Nonprofit Recruitment Strategies Help Your Mission Succeed

Recruiting is hard in any industry today, but it is much more difficult in the nonprofit sector. While a worthy cause can attract talent, most nonprofits simply cannot compete with the salary and benefits found at corporate competitors. With today’s unprecedented labor shortages, how can nonprofits reach their hiring goals?

• Budget constraints
  The financial limitations of most nonprofit organizations rank high on any list of recruiter complaints. In many fields, nonprofits compete against better funded corporate competitors, and it shows in their ability to attract candidates into the hiring pool. Job requirements may not be adequately advertised, and this can result in a smaller funnel of available workers. As a result, many nonprofits promote from within. While this is positive for the career paths of current workers, it fails to bring in the new blood necessary to sustain these organizations.

• Noncompetitive salary and benefits
  Unfortunately, smaller budgets mean smaller salaries. This inability to compete against larger nonprofits or corporate competitors doesn’t always mean organizations won’t attract top candidates, but it rarely helps. Candidates can be attracted to the mission of the nonprofit, seeking to give back to the community. But when this desire isn’t at the forefront of the candidate’s selection criteria, the nonprofit can lose top-quality candidates to competitors with bigger budgets. This could also have an impact on employee retention. Today’s hiring market has pushed recruiters to  engage with employed workers to entice them to “jump ship” if they are unhappy. Existing nonprofit employees may be stolen away by a higher compensation package.

• Lack of a formal recruitment strategy
  Smaller nonprofits may spread the hiring functions among existing team members. An executive director may wear multiple hats, from operations and fundraising to hiring. In these instances, these nonprofits often lack a cohesive long-term recruitment strategy to bring in top talent. In most competitive markets, with historically low unemployment, this is a necessity.

In the face of these unprecedented challenges, nonprofit organizations can struggle to find, hire, and retain top talent. But there is one thing they can do now to improve their recruiting efforts. Nonprofit recruiting software can help these organizations achieve their mission.

• Finding candidates who fully embrace your mission

• Retaining existing candidates

• Organizing recruiting efforts and building a candidate pool

• Bringing fresh talent into the nonprofit instead of promoting from within

• Improving compliance with local, state, and federal hiring rules

• Reducing time-to-hire

Most nonprofits have notoriously low retention rates. This is problematic with the candidate hiring pool being historically thin. With low unemployment, you must retain as many employees as possible to achieve your service mission.

Nonprofit recruiting software can help you attract a better quality of candidates to the organization. The ATS positively impacts every stage of the hiring process, from writing and posting job requirements to communicating with applicants to hiring and onboarding.

Nonprofit recruitment software can automate many of the most time-consuming processes like emailing candidates, scheduling interviews, and taking notes. This can free up your time to focus on other needs.

Nonprofit recruiting software in the form of an ATS is like adding an additional team member devoted to the hiring process. The best tools are low-cost, cloud-based subscriptions that have customizable features and are extremely easy to use.

Simply put, nonprofit recruiting software can help these organizations achieve their mission. Finding driven employees faster is the ultimate goal of these products. Nonprofits failing to leverage these tools will continue to struggle to find workers in today’s competitive candidate markets.

• Job postings that will attract the right candidates when you need them most.

• A simple, mobile-friendly application process that will eliminate “ghosting” and cart abandons that happen when your online application process is broken.

• Automating candidate screening so organizations spend less time on the back-and-forth processes that frustrate you and the candidates. TAM works with calendar functions to help you to schedule and screen applicants.

• Automating the offer and new hire orientation, which ensures that you don’t miss a single piece of paper needed to comply with applicable laws.

• Onboarding candidates in a way that creates a positive experience from day one.

• Accepting resumes even when no position is open, letting your organization build a pool of potential candidates interested in your mission – to whom you can reach out when you need someone with their skill sets.

• Achieving greater efficiency in the hiring process, saving your organization time and money, and helping you devote more resources to your mission.

Recruiting in the nonprofit world is a lot easier with TAM. Contact our team about pricing, features, and how TAM can help your organization meet its mission and margin.

See how TAM can revolutionize your nonprofit hiring process and help you advance your mission.