March 10, 2014 | Read Time: 7 minutes
As head of information technology at several charities over the past 14 years, Peter Campbell has interviewed dozens of job candidates for every type of tech position imaginable. When he does, he routinely invites staff members from other departments to sit in.
Too often, Mr. Campbell says, he has then watched the non-tech employees “glaze over” as the job seeker detailed his or her skills.
But that doesn’t matter so much. While most nonprofit managers don’t understand tech jargon, or even the skills that jargon describes, they really don’t need to—even when hiring a technology expert for their organization.
“The best directors I worked for didn’t know the tech-talk acronyms, but they knew what their organization needed,” says Mr. Campbell, who has worked at Goodwill Industries International and EarthJustice and now serves as chief information officer at Legal Services Corporation, a government agency that allocates federal funds to legal-aid groups.
What’s really needed, says Mr. Campbell, is usually just someone to play the role of translator.
Information-technology experts who work with nonprofits agree: With the proper help, an executive director whose specialty is, say, social work or the arts can recruit and hire a top-notch technologist. Following is some advice to help find tech help.
Make a wish list. Start by asking each department what it needs, suggests Dana Scurlock, who oversees the nonprofit division of the recruiter ExecuSearch. “The fundraising person might not realize it, but they are also the database manager, and thus the one who knows when it’s time to upgrade,” she says.
Figure out which needs deserve top priority. Then, Ms. Scurlock advises, directors should seek tech experts with a strong capability for the top three—not top 10—primary projects.
“Finding it all in one package is unrealistic,” she says. “If instead you hire someone you think is sharp and who can handle your primary projects, you can trust that over time they will be able to bring themselves to speed to meet your second-tier needs.”
Figure out how much help you need. Technology support these days comes in a wide variety of flavors, from full-time staff member to part-time or even temporary help; outside contractors can also do the work. No matter what you’re seeking, experts say the selection process should be the same.
Find a translator. Last summer, Alex Kadis was hired as technology manager at Repair the World, a charity in New York that promotes community service. Because the relatively small organization lacked a dedicated information-technology worker, Mr. Kadis was interviewed mainly by the finance director.
“A couple times during the interview process she asked me, ‘What should we be asking you and what should you be telling us?’” he recalls. “She knew what needed fixing—she just didn’t know how to say it in developer geek talk.”
Ideally, your organization’s technology goals should be rendered into techspeak well before the interviews begin.
Jessica Carey, hiring director at New Classrooms, an education nonprofit in New York, calls this “finding your tech translator”—identifying someone who can help convert your organization’s technology wish list into an effective employment ad and then sit in on interviews to “translate between the tech talk and everyday workplace language.”
To find a volunteer translator, Ms. Carey recommends seeking out groups that combine technology advice with help for charities in general, like the nonprofit TechSoup, or even better, for your particular cause. As an example, she points to EdSurge, an online community for people who work in education technology.
Also, look for potential tech translators within your group’s own professional and social networks, suggests Mr. Campbell: “Even if you yourself are not a technical person, you for sure know someone—a savvy board member, your program director’s techie brother—who is, and who’d be willing to help.”
Advertise on social media. After a tech translator has helped craft an ad, don’t simply post it on the usual online help-wanted sites.
“These days, social networks are the way to recruit, and tech networks tend to be very open to outsiders looking to hire,” says Amy Sample Ward, chief executive officer of the Nonprofit Technology Network, commonly known as NTEN, a group that represents technologists who work at nonprofits.
When tweeting your job ad, use hashtags designed to draw attention. The #NPTech tag, for example, “can get you on a lot of people’s radar,” she says. Ms. Ward also suggests asking the people in your organization to tell their own networks that you’re hiring.
Assess cultural fit. It’s natural for managers who lack a tech background to feel nervous about evaluating job seekers whose skills they don’t fully understand, says Gayle Brandel, president of the staffing firm Professionals for Nonprofits.
However, she offers a pep talk: “You are still a valuable part of the hire. Even if you can’t fully assess for skills, you are assessing whether this person is a good fit with your organization’s culture.”
Prepare a crib sheet. If your group is small, chances are you don’t have ready-made interview questions for technology candidates at hand, says Mr. Campbell. However, he says, such boilerplate queries should be easy to gather. Chances are, he says, “there is someone on your board who works for a company whose HR department does have those questions prepared. That is not a tough ask.”
Elicit plain talk. One thing nonprofit leaders should assess for themselves is how well tech candidates can discuss problems with people who know nothing about technology, says Ms. Brandel. Make sure job seekers can explain their work simply.
“When people are in panic mode because the website donations page suddenly isn’t working in the middle of a major campaign, you want someone who can communicate, ‘OK, here is what we are doing to fix it and how long it will take,’” she says.
It’s a bad sign if a candidate is “throwing a bunch of technical terms and talking over you” even when asked to explain things in simple language, Ms. Brandel says.
Test problem-solving skills. Include real-world scenarios as part of the interview, say experienced hiring managers. “Present something you and your staff consider an emergency: ‘Our clients can’t log in to book counseling sessions, what do you do?’” says Ms. Ward. “If their first answer is, ‘OMG, I dunno, what do you want to do?’—that’s a real red flag.”
Besides helping to gauge how a candidate would handle a crisis, such exercises can help flush out arrogance or other traits that could ultimately make that candidate a poor fit for the organization. When he hires tech employees, Mr. Campbell looks for humility coupled with a willingness to learn.
“If someone claims they know everything, they’re lying,” he says. “If, however they say they don’t know everything, but they know how to Google, that’s a great answer, indicating they can think on their feet.”
Bring others into the interview. Staff members who most use the technology in their daily work should get to meet the candidates as part of the hiring process, experts say.
Steve Heye, technology manager for the Cara Program, a social-services charity in Chicago, recently hired a database manager. He asked four finalists for the job to demonstrate their skills by “sketching out a basic process” using input from the group’s operations staff.
“The tech team preferred this one candidate who had huge technical skills, but as soon as this person got in the room with the operations staff, it just fell apart,” says Mr. Heye. He ended up hiring another candidate who had considerably less experience but demonstrated “the ability to ask good questions and talk fluently with both the tech team and the end users.”
Sell the perks. One downside to hiring tech help in a competitive marketplace is the inability of most charities to compete with higher for-profit salaries. However, nonprofit recruiters and managers say that younger workers are increasingly drawn as much by mission as by compensation.
“We have seen, over and over, that folks are willing to forgo things like equity for the chance to make lasting change in the world,” says Ms. Carey, of New Classrooms.
Ms. Scurlock advises playing up what you are able to offer. Tech workers tend to skew younger than other professionals and are more likely to demand work-life balance. To attract them, she suggests flexibility in lieu of higher pay: “Flex-time or extra vacation days, support for ongoing education—anything that can make life more interesting.”
