Taking recruitment and hiring seriously is good for the people and communities who might otherwise be overlooked, good for our organizations that will end up with phenomenal talent, and good for bringing the world of work into line with the Jewish and human value of equal dignity. 

If we simply follow our habits and instincts, it’s easy to hire someone to fill open positions. But our habits and instincts can lead us astray. They can cause us to overlook eminently qualified people we didn’t know we needed to recruit. They can allow us to judge people based on irrelevant distractions and biases. 

A robust process for recruiting and hiring staff members is neither easy, quick, nor simple. But effectively building a team of amazing people deserves your time, your deliberate effort, and your ongoing engagement. 

Below are eight steps to recruiting and hiring top talent. 

Lay the groundwork. Create a culture of equity and inclusion at your organization so that the best talent won’t be missed or lost due to bias (before, during, and after the hiring process). 

Define the role. Gather your hiring team, write a detailed role description for internal use, and write a job description and announcement for external recruitment. 

Announce the opportunity. Check your digital first impression (what potential candidates will see when they Google you and find you on social media). Post the job in the obvious places—and the nonobvious places.  

Build a pool. Attract top talent through word of mouth by being a great place to work. Make building a potential talent pool a constant activity at your organization, not just something you do when a position is open. Develop networks of connectors who can help you find great people. Reach out to networks and groups beyond your current team’s social networks, especially in underrepresented communities. Reach in to develop the talent already present in your organization. 

Narrow the field with application review, phone screenings, interviews, and job simulations (assignments similar to the position’s real work). Use a structured process for equity, fairness, rigor, and proven effectiveness. Score each candidate at each step of the process according to predetermined rubrics. Communicate clearly with candidates throughout the process so they know what to expect at each stage. 

Check references for the strongest candidate. To ensure you receive truly useful information from references, know in advance what you want to know from them; look beyond the contacts submitted by the candidate; email references rather than calling them; help references understand the role for which the candidate is being considered; and frame questions that lead to useful replies instead of mere gushing. 

Make an offer. Be prompt, once you know whom you want. Convey your enthusiasm clearly. Lead with a strong offer in terms of salary, benefits, perks, future growth potential, and more. Offer the candidate a chance to connect with the staff. Get a sense of what factors the candidate is considering in weighing the offer. Once the offer is firmly accepted, follow up with nonhired candidates. 

Retain your people. Start with a strong onboarding process. Ensure the new hire will have skilled supervision. Provide meaningful, sustained professional development opportunities. Facilitate substantive mentoring. Ensure frequent, clear, fair, and constructive performance evaluation processes.

Learn more about each of these steps in our resource, A Guide to Recruiting and Hiring

A robust process for recruiting and hiring is neither easy nor quick, but absolutely essential when building a team. Here are a few steps to get you started when looking for talent.

Recruiting and Hiring Top Talent in Eight Steps

Simple, concrete steps your organization can take now to improve your organizational culture, talent management, and leadership.

Leading Actions

Research has shown that hiring managers are 50% more likely to advance a candidate in the process who has a stereotypically white-sounding name than a candidate who has a stereotypical Black name—even if the candidate’s qualifications and educational backgrounds are the same.  In addition, in-group preferences for candidates who, for example, went to the same school as the manager can also positively bias a manager toward a candidate, even if their other qualifications are sub-par. 

If an organization has the capacity to designate a staff member who is not involved in the hiring process to remove names and schools from the materials before they are reviewed by the hiring manager, this can minimize bias in the process. Another option is to invest in software that reviews cover letters and resumes automatically, which can mitigate some human biases. 

If neither of these is possible, hiring managers should be made aware of this research and their supervisors should ask questions about how they plan on addressing these tendencies during the hiring process. Regardless of whether the hiring manager reviews applications with or without software, and with or without obscuring names and schools, hiring managers should assess each resume/cover letter according to a standard rubric that lays out what qualities of an application packet qualify a candidate for the next step in the process. 

Learn more in our resource, A Guide to Recruiting and Hiring

Many of the candidates who submit a cover letter and resume to be considered will not be the right fit for the position. So how can managers assess this accurately, and do so in a way that minimizes the impact of bias on their decisions?

Avoid Bias When Selecting Job Candidates

This will allow multiple team members to focus their evaluations on shared criteria, while reducing the role of bias and ensuring that every pre-determined “must have” criterion will not be forgotten at any stage in which candidates are eliminated or advanced.

A good rubric lays out a set of specific criteria for rating each candidate according to qualifications drawn from the role description. Each candidate should be rated separately on each criterion. The rubric should have a clear key that explains what each rating level means for each criterion. Rubrics should also ask interviewers to provide “evidence” for each rating in terms of direct observations from the interview that back up the interviewer’s rating decision.

 Interviewers should be encouraged to challenge any conclusions they have come to for which they are unable to provide “evidence” because this is where bias often arises. Whenever multiple members of the hiring team are involved in advancing or eliminating candidates, they should fill out rubrics independently before debriefing together to discuss their impressions.

Having independent rubrics in hand before these discussions begin gives interviewers an opportunity to check themselves for biases or unwarranted assumptions, especially if their rubric ratings of a candidate significantly differ.

Try out these resources to help you get started: 

 “Hiring Rubric Starter Kit.” — The Management Center. 

 “How to create an interview evaluation form (+ free template).” — Hire by Google.

At each stage in the hiring process, candidates should be assessed based on a pre-determined rubric. This will allow multiple team members to focus their evaluations on shared criteria, while reducing the role of bias and ensuring that every pre-determined “must have” criterion will not be forgotten at any stage in which candidates are eliminated or advanced.

Evaluate Job Candidates Based On a Rubric

Organizations and candidates are each assessing the other during the interview process. While employers evaluate whether candidates are right for the job, candidates are trying to determine whether they want to work for your organization. Finding the best match between organization and candidate depends on both parties learning what they need to know about the other.

As a baseline, each stage of interviews should include an opportunity (and enough time) for candidates to ask questions about the role and organization, and to receive thorough responses. Even beyond what candidates ask, though, organizations should consider proactively sharing several other kinds of information during the hiring process. These include:

Information about the hiring process itself. Organizations should share explicitly what their hiring process includes, what candidates can expect during the process, and how candidates can be most successful. While candidates who went to schools with strong career preparation services, candidates who have applied for jobs at similar organizations before, or candidates with extensive networks of professional peers may already know what to expect out of this process, providing this information helps to minimize the information gap about how hiring processes can disadvantage certain candidates, especially those from underrepresented groups. 

Updates on the process. The hiring process is a future staff person’s first exposure to the culture of an organization. Hiring managers want to send a clear message about the professionalism, responsiveness, and high expectations of the organization. This means that throughout the hiring process, the hiring manager should be timely in their responses to candidates. If delays arise for reasons outside of the manager’s control, sharing a quick update with all candidates in the process about the changes to the timeline builds a positive image of the organization and establishes trust with the candidates. 

The organization’s approach to equity. Organizations should include information in the hiring process about what steps the organization has already taken toward equity and inclusivity and what further processes are planned. Sharing this information, with a stance of humility and transparency, helps to build trust with candidates, especially those from groups that may often face discrimination or exclusion, whether explicit or implicit, in the workplace. 

Any significant challenges that can be expected. If there are any serious challenges that a candidate could be stepping into, such as an organizational deficit or challenging dynamic with a partner organization, hiring managers should be up front with final candidates about these so that the candidate takes the job with full knowledge of what they will take on. This builds trust with the candidate and lays a strong foundation for their relationship with the organization moving forward.

Organizations and candidates are each assessing the other during the interview process. While employers evaluate whether candidates are right for the job, candidates are trying to determine whether they want to work for your organization. Finding the best match between organization and candidate depends on both parties learning what they need to know about the other. 

Give Your Candidates The Right Information

Many hiring managers prefer to keep interview conversations free and unplanned, believing this will give them a better sense of a candidate’s potential fit. But according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, structured interviews—i.e., asking candidates the same questions in the same order and evaluating answers according to pre-determined criteria—are more effective. Structured interviews have both more reliability (i.e., different interviewers come to more consistent conclusions using a structured interview) and more validity (structured interviews are better at assessing the actual skills and traits they’re intended to assess, instead of other, less-relevant factors). Structured interviews are also more effective at reducing hiring bias than free-flowing conversations.

For similar reasons, job simulations should play a role in the hiring process. Research has demonstrated that job simulations are more strongly correlated with future job performance than any other type of assessment— including interviews. They also present opportunities for minimizing bias because job simulation products can be evaluated without names attached. (One well-known example of this practice is the way many orchestras have increased the number of female musicians by conducting “blind” auditions in which evaluators can’t see who is playing.) Multiple people should review a job simulation using a standardized rubric, in order to avoid bias. 

If a job simulation isn’t desired,  another option is asking a candidate to submit an example of their previous work that is relevant to the current role. If you go this route, it’s important to clarify what role the candidate had in producing that piece of work. At each step, some members of the hiring team may be tempted to “just speed things up.” But hiring the best talent is too important a task to be rushed. Therefore, you should actively slow down decision-making—and encourage those conducting interviews not to form or voice strong opinions too early, especially before they’ve gone through a structured process to assess each candidate against predetermined criteria.

In a well-structured process, hiring managers still have as much discretion as they need—but not so much wide-ranging and unexamined discretion that their whims, habits, variations in mood from day to day, subconscious biases, and other human idiosyncrasies will prevent them from identifying the candidate best able to fill the role. 

Many hiring managers believe unstructured interviews will give them a better sense of a candidate’s potential fit. However, structured interviews have both more reliability, more validity, and are more effective at reducing hiring bias than free-flowing conversations.

Use Structured Interviews When Hiring New Talent

Everyone in the organization should always be on the lookout for potential candidates and especially qualified individuals who belong to groups that are currently underrepresented at the organization.23 In order to easily track these potential candidates, an organization should create a shared document in which to track names, contact information, and notes about these individuals.

Potential candidates can be grouped  into three types: actives, pre-actives, and passives:

Actives are determinedly looking to find a new job (whether currently employed or unemployed).

Pre-actives are making the decision to leave where they work but have not yet applied to new positions.

Passives are fully employed but open to hearing about opportunities. 

A strong pool-building strategy involves tracking all three of these potential candidate types. 

Organizations often post jobs to various job boards and listservs and assume that this is all the outreach needed to create a robust pool of talented candidates. In reality, building an outstanding talent pool means developing and maintaining a network of connectors—individuals who are not likely candidates for a position but who can connect you to potential candidates. Importantly, in order to create robust candidate pools that are inclusive of candidates whose identity/ies are underrepresented within an organization’s current staff, this network of connectors must extend beyond the typical personal and professional networks that organizations often turn to for candidates. As the saying goes, “What got you here won’t get you there”—these networks have not previously led to diverse candidate pools and are unlikely to do so in the future. 

Instead, organizations should consider what additional networks they might tap into that they have not previously connected with. These might include job affinity networks, colleges and universities, conferences, fellowships, and training programs that serve underrepresented communities, such as Jews/people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. In addition, organizations can consider sending a representative to career or job fairs at historically Black, Latino/ Latinx, and Native American-serving institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Finally, organizations can develop partnerships with organizations that focus on the LGBTQ community, communities of color, or individuals with disabilities to distribute job postings to these organizations’ constituents who might not be reached by an organization’s traditional methods of staff recruitment. 

One of the most important steps to hiring well is building a robust and diverse candidate pool from which to choose. Effectively building a pool requires a significant investment of time, both during the hiring process and throughout the year.

Build Your Talent Pool Year-Round

The way you keep your current team informed is just as important as how you communicate with a new staff member during the onboarding process. 

Here are a few suggestions for communicating with your existing staff on a new employee’s first day of work:  

Send an all-staff email introducing the new hire including his/her bio and possibly a headshot. 

Communicate the new hire’s desk location (or geographic region for remote employees), email, and phone number—ask colleagues not to overwhelm them with work emails but encourage them to drop by to say hello or send a QUICK welcome email. 

Set and send lunch invites (in person or virtual) to the group(s) of staff for the new hire’s first day or first few days. 

Assign a buddy who is not the new hire’s direct manager and is at a comparable level of seniority.

“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers ‘grow, grow.’” —The Talmud

Learn more in the Onboarding Best Practices Guide.

Are you prepping your team for a new hire’s first day? Here are a few suggestions to improve your internal communications during the onboarding process.

Prep Your Team for a New Employee's First Day

When people learn about a new job, one of the first things they usually do is Google the organization. So before you post your job listing on job boards and listservs, ask the following questions:

Has the careers section of your website been updated to include this posting? 

Do your website and social media feeds describe your culture and mission in a clear and enticing way? 

Do your website and social media feeds say what you do in plain language that would make someone excited to work for you? 

What news, articles, reports, blog posts, social media content, and other content will people see first when they Google your organization? (You probably won’t be able to change this reputational snapshot—at least, not quickly or easily—but you should understand the strengths and challenges of your current online reputation.) 

What information will potential candidates see if they check your publicly available Form 990? (Candidates for higher-level positions are especially likely to seek out Form 990 information.)


When people hear about a new job posting, usually their first stop is Google. Make sure they get the best first impression by answering a few simple questions.

Check Your Digital Presence Before Recruiting Talent

The compensation range for each role needs to match your budget and bear some relationship to the market rate for the desired skill set and responsibilities. But it is also important to avoid making salary decisions for each role in isolation from the others. Clarity and transparency about compensation across an organization can help to prevent salary inequity, alleviate employee jealousy or feelings that pay is arbitrary, and boost job satisfaction. Research by Leading Edge, PayScale, and others has shown that transparency around compensation philosophy can have a profound impact on employee engagement, as well as advancing equity and attracting more of the right applicants.

“When salary bands are shared openly, employees will have a better sense of where their role stands in relation to those above or below them, leading to fewer assumptions and less jealousy.”
— A Guide for Building Equitable Salary Bands, Leading Edge

One way to achieve this is by implementing salary bands across your organization. Salary bands are ranges of pay amounts used to provide structure for salary decisions and salary conversations. Salary bands promote equity and encourage fairness by providing a clear maximum and minimum for each role in an organization.

Defining the role is an important step in talent acquisition, and setting the compensation range is a vital part of this step.

Include a Salary Range in your Job Descriptions

Include a Salary Range in Your Job Descriptions

Be deliberate in identifying the “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves” in ways that promote equity and inclusion.

Focus on what skills are needed to perform the core responsibilities of the job. Traditional proxies, such as university degrees and years of experience in the field, tend to advantage candidates who have had more access to higher education and certain professional networks, both of which have historically excluded a variety of groups including women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities.

Consider the type of Jewish knowledge and experience a position requires if any. Access to Jewish education and experiences often has not been fully available to a wide range of Jews, including Jews of color, LGBTQ Jews, women, Jews with disabilities, and others. Taking this into account, hiring managers should consider what Jewish background is critical and which Jewish knowledge can be learned on the job.

Include equity competencies. Hiring managers are encouraged to consider what skills the person who is hired will need to have around equity and inclusion. Do they need an equity lens in the creation of programs or materials? Do they need to manage a team of diverse staff members? Do they need to be able to communicate effectively across diverse social identities?

(The Management Center provides a sample role description and a worksheet for creating your own.)  

Learn more about creating job descriptions in our resource, A Guide to Recruiting and Hiring

Scoping out the role is a vital step in talent acquisition—here are a few tips to make sure the role description is equitable and inclusive.

Job Descriptions Should Promote Equity and Inclusion

Whether you are in a large, mid-size, or small organization, select a small group of colleagues who will help spread the word among their networks, review resumes and applications, help with screening and interviews, and provide wisdom on candidate selection and hiring. 

Someone with a depth of experience in talent acquisition 

The healthy disruptor sees things that are “out of the box” and adds needed perspective. The recruitment “expert” helps the hiring manager to move the process forward and provides wisdom. The hiring team should also represent as much demographic diversity as possible. Not only will including these multiple perspectives help you assess a candidate’s potential for the job from various points of view, but research has also shown that including multiple decision-makers in complex processes, such as hiring, reduces the impact of implicit bias on those decisions.

Sometimes hiring high-quality talent can feel threatening. Top candidates may have strengths and skills that we don’t. The best hiring managers draw on their emotional intelligence and a diverse team to rise above any tension or bias.

Who should be on your hiring team?

That’s why an approach to recruiting and hiring that seeks excellence must work to improve the organization’s culture more broadly in ways that advance equity and inclusion in all contexts.

In the Jewish nonprofit sector, some people may be tempted to assume that these concerns apply less to our field than to the United States as a whole. This is a mistake. As our already diverse community becomes increasingly diverse over the next few decades, our staff demographics must reflect those of the Jewish community overall so that we can best serve our constituencies and remain relevant to them. 

In 2019, Leading Edge’s annual Employee Experience Survey received responses from over 11,400 employees at 182 organizations, including many of the most prominent institutions in the field. Only 1 out of every 4,000 Jewish nonprofit workers surveyed is a Jew of color (just 0.025% of total respondents). This is a dramatic underrepresentation, given that more than 1 out of every 8 American Jews is a Jew of color.

What, then, does it take to create a culture of equity? Robert Gass suggests in his Wheel of Change that any type of organizational change requires three interrelated and interdependent processes to occur: Organizations must change hearts and minds, structure, and behavior.

When it comes to equity and inclusion, some of the types of changes required in each of these categories include:

Requiring equity and inclusion training for staff and board

Training managers on how to supervise through a lens of equity and inclusion

Coaching on issues related to equity for staff, especially senior leaders

Standardizing HR processes such as hiring, performance evaluations, etc.

Creating salary bands to support pay equity across identities

Creating checklists to reduce bias in various processes across the organization

Recruiting and hiring a more diverse staff

Managing and developing staff in ways that promote equity and inclusion

Creating materials, collateral, curriculum, etc. that are inclusive and representative of an organization’s constituency


To find and hire the best talent available, we need to ensure inequity and exclusion aren’t robbing our organizations of potentially excellent candidates. To retain them once they’re hired, we need to remember that when employees feel seen, supported, and included for all of who they are,they are more productive, more creative, and less likely to leave.

Hiring Top Talent Starts with Equity and Inclusion

If coming into a physical space, new employees should come in on their first day to a clean workspace and basic work necessities. If your new hire is a remote employee, all basic necessities should be sent to them well in advance of their start date. 

“I spent time on the first few days of my job cleaning
out my desk from the person who was there before me.
I actually had to bring in cleaning supplies from home. I
didn’t stay long at that place.” 

— Consultant, Jewish nonprofits

Think about what they will need for their role in the organization. To get a few ideas, poll some of your current employees on what they wish they had on their first day. You can also contact your new hire directly and ask them what items they will need to feel comfortable in their working environment. 

Learn more in the Onboarding Best Practices Guide

Even in a virtual space, it’s important to have a new employee’s environment all set up.

Set Up a New Hire’s Work Environment

If you have praise to give as part of your feedback, then include that, but make sure that it’s genuine. People can generally sense if you don’t mean it and are just being nice to soften the blow. 

Some managers are hesitant to give negative feedback to direct reports who may have different identities from them; this typically stems from a fear of being misinterpreted or perceived as discriminatory. However, not giving honest feedback can be more harmful and inequitable, as all employees deserve honest, straightforward information so that they can develop and advance professionally. We will continue to explore these issues and the many types of power dynamics in a future article.

Learn more in our resource, Effective Feedback: Two Models for Managers

While it’s certainly possible to speak too negatively—which can result in anger or defensiveness—it’s also important not to be artificially positive.

Make sure your positive feedback is genuine.

Make Sure Your Positive Feedback is Genuine.

Try asking beforehand if they are ready to hear feedback. Giving them an opportunity to delay the conversation—especially if they are stressed or overwhelmed—will create a more supportive and respectful tone and ensure that the conversation does not feel like an ambush. 

Consider initiating the conversation with one of the questions below:

Do you have 10 minutes to talk about the staff meeting yesterday?

Can I share some thoughts with you about your last email to Tanya?

May I give you some quick feedback on your presentation this morning?

For some people, it can be more difficult to give (and receive) feedback virtually as it’s not easy to pick up on someone’s emotions through a screen. When giving feedback virtually, take extra steps to check in with your employee to make sure they are ready for a feedback conversation.

Sometimes we just aren’t in the right headspace to receive feedback.

Find the Right Time to Give Feedback

You’re busy, your team is busy, and thinking about feedback feels like a distraction; you want to make sure you avoid any awkwardness or conflict; you worry that criticism could undermine trust or damage the relationship you’ve worked hard to build. You may also be concerned that giving feedback may exacerbate existing power dynamics. 

In the end, however, when you have insight into how someone might improve, you have the opportunity to positively impact their work quality, future career trajectory, and job satisfaction—and yours as well. If you withhold that insight, your colleague misses out on opportunities to improve while you increase the chances that they will find out the same truth later anyway, potentially with more severe consequences. Meanwhile, your own frustration with the problem may grow.

Leaders may have difficulty providing constructive and effective feedback, but the positive effects far outweigh any discomfort.

Why does effective feedback matter?

Since 2016, Leading Edge has asked thousands of employees at Jewish organizations about their experiences at work. And every year we are struck by a fascinating finding: the vast majority of employees evaluate their managers favorably—they feel that their managers respect and care about them—but they want feedback that is more frequent and useful.

Effective feedback improves performance and increases trust; ineffective feedback (or no feedback) breeds conflict, negativity, and demotivation.

Direct reports want more frequent and more useful feedback from their managers.

Employees Want More Feedback From Leadership

Every hiring process has its own timeline. No matter how long you have from the time of the offer to the first day, make sure to communicate with your new hires! 

Here are five ways to get the communication ball rolling with a new employee: 

Communicate the game plan — Within a few days of accepting your official offer, new hires should know what to expect in the time leading up to their first day. Send an email about what will happen up until the time they start. This can be a detailed overview, or short and sweet, just be sure they know who to contact with any questions that may arise. 

Provide the paperwork — If possible, send it over electronically. The goal is to make paperwork as seamless as possible so if there is anything you know is complicated, save it for the first week. 

Get them excited — A two minute phone call or short email from a board member or someone they will be working with will go a long way in making them feel like a part of the team. 

Provide arrival logistics — Make sure they have all the necessary information for their arrival (the whos, whats, wheres, and whens)

Share the plan — At least a few days before the first day, let them know what they can expect. Provide a schedule for the day, lunch plans, and bios of the people they will be meeting. 

Here are five ways  to make incoming employees feel prepared and excited.

What to Communicate Before an Employee’s First Day

Although the first impression of your organization happens long before a candidate interviews for a job, your brand as an employer is established at the interview and during the hiring process. It is further solidified by new employees’ experiences leading up to their first day.

“The goal of communicating ahead of time is to make new employees feel prepared and excited, while not requiring anything of them or setting a precedent that you will expect them to work above and beyond the requirements of the role.” — Employee Onboarding Best Practices, Page 6

Although the first impression of your organization happens long before a candidate interviews for a job, your brand as an employer is established at the interview and during the hiring process.

Leading Action: Communication begins before an employee's first day

Communication begins before an employee's first day

Feedback loops are a key part of improving and achieving excellence. A well-designed process of ongoing CEO performance management can help CEOs learn how to grow and improve.

Unfortunately, Poor performance management is widespread at all levels of Jewish nonprofits. Many employees who take our annual Employee Experience Survey have reported that they do not receive meaningful annual performance reviews. 

Performance management is especially important at the top of organizations, where professionals’ actions have the largest impact. Yet here the Jewish nonprofit sector is not alone in its failure to routinely evaluate CEO performance. In the 2015 Stanford survey of nonprofits, 80 percent of boards claimed to formally evaluate the performance of the executive director. However, the researchers found a significant number (39 percent) do not establish explicit performance targets against which the CEO's performance is measured. 

Boards and CEOs alike should remember that performance management is a key tool not only for helping the CEO achieve more, but also for the long-term health of the organization. No CEO’s tenure lasts forever, and defining performance metrics and checking in with them over time will help the board understand what qualities they will need from the next CEO, whether succession is imminent or far away.

Learn more in the CEO Search Committee Guide.

Leading Action: Boards: Evaluate CEO performance regularly

Boards: Evaluate CEO Performance Regularly

Onboarding doesn’t happen in one day. It is part of a longer process that typically lasts a year. Most employees report feeling truly part of the organization after a full year has passed. Successful and effective onboarding is beneficial to the organization in two ways: 

Saves money. Hiring, training, and functioning at less than 100 percent adds up. Having new employees leave after a few months wastes valuable company resources. Organizations save money when onboarding is efficient and successful. 

Maximizes productivity. Hiring new employees, training them, and waiting for them to figure things out is inefficient. It is in the organization’s best interest to have an onboarding process that minimizes time spent learning the ropes. 

Learn more in the Onboarding Best Practices Guide.	

Onboarding doesn’t happen in one day. It is part of a longer process that typically lasts a year. Most employees report feeling truly part of the organization after a full year has passed.

Leading Action: Employee Onboarding Should Last a Year

The entire organization is impacted when new employees arrive, so many people need to be involved in onboarding efforts. It is not just the responsibility of HR or the manager/supervisor, but the entire organization. 

There’s a difference between onboarding and orientation. Orientation might occur on the first day or during the first week , to introduce new hires to policies and procedures. Onboarding is a process that socializes new employees to the organization and ensures they have the necessary skills and knowledge to become effective members of the organization. Engaging the entire organization in this process is crucial to building a foundation of trust and support that will grow alongside the employee themselves. 

Encourages open communication from the start.

Builds your employment brand as a great place to work.

Fosters connection and relationships between employees.

Enables new employees to be productive faster.

Decreases turnover and increases employee satisfaction. 

Leading Action: Onboarding New Employees is a Group Effort

The search process should be inclusive, yet involving the entire board can lead to dysfunction. The committee should be composed of between five and eight people. The current board chair and members of staff should not be included in the committee. This goes especially for the incumbent CEO. 

In a report on search committees, Bridgespan makes a compelling case: “It can be difficult for an incumbent CEO to be objective about the requirements for the incoming CEO and to evaluate candidates; likewise, it can be difficult for search committee members to be candid regarding requirements for the incoming CEO, especially if there are requirements that the incumbent did not meet.”

 An ideal search committee will have a mix of past and future leadership as well as representatives of key constituencies. This can include: 

A member of the board with deep hiring expertise

A board member from a partner organization with which the nonprofit works closely

Learn more in the CEO Search Committee Guide.	

The search process should be inclusive, yet involving the entire board can lead to dysfunction.

Leading Action: Who’s on a CEO search committee?

Even the most well-planned succession can leave organizations feeling uncertain. Any change — even for the better — is difficult because it entails loss. The best organizations embrace this uncertainty, welcoming the opportunity for change.   

A CEO transition not only provides an organization with a unique opportunity to take stock and do a strategic refresh, but is a perfect opportunity to have a courageous conversation about the very existence of the nonprofit. The board should be willing to address the following questions:

What is the organization’s raison d’etre? 

Does the organization have the sufficient scale to maximize impact?

Could the work be better fulfilled if programs were “gifted” to another nonprofit? 

Even the most well-planned succession can leave organizations feeling uncertain.

Leading Action: Use CEO transition for strategic review

For planning purposes, experts recommend that boards assume that a CEO search and selection process takes four to six months. 

Sometimes unanticipated things happen, and boards should ask themselves: how would we want our organization to fare during that significant time period of CEO transition, planned or unplanned?

Whether or not a transition date is known, boards should answer these five questions:

Has a potential interim CEO been identified (or at least a list of competencies and attributes needed from an interim executive)?

Are the internal and external talent pools being adequately monitored?

Are talented insider candidates being helped to develop leadership experience?

Is it known who will serve on the search committee and be search chair?  

Is it known who will handle communications with the staff and other stakeholders once the CEO departs? 

For planning purposes, experts recommend that boards assume that a CEO search and selection process takes four to six months.

Leading Action: What if your CEO left tomorrow?

According to research, 22 percent of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment, and 4 percent of employees leave a new job after a disastrous first day. But there is also some good news: A thoughtful approach to onboarding new employees can dramatically improve these statistics for your organization. 

Effective onboarding can help your organization reduce costs associated with staff turnover and ensure that new employees are set up for success. The effects of onboarding last for years, so it’s worthwhile to spend time considering the best approach for your organization. 

Employees who receive well structured and meaningful onboarding are much more likely to remain at an organization for a longer amount of time.

Leading Action: Onboarding new employees matters

While the majority of for-profit companies fill CEO vacancies with insider candidates, most Jewish nonprofits prefer outsider candidates. 

This may be because boards don’t perceive insider candidates to be of suitable quality or because of the perception that outsider candidates can strike a fresh start — or some combination of both.  

An often overlooked consequence of hiring an outsider candidate is that it can be demoralizing to staff, who can begin to feel that there is no career advancement available to them. “I have spent 15 years building experience in this sector, and now I feel like all that is worth less than if I decided to parachute in from a for-profit company,” one interviewee for the CEO Search Committee Guide said.  

While the majority of for-profit companies fill CEO vacancies with insider candidates, most Jewish nonprofits prefer outsider candidates. This may be because boards don’t perceive insider candidates to be of suitable quality or because of the perception that outsider candidates can strike a fresh start — or some combination of both.  