Talent Market

Talent Market's mission is to promote liberty by providing talent for critical roles within the free-market nonprofit sector

Talent Tip #144: The F Word

I love the F word.

I use it frequently, in fact. I say it in front of my clients and candidates…in front of mature audiences and young professionals….even kids. Heck, I say it in front of my mother-in-law. I’m shameless about it.

No matter when or where I use it, it never fails to raise eyebrows.

I don’t think people are offended by it; they just don’t think about it that often.  But they should.  Because it’s absolutely critical to everything we do here in the free-market universe.

And that’s why you’ll hear me blurting out “FUNDRAISING” every day and twice on Sunday.

Fundraising has been and likely will always be Talent Market’s greatest talent need. On any given day, about a third of our searches are development-focused. And as I write this, it’s even higher: of Talent Market’s 50+ current searches, more than 20 are in development.

And that’s why I want everyone to embrace the F word as much as I do.

Specifically, I want young professionals who haven’t yet decided on a career to strongly consider fundraising.

  • It’s one of the most diverse fields in the liberty movement. Development roles can focus on relationship building with major donors or foundations, writing, research, management, strategy, data analysis, events, campaigns, estate planning, direct mail, corporate relations, or all of the above! There are an F-load of options!
  • If you love free-market ideas, fundraising will give you a chance to be engaged with these ideas. A good fundraiser needs to understand free-market principles and be able to talk about them, write about them, and connect with people who share our appreciation of these principles.
  • If you’re good at fundraising, you’ll have plenty of job opportunities to consider throughout your career. See our openings list for proof.

I also want free-market nonprofits to consider a few key items related to fundraising talent, especially in this market.

  • If you are hiring and see a candidate you like, you need to act very quickly. If you don’t snatch up that talented development officer, one of the other bazillion organizations hiring will.
  • Think about unconventional candidates. Do you really need someone with 5 years of experience fundraising for freedom? Or would you consider an individual with transferable skills who is eager to join the liberty movement?
  • Treat candidates well during the hiring process. We recently had a candidate drop out of the running for a development opening because she wasn’t pleased with how the organization treated her and she knew she had myriad other options to consider. Sure enough, another nonprofit hired her within days.
  • Treat your existing development staff well. It’s much easier to keep them than to hire.
  • Consider a development track for your organization’s internship program. If your free-market organization hosts interns, be sure that some of them are assigned to your fundraising team and make sure all of them are exposed to fundraising and learn about its importance in our world. If we don’t develop the next generation of fundraisers, who will?

Finally, I want everyone reading this to do a few things for me.

  • Encourage young professionals to consider development as a career path. Many recent graduates are thinking about a career in policy because it’s the most obvious path (I was one of those!). But they probably have no idea that there are far more openings in development, nor do they understand just how many different types of opportunities are available within the fundraising realm. If we don’t open their eyes to this, who will?
  • Hug a fundraiser today. Do you know someone in fundraising? Go hug them, give them a buzz, shoot them a text, or drop them a line right now and thank them for what they do to advance liberty.
  • Finally, let’s all say the F word with a little more frequency. It’s a word worthy of repeating. Fundraisers keep the lights on in the nonprofit world. Let’s face it, without fundraisers, we’re all…..doomed. 😉 What did you think I was going to say?

Talent Tip #143: Courting in a Candidate’s Market: 5 Ways to Stay Competitive

Many moons ago I was dating a gentleman we’ll call “Bob”. Things were getting pretty serious when, as fate would have it, I ran into my ex-boyfriend. We’ll call the ex “Josh”. Josh and I made small talk and caught up on life. Just as we were about to part ways, he hinted at maybe going out again sometime. I gently let him know I was dating someone else. I remember walking away feeling kinda bad for the guy. That ship had sailed, ya know?

Roughly 24 hours later, Josh appeared with a diamond ring and a marriage proposal.

Boy, that escalated quickly.

Incredibly long and sordid story short…I said yes.

Had Josh not moved with such alacrity, I might still be Claire Kittle. Or Claire Throatwobblermangrove. Who knows?

Our story illustrates the importance of recognizing the competition and adapting your behavior to achieve your ends. And it’s spectacularly analogous to hiring in the current candidate’s market.

With that, let me share 5 tips for free-market nonprofits hiring now.

  1. Move efficiently in the hiring process! If you identify a candidate you like, best to put a ring on it before another organization does.  Case in point, we are currently working on 19 (!!) fundraising roles. Therefore, every organization in search of development staff should be moving as expeditiously as possible to mitigate the risk of losing candidates to another vacancy! One of our clients took this message to heart and just filled their fundraising role in 32 days (less than half the average time it takes for clients to make a hire). The organization got the candidate they wanted because they made hiring a priority.
  2. Offer virtual work options. Many candidates want to work virtually in this (post?) pandemic world. They have enjoyed the two-year commute hiatus, the concept of optional showers, and the flexibility that comes with working virtually. And because the demand for talent is so high, candidates are quite happy to ignore job openings that don’t allow for virtual work and instead focus their attention on the openings that do. In fact, roughly 70% of our current searches allow for virtual work in some form. So, if your nonprofit isn’t offering virtual work, you’re putting the organization at a strong competitive disadvantage. Of course, not all work can or should be done virtually. And if your organization needs someone in the office, then so be it! Just be aware that finding someone might be especially difficult right now.
  3. Remember it’s a courtship. Hiring is always a two-way street, and in a candidate’s market, nonprofits should be especially focused on courting the best candidates. Unfortunately, we’ve heard some stories lately about organizations that treated candidates more like criminal suspects than in-demand potential employees. One candidate said, “The interview felt like an interrogation. I wasn’t given an opportunity to speak and it felt very one-sided.” Another candidate withdrew from the interview process after talking to what he described as a “prickly” hiring manager.  And another candidate described the process as more akin to a “Rorschach test than a substantive interview”. She, too, withdrew from consideration. In all of these cases, the candidates were interviewing elsewhere and didn’t think twice about walking away from an organization that didn’t treat them well.
  4. Broaden your candidate pool by thinking outside the box. In this market, it might pay to think creatively about the experience and background you’re requiring for candidates. A great illustration of this is a client of ours who was recently hiring for a mid-level development staffer. They ended up interviewing and hiring a more experienced candidate who was willing to do the work on a part-time basis. Sure enough, he did so well and was able to contribute in so many areas that the organization brought him on full-time in a senior level development role after only a few months. It was a win-win!
  5. Treat your current employees well. One of the best ways to ensure you have the talent you need in this market is to keep the talent you have! That means paying your employees well, treating them with respect, giving them a reasonable amount of flexibility, keeping them challenged, and creating a healthy, high-functioning work environment.

P.S. If you ever want to hear the full engagement story, ply me with alcohol next time you see me. The full-length version is high drama and involves kiteboarding, broken bones, multiple proposals, a ring exchange (for less bling, if you can believe that), road trips, and lots of soul-searching. Hey, at least hiring isn’t that complicated!

Talent Tip #142: 10 Questions to Ask on Your Next Date/Job Interview

My father once gave me some fantastic dating advice:

“On the first date, ask him what drugs he is taking, legal and illegal.”

Subtly isn’t my dad’s forte, and now you know I came by it honestly. But you can understand what pops was getting at. Before you get serious about someone, pop open the hood and poke around.

And so it goes with job hunting. So many of the things we really want to know, whether we’re seeking a personal or professional long-term relationship, often come from direct (and maybe mildly uncomfortable) questions that we tend to avoid.

[Read more…]

Talent Tip #141: Five Gifts to Give a Hiring Manager

It’s that time of year again! I can’t wait to drink egg nog, watch Christmas Vacation for the 7641st time, and erect the Festivus pole/prepare for the airing of grievances.

Speaking of grievances, have you ever gotten a really terrible holiday gift?

Many moons ago, a boyfriend of mine got me a stunning, likely expensive, gold bracelet. The design was lovely and it really was beautiful…except for the fact it was gold. What’s wrong with gold, you ask? Well, nothing if you’re a leprechaun. But I’m not and I hate gold.

I had been dating this guy for a long time…how had he not noticed that every single piece of jewelry I owned was silver?

While it was a sweet gesture, he clearly didn’t put much thought into it.

And that brings me to the notion of the “gifts” that candidates give hiring managers throughout the hiring process. Sometimes these gifts look more like a White Elephant exchange than a real attempt at getting a job.

If you really want the job, here are five gifts the hiring manager actually wants:

  1. EVERYTHING that is requested in the application instructions – Easy enough, right? If the application instructions ask for a cover letter, resume, and writing sample, be sure to include all three items.
    If they ask for a cover letter that addresses two specific questions, make sure to address those two questions!
    And if they ask you to share your desired salary range, don’t say “I’d prefer to share that later in the process” because the hiring manager may decide that he prefers to give you a lump of coal instead of an interview!
  2. A mention in your resume of EVERYTHING you’ve done that correlates to the key job requirements – You wouldn’t believe how often candidates tell me, “I didn’t put this in my resume, but I have extensive experience doing X”…and X just happens to be one of the key requirements for the job! Unfortunately, hiring managers are NOT Santa Claus: meaning they do NOT know when you’ve been naughty or nice, nor do they know you’ve overseen a company-wide database upgrade or a multi-year strategic planning process for a $5M organization. So, you must tell them!
    And if you don’t include this important information in your resume, you run the risk of being declined for not meeting the requirements! This season, give the hiring manager the gift of knowing you ARE qualified!
  3. Evidence of your philosophical alignment and passion for the organization’s mission – Are you as excited about the job as a kid on Christmas morn? Great! Say that in your cover letter!
    Clients routinely decline candidates who don’t take the time to articulate their philosophical interest in the organization’s mission. Sending a generic cover letter to a hiring manager is like sending a fruitcake to anyone with tastebuds: it won’t be well received!
  4. A regular review of your spam folder – Clients often come to us saying, “I emailed John to schedule an interview, but never heard back.” All too often, that important email was sitting in John’s spam folder, sad and lonely, just like your neighbor’s half-deflated inflatable snowman who is doubled over like he drank too much eggnog.
    And by the time John thinks to check his spam folder, the job has long since been offered to someone else.
    If you are searching for a job, be sure to check your spam folder regularly!
  5. Flexibility on scheduling – Have you ever spent the holidays traveling from one family member’s house to the next, and then to the in-laws’ house, and then to Cousin Eddie’s? It’s exhausting!
    And this is exactly how the hiring manager feels! He is trying to arrange interviews with multiple candidates over multiple days and perhaps even with multiple staff members.
    Don’t be a Grinch and be difficult about finding times that work for you.
    Instead, be sweet and flexible with your schedule, like Cindy-Lou Who!
    (See what I did there?)

Following these five tips might just land you a job, and if you’re really lucky, a membership to the Jelly of the Month Club! Happy holidays!

Talent Tip #140: Lessons from Potty Training: 6 Hiring Mistakes Nonprofits Make

Katelynn Barbosa

Labor Day weekend of this year, my husband and I decided that it was time to get serious about potty training our two-year old and we decided to commit to the three-day method. For the uninitiated (untraumatized), the three-day method is a very popular potty training method where you stay home with your toddler for three straight days, never take your eyes off of them, and anytime they start to do their numbers, you rush them to the bathroom. The idea is that they will catch on, eventually discover they are unhappy being covered in their own bodily fluids, and start going to the bathroom on their own. By the end of the three days, you will have a fully potty-trained toddler and can throw away the diapers forever! Yeah!

Well, when I dropped off my daughter at daycare this morning, I can assure you she was very much wearing a diaper. Why? Because try as we did, she simply wasn’t ready for potty training. She didn’t mind being covered in filth, no amount of reminding her to use the potty was effective, and the only thing we accomplished in three days was teaching her to say “I made a bad decision” when she relived herself on the floor.

I know what you’re thinking: Katelynn, what in the heavens does this have to do with hiring? Well, it turns out that lessons from potty training also apply to hiring!

How so?

  1. Don’t start until you are ready. This is the first lesson of both potty training and hiring. If you try to hire before your organization is ready, you’re going to be extremely frustrated, waste a lot of time, and have lots of metaphorical pee on the floor. So before launching a search, make sure you have full approval from the powers that be and funding for the role. Finally, talk to your team about the search so they are not blind-sided by a parade of candidates coming in to interview.
  2. Don’t launch a search unless you have the time to devote to it. Potty training doesn’t happen overnight (or even in three days!), and neither does hiring. These things take time.With hiring, involved parties will need to devote at least several hours per week to be fully engaged in the process.

    So, if a team member  essential to the interviewing process will be going on his dream trip to Turkey rendering you unable to schedule interviews for three weeks, it’s probably not the best time to launch a search. Or, if your organization’s biggest annual event is coming up and you won’t have time to open your email for the next month, launching a search right now is a bad decision. See what I did there?

  3. Communicate regularly. I am pleased to report that a couple of weeks ago, we attempted the three-day method again and were a lot more successful this time! But every time we take our toddler out of the house, we have to communicate with her and encourage her to use the potty before she leaves and when she gets to a new destination. Otherwise, she will have an accident.Similarly, you will want to remain in regular communication with candidates throughout the search.  If you don’t let candidates know what is going on with the search, they will get frustrated, contemplate if you are really serious about filling the opening, and worse, wonder if your organization is just so disorganized that it’s about as fun to work there as it is to potty train a toddler.
  4. Don’t get distracted. As successful as our toddler is using the bathroom at home, as soon as she is hanging out with other kids and having fun, she gets so distracted that she forgets everything she’s learned and makes a mess.Likewise, when hiring, it’s easy to get distracted. That big grant proposal is due next week. You’re launching a new program next month. Expense reports were due yesterday. Performance reviews are coming up. Before you know it, three weeks have gone by since you even thought about the search. And when you finally come back to it, you learn your top candidate accepted another job and your other two finalists are disillusioned with your absence. Now that’s a mess.
  5. Don’t get hyper-focused, either. When our toddler is successful using the ladies’ room, she gets an M&M. Unfortunately, she has figured out how to game the system: she insists that she has to use the bathroom every few minutes to the exclusion of all other activities. Sure, she gets a lot of M&Ms, but eventually she finds that she is tired and has wasted a perfectly good evening spending all of her time on the porcelain throne.Likewise, when hiring, you don’t want to get hyper-focused on one candidate to the exclusion of all others.  Even if one candidate looks stronger than the rest, it’s usually wise to keep all solid contenders in the mix until a decision is made. Otherwise, you might find yourself with soiled pantaloons and no change of clothes. You didn’t really think I would take the analogy this far, huh?
  6. Don’t wait! When our toddler says it is time to go potty, we better deliver her to a latrine  within five minutes or we’re in trouble.With hiring, you want to employ this same sense of urgency. It’s a candidate’s market right now, and dilly-dallying can cost you a candidate or three.

    In fact, we’ve had several clients recently who understand this and have made a hire within 30 days of launching the search. They didn’t cut corners; they just moved efficiently because they knew they would miss out on good candidates if they didn’t.

By now, our darling toddler terrorist is doing pretty well on the potty training front (with the exception of daycare…anyone have advice?) and it is all because she was ready, we seriously committed time to the process, we always communicate with her regularly, we don’t let her get distracted, and we move quickly when it’s time. So if you want to have success in your search, approach it like potty training!

Talent Tip #139: Hiring Horror Stories (Just in Time for Halloween!)

Katelynn Barbosa, Stephanie Keaveney, Claire Kittle Dixon

In the spirit of Halloween, our team wanted to share our best hiring horror stories with you. Names and identities have been changed to protect the innocent (and the ghoulishly guilty!).

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The Candidate Who Ghosted Us

A couple of years ago I was working with a nonprofit who wanted to hire for a senior level opening. We identified an impressive candidate who had worked for one of the most reputable think tanks in the country. He did well in the interviews and the organization made him a great offer. He accepted and they agreed on a start date three weeks out.

Then, like a ghost, he disappeared.

At two weeks before the start date, we were confused but thought maybe he just took a few days off in between jobs. By one week out, we were concerned. We started searching online, thinking maybe Jason Vorhees had visited the candidate. Both the hiring manager and I tried everything we could to reach him: emails, voicemails, texts, and social media messages. Radio silence. By three days out, we finally accepted that he had ghosted us.

To this day, we’ve never heard from the candidate. If the candidate had changed his mind, the right thing to do would have been to just let us know and we could all move on. This probably wasn’t the first or last time the candidate displayed such unprofessional behavior, and no doubt these actions will haunt him throughout his career.

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Trick….or Treat?

Near the end of my final semester of college I began looking for my first full-time job where I could leverage my shiny new degree. The opportunity came in the form of a verbal offer to become a low-level government bureaucrat in a neighboring county. Within a few hours of getting the call, I quit my job at a car dealership and made plans to break my apartment lease. About an hour into my final shift at the dealership, I received an email letting me know that the offer had been revoked. I was left jobless and apartment-less.

Many years later, I’m still not sure what led to the rescinded offer, but I learned the very important lesson to not count my chickens before they hatch (although I’m grateful my career ultimately took a very different path) and to always, always wait until you get it in writing.

Oh, and you can’t trust the government.

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Ghastly Behavior and Horrifying Hurl 

Years ago I was at a social gathering with free-market friends when I was introduced to a sharp gentleman. He was a recent college graduate who was in between jobs. I was immediately impressed with how articulate and charismatic he was. And he was brimming with confidence! I wondered how someone so sharp could be unemployed. I told him about the internship program at our organization and invited him to apply. He applied, we put him through the typical hiring process, and next thing you know, he was in our program.

For a while, everyone thought he was terrific. But it didn’t take long for the shine to wear off.  What I had initially seen as confidence turned out to be an extreme case of arrogance. And his articulate and charismatic personality gave way to one that was manipulative and self-serving. Staff members were starting to see his real personality and no one liked it.

The nail in the coffin came when he went to a work function, got completely trashed, and threw up on the shoes of a VIP who worked for one of our allies. I was mortified (though mildly disappointed that I didn’t actually get to see the grand finale…my associates assured me it was a sight to behold!). Thankfully, he quit the program before we could have the satisfaction of asking him to leave.

The lesson for me was two-fold. First, vet the heck out of anyone with heaps of confidence. If they don’t have humility, they will eventually cause you trouble. Second, if someone seems too good to be true, they probably are.

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Hiring at the Pace of the Walking Dead

Before Talent Market, I was a career counselor at a law school and it was my job to help students find their first job out of law school, which involved helping them apply for jobs, weigh offers, and ultimately decide where to work. I remember working with a stellar student with great grades, an awesome personality, and basically everything an employer could want. She had applied for her dream job and was waiting to hear back from them after a great interview. For weeks, she waited and waited. Each day that went by without hearing from them, she got sadder and sadder, then she got frustrated, and then she got annoyed. She ended up accepting a job somewhere else.

Time passed. Then, she finally heard from her dream job 8 weeks after she interviewed with them. They wanted to offer her the job. By that point, she didn’t even want to work for them anymore. Taking that long to get in touch with her made her think they were inconsiderate, scattered, and the type of place she wouldn’t want to work.

My key takeaway from this experience is that when an organization is hiring, they need to treat candidates with respect. Leaving candidates to wait, wondering what is going on, even if they aren’t interested in the candidate is bad for their organization. Candidates talk and this type of behavior can impact an organization’s reputation, leading people to think of the organization as either disorganized or inconsiderate, both bad traits. That is why Talent Market is so committed to never leaving our candidates hanging and always keeping them updated no matter what!

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Hey there Pumpkin…I Think You’re in the Wrong Patch

I often conduct first round interviews with candidates. During one particularly memorable call, I asked a candidate to explain why she’d applied to the role. The candidate launched into an impassioned soliloquy on why this position was an ideal fit not only in terms of her skills but also because of how well the organization’s mission aligned with her personal values. It was an incredibly compelling answer… for a different role, at a different organization.

As gently as possible, I reiterated what role and organization our call pertained to. And while I was willing to cut the candidate some slack, the mistake clearly threw her off for the remainder of the call and she ultimately did not move forward in the hiring process.

The key takeaway is that when you’re job searching, you’re likely applying (and interviewing!) for many different roles at many different organizations. There’s nothing wrong with that! But it’s absolutely critical to make sure you’ve done your homework and adequately prepared for the (correct) interview.

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Getting Hiring by Dr. Jekyll…or is it Mr. Hyde?

My first job out of college was as a sales rep for a design firm. During the interview process, the president of the firm came across as Mr. Perfect. He was smart, charming, kind, and had plenty to say about his firm’s success and how easy it would be for me to sell its work. I happily accepted the meager salary and had hopes about the big commissions he assured me would come.

Young and eager, I worked my tail off cold-calling, visiting clients, and trying everything under the sun to get a sale. After a few months and very little success, I started questioning my own sanity. Finally, a client with whom I had built a strong relationship pulled me aside to tell me how terrible the president’s reputation (and, by association, the firm’s reputation) was. He shared stories of undelivered results, missed deadlines, lack of follow-through, and jaw-dropping unethical behavior. He gently told me that no amount of work on my part could correct the reputation of the firm and that this was why I hadn’t had more success in my role.

Two hiring lessons have stuck with me since then: 1. Do your homework about an organization before you accept a job there. Had I done more digging, I may have discovered that this man and his firm weren’t as he described. 2. Reputation matters. If you go to work for an organization with a questionable reputation, not only will it make your job infinitely more difficult (whether you’re in fundraising, communication, policy, etc.), but you also risk damaging your own reputation.

About Us

Claire Kittle Dixon
Executive Director

Claire runs the day-to-day operations of Talent Market, manages searches for clients, and oversees the organization’s fundraising communications, technology, administration, and cat-herding efforts…
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Katy Gambella
Director of Outreach

Katy oversees Talent Market’s outreach to young professionals and manages the outreach team. She also manages searches and executes outreach directly herself…
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Stephanie Keaveney
Senior Manager of Outreach
Stephanie splits her time between managing talent searches for free-market nonprofits, maintaing Talent Market’s social media presence, and engaging in outreach to young professionals interested in liberty-oriented careers…
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Bailey Drouant
Project Manager
Bailey assists free-market nonprofits with their hiring needs by helping them manage the search process from start to finish…
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Savannah Rupp
Project Manager
Savannah channels her expertise to manage searches for free-market nonprofits, ensuring they find the perfect match to drive their missions forward. She also supports Talent Market’s…
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Wait, You’re a Nonprofit?

Talent Market is a nonprofit. We’ll wait here while that sinks in. We know it’s a crazy concept, but it’s been working like a charm since 2009.

Talent Market’s mission is to promote liberty by providing talent for critical roles within the free-market nonprofit sector.

We provide consulting and recruiting services at no cost to 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations that clearly and directly focus on advancing the principles of economic freedom, free enterprise, free trade, free speech, property rights, rule of law, and limited regulation. (We do not work with political organizations, organizations with mission statements that do not clearly advance free-market principles, organizations that focus on social issues, or organizations that have a focus outside of the United States. We are not a job board. ) 

Talent Market believes that the road to prosperity is paved with freedom and that the success of our movement hinges on the talent that will take us there.

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