-fledged recruitment efforts down the line (as all nonprofits have unique hiring needs). 

For now, you can collect this data by answering the following questions (we’ll review more sophisticated hiring metrics to use going forward later):

• How many people are you regularly recruiting?
• How effective are they?
• At what level do you need to hire to achieve your growth goals?
• Do you outsource your hiring process?
• What’s your employee retention rate?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can reliably pinpoint areas for improvement in your current approach. 

Pro tip: It can be helpful to present your findings using the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) framework. It allows you to contextualize internal trends with external events, and vice versa, to fully leverage all possible assets.

2. Analyze Your Tech Stack

From CRMs to marketing management solutions, finding the perfect mix of tech tools for your budget and needs is an essential, yet sometimes difficult task. That’s why many nonprofits start with a straightforward, catch-all solution to manage their hiring efforts, such as a spreadsheet. While this might work for extremely basic hiring needs at the start of a nonprofit’s life, this method isn’t sustainable as you grow, as it requires you to keep track of important information manually. 

It pays to think big and future-proof your hiring efforts with tools built for hiring workflows. Hiring software prevents data from slipping through the cracks, allowing your team to make more informed decisions. According to the talent acquisition software Jobvite, some benefits of a leading applicant tracking system include:

• Enhanced candidate experience via streamlined, standardized, and straightforward processes.
• Improved team collaboration with multiple seats allowed per license.
• Increased diversity by using bias-blocking technology to remove any identifying information from resumes.
• Improved brand recognition with integrated recruitment marketing management features.
• Customizable applicant pipelines that improve hiring fairness and results.
• Holistic data reporting that allows you to visualize abstract yet important recruitment data.

Not only do these benefits improve your internal processes, but they also enhance your brand as an employer, drawing more applicants to your organization.

Pro tip: Throughout your research, you might find that many hiring systems are built for more robust hiring needs, like those of corporations. However, don’t be daunted—there are plenty of hiring systems made for the more straightforward recruitment needs of nonprofits and small businesses. When trying different hiring solutions, confirm that the platform’s target market aligns with your nonprofit’s needs.

3. Evaluate Your Employer Brand

When it comes to hiring, your reputation means everything. In fact, studies show that 88% of job seekers consider an organization’s employer brand when applying for jobs or choosing opportunities. Enhancing your branding will help you stand out from competitors and convince the best talent to apply to your nonprofit. 

Gauge your employer brand’s effectiveness by:

• Surveying stakeholders. This could include your current employees, past employees, and even those in your applicant pipeline. 
• Reviewing your existing marketing materials. Have you highlighted hiring in your past marketing efforts? Review your campaigns to gauge whether you discussed recruitment and how you framed your hiring efforts.
• Analyzing similar organizations’ hiring materials. Competitive analysis is always helpful in marketing, so look at other nonprofits’ hiring outreach. Note how their employer brand comes across and note opportunities where you could surpass them.

Pro tip: While highlighting the benefits of working with your organization is crucial, you must also remain transparent. Don’t shy away from any areas for improvement—instead, work with your employees to fix them. This will reflect better on you as an employer, winning employee loyalty and proving your dedication to applicants.

4. Understand and Broaden Crucial Hiring Metrics

Once you know how you want to grow and have the infrastructure to collect hiring data (in the form of an ATS), you can begin collecting and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs). Now, you can translate the answers from step one into actionable analytics.

Lever suggests tracking the following hiring metrics:

• • To gauge hiring efficiency, you should track:
    • Time to fill: The time it takes from opening a new job requisition to the candidate accepting an offer.
    • Time to hire: The time between when a candidate applies for a job and when they accept an offer.
    • Cost per hire: The total amount you spend on recruitment divided by the total number of hires you’ve made within a certain period. 

• • To gauge the quality of the hiring process, you should track:

• Offer acceptance rate: The percentage of candidates who accepted an offer out of the total number who received an offer.
• Applicants per role: The number of people applying for each open position.

• • To gauge long-term hiring success, you should track:

• Quality of hire: The quality of the overall performance and contributions of a new hire within their first year.
• Attrition rate: The rate at which your organization loses employees within a year.
• Sourcing channel effectiveness: Which recruitment marketing channels yield the best ROI for your nonprofit.

Pro tip: After you’ve narrowed down the KPIs that best support your goals, configure your ATS to track them. That way, you can leverage customized reports about your efforts without sifting through extraneous information.

Now, you can set the next evolution of your recruitment approach into action! Like other nonprofit marketing campaigns, choose channels that support the recruitment marketing content you’re putting out, monitor trends, and pivot accordingly. With the right approach and effort, you’ll see huge strides in your recruitment marketing efforts!

The post Gauging Your Nonprofit’s Recruitment Approach: 4 Tips appeared first on marketing for the modern nonprofit.

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