How to Hire the Right Staff for Your Program
If you’ve had any exposure to youth development and out-of-school time learning programs, you’re probably aware that staffing is an important, long-standing issue for our field. In a recent conversation with the Ohio Afterschool Network, consultant Katherine Spinney reminded us about the significant cost of the high staff turnover in OST programs. As Spinney notes, driving down these high turnover rates starts at the beginning, with effective staff recruitment and hiring.
Hiring for OST programs can be complex but it is also one of our most high-stakes activities. Research and experience tells us that hiring effective staff is a key driver of OST program quality, as Child Trends noted in their 2009 brief on this subject.
Our hiring processes have to account for a number of different factors. Since many of us who have supervised OST programs received little or no training in effective staff recruitment, we wanted to share a few practices and principles that we’ve found to be effective for hiring staff who have the necessary skills and mindset for meeting the needs of the young people and families we serve.
Design Your Search Process. If we’re doing it right, our programs have a thoughtful design that drives towards explicit outcomes for young people. Shouldn’t our hiring process reflect that same focus and intentionality? It can be tempting to just follow whatever process has been used in the past but we recommend revisiting the design of your process each time including the stages and hiring activities. Here are a few important considerations to keep in mind as you design a hiring process that’s right for your program’s needs:
While it’s always a good idea to double-check your organization’s hiring policies and procedures with your Human Resources team, the job description is typically a helpful starting point. Try to work backwards from requirements and any high-priority qualifications listed in the job description, which could include skills and knowledge but also mindset and values.
Everyone on your hiring team should be clear about the relevant evidence and evidence-gathering activities that will give you insight into each qualification. Let’s say, for example, that culturally-affirming teaching practices are a necessary skill for the position you’re trying to fill. Some places you might look for evidence of this skill include:
The candidate’s track record as shown in their resume;
In work samples that they’ll submit like a lesson plan or activity they designed;
In their responses to interview questions that prompt them to highlight this skill in their past experiences or in scenarios specific to your program.
Keep in mind that, while it is important to vet candidates for mindset and alignment to your organization’s mission or values, there is also a potential pitfall here. Any values or attitudes incorporated into your job description should be clear and concrete as should your plan for assessing them; general references to “culture fit” or phrases like “the candidate just isn’t a good fit” often indicate an opportunity for bias to creep in.
Show and Tell. Try to design your process to be as concrete as possible. Candidates should be able to tell you about their qualifications but, as much as possible, you’ll also want them to show you. Since we rarely get a chance to see how a candidate actually performs before hiring them, it can be helpful to incorporate timed role plays into your in-person and virtual interviews. This gives you a way to see candidates in action and can be a powerful tool for learning about facilitation, instructional, emotional intelligence, and many other skills that can sometimes seem intangible or difficult to assess.
Role plays also allow people to shine in other ways besides just the written word since that can often be overemphasized in the hiring process. Maybe you’ve experienced role plays in a workshop or training as a way to practice a new skill in a low-stakes environment and the idea here is essentially the same. Your interview might include:
A mock mini-lesson for a direct service role, where the candidate acts as the group leader or educator and your interview team plays the role of young people participating in the activity (this one can be a lot of fun!);
A mock coaching conversation for a supervisory role, where the candidate plays the role of supervisor and your interview team acts out the part of a staff member being coached;
A mock partner meeting for community schools coordinator or other roles that place a heavy emphasis on partnerships, where the candidate plays the role of coordinator and your interview team acts out the part of the partner representative;
A followup activity to learn more about the candidate’s openness to feedback such as:
The interview team debriefs with the candidate after their role play;
Or the interview team shares a specific, actionable piece of feedback with the candidate after their first role play attempt and then asks the candidate to try again based on that feedback.
Some advanced warning helps candidates prepare mentally for an activity like this that requires a little vulnerability. Also, make sure to share the time you’ve allocated for your role play with the candidate as well as any other context or materials you’d like them to keep in mind for this mock interaction.
For a front line staff role where they won’t be expected to engage in major curriculum or lesson plan creation, we suggest that you provide candidates with the content for their mock lesson.
For a role requiring deeper expertise, consider sharing a lesson plan or other content that is mostly developed but with some gaps that they’ll fill in or sections that you expect them to revise to make it their own.
For supervisory or partnerships roles it helps to share a scenario and a little context beforehand so candidates can prepare. While some pre-work or prep is necessary, of course, make sure that you’re not requiring candidates to do an unrealistic amount of work in advance. Remember, they’re not being compensated for this time.
Your team will also want to prep in advance for their part in any role play activities. Who will take notes and keep time or tell everyone when to pause the role play? Who will play the role of the student in this mock lesson or the program partner in this mock meeting? What kinds of things might they say while playing that role and how much will they improvise?
Another way to ensure that you are gathering concrete evidence of candidate qualifications is through interview questions that focus on examples and the candidate’s track record. These may include statements like “Tell me about a time when you…” or “Walk us through how you addressed [insert a relevant challenge or task here] in your previous role. If you could rewind and do it over, what would you do differently?” Asking questions like this should:
Prompt candidates to share in concrete detail about their track record;
Give you some insight into their reflectiveness and self-awareness;
And provide an opportunity for candidates to showcase their capacity to articulate how their past actions impacted young people or other stakeholders.
Scenario questions can also be helpful. Try to ask questions using scenarios that the candidate might encounter at your program, ones that are relevant and provide the candidate with an opportunity to showcase the skills or knowledge that you are attempting to assess.
Leverage Your Team / Share Decision-making. There are a number of advantages to making your hiring process truly collaborative, with thoughtful involvement from your team and other important program stakeholders. First, it creates stretch opportunities for staff to develop an essential management skill set that prepares them for future leadership. The experience of being involved in hiring supports your team’s professional growth and sets them up for success when it’s their turn to supervise a program or inhabit some other management role. It also encourages the team to reflect together on the structures, strengths, and capacity of your team. As you collaborate to revise the job description, identify important core competencies, and design an effective hiring process you will inevitably discuss your team’s overall capacity to meet the needs of the young people you serve.
This reflection time can help you identify team strengths and skill gaps, any misalignment with the needs of your program participants, and possibilities for refining your program design. Maybe your team decides, for example, that emotional intelligence is an essential skill set for this role. How will your hiring process provide you with evidence of your candidates’ skill set in this area? Has your team as a whole worked to define and develop emotional intelligence? Have you, as the program leader? We recommend that you make sure to have a clear sense of each team member’s role in the hiring process and how you’ll make decisions at each stage. Tools like the RACI (Responsible | Accountable | Consulted | Informed) matrix or RAPID (Recommend | Agree | Perform | Input | Decides) matrix can help frame how your hiring team will make decisions based on their appropriate role. This allows you to involve your team in ways that play to their strengths and diverse perspectives while also clarifying expectations.
If at all possible, consider incorporating young people and families into your interview team as well as other stakeholders like a representative from a key partner. Community schools providers often involve their partner school staff, for example, but this can be effective for other program models as well. This approach helps account for any biases or blind spots that you might have but also strengthens relationships with your program stakeholders and shows them how much you value their participation in all aspects of the program.
Just be sure to involve the various people on your hiring team in the design of the process as well as giving them ample time and training on any tools they’ll need to use. Norming with the group on what makes for a strong candidate and what a strong candidate might do or say in an interview is particularly important. Co-creating a rubric or scorecard at the beginning of the process can be a great way to establish that kind of consistency across the hiring team and to make sure that you all stay focused on what’s most important throughout.
If you do incorporate program stakeholders from outside of the formal team into your interview process, just make sure to set up clear pathways for them to provide feedback afterwards. This can be done through a post-interview debrief meeting, for example, as long as your meeting agenda is designed in a way that creates an inclusive environment for honest, open feedback from everyone involved.
Walk the Walk. Finally, the way that you manage your search process and the experience that it creates for your candidates is essential. Model the behaviors you’d like to see them exhibit such as responsiveness and clear, respectful communication. Being transparent and communicative with candidates about what they can expect from the hiring process, which qualifications you’ll prioritize, when you’ll get back to them with updates, and their current status shows them that you respect their time and that your organization maintains a high level of professionalism. Remember, candidates are implicitly interviewing you and your organization too!
We work in a field of passionate, mission-driven people so leading with your values is important if you want to attract highly-qualified candidates. And candidates notice when you put in the time and effort to create a thoughtful process that is designed to identify candidates who are the best fit but also to provide a positive experience for them.
In addition to modeling your organization’s values in your management of the search process, you can also take this opportunity to share your program’s values. You can send a clear message about what is most important to your team through steps like:
Including young people and other non-staff stakeholders on your interview team;
Emphasizing an assets-based approach;
And keeping impact on young people at the center of your interview activities.
When your hiring team participates in role plays in an interview it communicates to candidates that you are willing to be vulnerable and that you value continuous improvement. Taking adequate time to clarify the role and answer candidate questions shows them that you care about their experience through the hiring process and serves a precursor to the kind of workplace culture they can expect. Indeed, this is the beginning of shaping your program and organizational culture. Onboarding should start well before you decide to make someone an offer!
We hope this provides a few actionable ideas and principles to get you started. There’s a lot to learn about effective staff recruitment and hiring for youth development programs though so we definitely recommend seeking out professional development or other supports. In our work with OST organizations around the country we’ve experienced some thoughtful and creative approaches to hiring so we’d love to hear what’s working for your team!
Contributed by Mike Jolley, Senior Consultant, Development Without Limits.