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Executive Director Recruitment
As an organization dedicated to your community, hiring your next executive director is a big task. Let us guide you through the process.
Community Centered Hiring
Our approach to helping your board hire your next executive director is inclusive. This means that from the beginning, we look for ways to help you include people at all levels of the organization and community (in appropriate ways) in the hiring process. Depending on your organization and needs, this could mean community listening sessions, surveys or even going to local farmer's markets.
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We prioritize hiring in the local market, rather than national searches since we have found that a community-focused search tends to yield better more long-term results. That said, we still cast a broad net and consider every qualified applicant for the role.
Candice's expertise is incredibly valuable. She is empowering, trustworthy and genuine.
-Logan Robertson Huecker, Executive Director, Sequoia Land Trust
Some of our recruitment clients:
How does it work?
This is a sample workplan for ED recruitment. Actual plans are tailored to your board's unique needs.
Candice is a wonderful listener, and to say that she does HR really sells her short. She does so much more than that.
Conrad Seales
Owner & CPA
Santa Cruz Pacific Accounting and Tax
Preparation
We'll work together to decide on the community engagement plan, decide on responsible parties, and finalize the job description and qualifications, outreach, interview process and questions. It is important to have consensus on each element of the hiring plan so that there are as few surprises as possible along the way.
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Outreach
Once you have decided on the ways you would like to advertise the position, we coordinate all the things on the back end from designing graphics to posting on LinkedIn, Indeed and industry-specific job boards.
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Interviewing
My team and I handle candidate resume reviews, we send a first screening email to make sure the candidate meets all the qualifications, then we do the first screening interviews (usually up to 45 minutes long). Typically we will forward the board up to 5 candidates that we recommend move forward to a panel interview. For the panel interview, I will facilitate the interviews with board members asking the candidates questions. We usually try to leave 15 minutes at the end of the interview so the candidate can ask questions.
Hiring
We will assist you with drafting the offer letter for the candidate. We hold off on declining runners up until the candidate has accepted the position. The job offer is sent to the candidate by the Board Chair. If there are negotiations we advise the Chair on those.
Common questions:
What if we are in disagreement about who to hire?​
We work to build consensus from the start of the project so that everyone is in agreement on the qualities and qualifications of the right candidate for the role. When there is disagreement, we look back to our original agreements and weigh our opinions relative to what the group decided. Sometimes, through the process of interviewing dynamics change and there is some nuance to group decision-making. Each situation is unique, but typically disagreements can be worked through with the right involvement from us as consultants, the board chair, staff and members of the community.
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What is your role in deciding who we choose?
It is not our role to decide who is the right candidate for the role. During the process of interviewing we will ask you not to ask us questions about the candidates for a period of time so that we can come to our conclusions before sharing any information. We will make recommendations about who among the candidates meets the qualifications that have beed decided on, especially at the screening interview phase. During that phase we are just trying to weed out all the candidates who do not meet your qualifications. It is up to you to decide between them.
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How do you make sure all the committee members get to participate?
We understand that everyone is busy and adding an executive director recruitment on top of all your other responsibilities is a lot to ask! Typically the way we do it is to schedule hiring committee meetings every 2 weeks during the recruitment. Each week we work on one aspect of the recruitment plan or decision-making. We send out surveys early in the process to understand everyone's schedules so that we can schedule interviews during the times when the most people will be available. If it is agreeable to the group, we can also record sessions and share them after so that nothing is missed.
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