How to Successfully Recruit the Best in the Business
by Tom Livingston
expensive to replace productive employees. Public radio has a significant advantage in the quality and public service provided by the product. Build on that advantage by maintaining a healthy, happy workplace. Training is a potent retention tool that pays off in a more productive workplace and happy, long-tenured employees. Public Radio revenues have grown significantly and steadily over the past 20 plus years. Reinvest some of that revenue growth in your employees and the physical workspace. Invest in Organizational Development activities including team building.
1. Have a great workplace: Start your successful recruiting program by limiting turn-over as much as possible. Studies show that salary is only one factor in retention. It is also extremely
2. Pay Well: While pay isn’t the only factor in turnover, it is a significant factor. It is a significant advantage to pay better than the competition. Recognize the true value of employees and pay them commensurately. In the resource generating area this is especially easy to measure. In commercial stations it is common for the highest paid employee to be an ad salesman. Pay for performance. Use available salary benchmarking data for the public radio industry (CPB Salary Survey) and do research locally to ensure you are paying appropriately and competitively. Perhaps our biggest competition for development staff are other local non-profits such as the symphony, and conventional wisdom holds that public radio compensation dramatically lags those other local cultural organizations, especially considering the greater complexity of public radio development programs. 3. Be Prepared to Counter: It is much more expensive to replace a productive employee than to keep them. Costs of hiring a replacement include time and effort invested in the recruiting process, lost revenue incurred while the position is open and during the transition time, and time effort and money involved in training the replacement. There is also considerable risk the replacement won’t be a fit and/or won’t be successful. When a strong current employee tells you they are leaving for another opportunity, if the central factor in relocation is a modest (e.g. 10%) pay increment, you may be better off countering rather than lose the employee. If the incumbent is leaving for higher pay elsewhere, chances are you will have to pay the replacement what you could have retained the incumbent for. Pay more now or pay more later. 4. Succession/Employee Development Planning: Some level of turn-over is inevitable and even
healthy. All jobs have a lifespan and some employees will simply grow beyond the organization and the work available to them. Let’s face it, most work places also have people that are inadequate to the task and/or who can’t grow with the complexity of the organization. Good management dictates that succession plans be in place/in mind for every function in the organization. Who in the organization has the potential to replace the manager? The development director? Etc. How can we expand the duties of the Underwriting Director? When lapses occur at minimum such intentional planning will smooth the transition - you are likely to have a strong interim available. Included in the idea of succession planning is paying attention to when a job has gotten too big for the incumbent. Fixes for such a situation can be training or encouragement to find more appropriate employment. 5. At the time of the lapse, carefully review the position and organization: While vacancies are stressful, they are also an opportunity to reconsider organizational structure. Do we need to replace the departing Membership Director with another Membership Director or is it time to outsource the function and hire a Major Gifts person? Can we promote the Assitant Membership Director into the Director position and hire a new assistant? Etc. Even if you decide to hire exactly the same position, carefully review and update the position description. 6. Recruit thoroughly and continuously: Just as managing a development program has several steps that are common to every program, recruiting is a well-established process. Pay attention to who is good in the industry and the community. In addition to reviewing and updating the job description, be strategic and thorough about communicating the opening. Tailor your advertising to the kind of person you are looking for. In general, we believe it is important to recruit locally as well as nationally for most development positions at most public radio stations. We believe “Current” is an excellent buy for nearly any non-entry level position in public radio. Take advantage of the many free (DEI, NPR, CPB) job sites. If you are recruiting locally, purchase ads in the local paper. It is expensive, but it works. Look for free or inexpensive on-line job banks. Get on the phone and recruit. At Livingston Associates we spend a minimum of 25 hours on the phone talking to sources and potential recruits. Considering the high stakes involved in the recruiting process, it is simply foolish not to conduct extensive outreach for any important position (and aren’t they all important?) 7. Prepare for and conduct careful Interviews of more than one finalist: A successful recruiting process will hopefully yield a pool that has a significant number of applicants and several of the group you can plausibly imagine being successful in the position (if the pool doesn’t pass this test you may want to extend the search). Depending on how many people fall in the “I can see them
in the job” group you may want to either do phone interviews first (of 5-10 candidates) or move directly to in-person interviews (2-4 finalists). Phone interviews are for the purpose of making a more informed decision about the finalist group. For phone interviews you can either conduct them yourself as the hiring official or use a two or three person committee. I favor asking four or five open-ended questions that are prepared in advance and are the same for all candidates. As in research, this compare and contrast method can be very powerful. In addition to the answer to the specific question, watch for intangibles that will relate to success in the position (e.g. verbal acuity, a sense of teamwork, etc.). I strongly advise clients to interview at least two candidates in person, and that three or even four is even better (again, comparing and contrasting is a powerful evaluation tool). Preparing questions in advance and asking them of all candidates is a good idea in the in-person interviews as well. You might consider one-on-one interviews with a few key stakeholders (supervisor, peers, direct reports), as well as a group interview with a search committee or management team. Hiring, specifically including the interview stage, is an unfortunately highly regulated and litigated activity. It is important to have and follow a policy about questions you ask. There are several good resources for this process, including the book “Hiring Smart”. The basic rule is to stick to questions about the job and the person’s ability to do it - use common sense. Personal questions, age, religion, etc. are not useful and could well be illegal. When in doubt, consult an attorney or HR professional. 8. Conduct exhaustive reference checks: The hiring process is a fabric that has been developed and tested over time. The combination of reviewing resumes, interviewing carefully and closely checking references dramatically improve your chances of a successful hire on the positive side, and protect you from what can be significant damage on the negative. Reference checking is probably the most poorly executed part of the hiring process. Like interviewing, referencing has become a litigated activity, and many companies have policies that limit response to reference checking to confirming dates of employment. Don’t let that stop you from requiring professional references and calling all of them at least for the person you intend to hire. If you are having a hard time deciding between two finalists you might also get your answer in the reference checking process. In addition, it is a very good practice to do collateral reference checking - call people not on the list of references (previous bosses, current boss if not listed, direct reports, etc.). It is important to be sensitive with this step - you might limit it to the last step before you make an offer, and you ought to check with the candidate to let them know you are going to do it and that it is ok (if it is not ok you may have an issue). Sometimes people want to apply for jobs confidentially, and unfortunately in some work places it can cause irreparable damage if it becomes known the person is considering leaving. While it is appropriate for you to fully investigate whoever you are considering hiring, it is a good idea to be careful when doing collateral reference checking. You don’t want to harm
someone unnecessarily. 9. Invest in Transitioning new hire into workplace: Transitioning into a new job and workplace is stressful and challenging. Along with moving (which they may be doing too), death of a spouse and divorce, changing jobs is one of the most stressful things we can do. Besides the stressors of relocating and acclimating to a new workplace with a whole slew of new, unspoken norms, the incumbent is likely doing new work. Take time and care to help your new employee get to know their new job and workplace. Create a plan for them that includes identifying what they need to know and learn. Consider specific skills training, as well as, depending on the position, hiring a coach for them to help through the transition (coaching is a relatively new, but growing profession that has similarities to sports coaching, or individual consulting and includes regular, often weekly phone consultations). 10. Have a Great Workplace: See number 1 above.