The HRC was referred to a New England-based, internationally acclaimed, behavioral nonprofit organization which successfully transforms the lives of the most difficult to support young men and women. They had hired a Director for its first Connecticut site a year ago but it proved to not be a ‘good fit.’
This organization’s success relies on efficacy in building trust, education, and collaborative relationships with state, municipal, judiciary, and healthcare organizations while relentlessly building trust and connection with those who have little to none, are actively involved in violence, drugs, criminal activity, and who may be victims and/or parents of infants or young children.
Their leaders have extraordinary interpersonal ‘radar’ and turned to The Human Resource Consortium to help them:
- Clarify the needs for the role, the competencies, and performance expectations to update the job description and search profile;
- Create an engaging and best practice job posting;
- Discover and recruit rare individuals with undeniable expertise to lead a team of individuals charged with doing some of the toughest people-based work there is, have people smarts and personal experience in the toughest neighborhoods, a mindset of servant leadership, tremendous humility, and patience to learn and embrace their proven methodology over a period of a year while hitting the ground running, too; and
- Develop and implement best practice selection methodology and tools.
After reviewing background information and conferring with our new client, we conducted a ‘deep dive’ data gathering process at no additional cost, interviewed and surveyed members of their executive team, site leaders for all sites across 3 states, and the staff with whom the new leader would work and support. We then compiled and presented a Findings & Recommendations Report including recommendations for job description, job posting, and selection.
With their executives’ agreement with our recommendations, we immediately posted the job and began direct sourcing of candidates. The job postings resulted in candidates who were not a close enough match. However, the direct sourcing efforts resulted in one who Chris sensed was an ideal candidate as well as some additional candidates with the requisite background and skills. We knew though, for this organization, the background and skills had to be there. However, the individual’s intrinsic factors would ultimately prevail in selection criteria by the executive team.
To test our perspective, we scheduled an interview with the candidate and a member of their executive team. Immediately after the interview, the response was “she seems perfect… I want to schedule her to meet with the rest of the executive team next week and shadow someone who would be her peer and then meet with the staff.” After a full day onsite and meeting with the executive team and a prospective peer, without interviewing any other candidate, they quickly offered and received an enthusiastic acceptance… all within sixteen (16) weeks from our start.