If you haven’t looked at Build Consulting’s blog yet, I urge you to check it out – full of good advice on management, from high level questions to basic practical steps for improvement, including hiring for nonprofit IT roles.
This blog entry on hiring database managers caught my eye – although one could substitute other executive IT roles at nonprofits and find the same misfit of expectations and compensation.
From Build: “Why do nonprofits struggle to hire good database managers?
- Not enough talent to go around. There just aren’t that many database managers with the skills, experience, and judgment to thrive within today’s data-thirsty nonprofit environments.
- Undervaluing the role. Nonprofits expect the database manager to perform at a high level, but often don’t mirror that expectation with the right compensation.
- Poor hiring process. Nonprofits often don’t know how to express what the job really entails, or fail to recruit in the right places. ..”
Which coincidentally is the subject of the most recent post from Vu Le at NonprofitAF (formerly Nonprofits with Balls. If you aren’t reading him, why aren’t you?)
“… job postings—they suck. They have sucked for a long time. …We’ve been using the same format, the same tired language, and the same archaic requirements. We need to do better. Unemployment is down, meaning there is more competition for talent. Plus, while we talk about bringing diversity and inclusion, so many of our job posting practices—probably passed down from the 1900s, when…Eli Whitney invented the, uh, printing press with…moveable plates (I didn’t do so well in History)—are thoughtless, helping to exclude many diverse candidates…”
Don’t forget our joint webinar next week on management with Build Consulting “Successful Nonprofit Technology Change Management.” You can still register, and it’s free.
