Hot off her appearance in last month's episode, Kay Linder, Partner with ThinkingAhead's Nonprofit Leadership Search, talks about the interesting first career and skill set that led her into recruiting, how she excels within her area of focus, and what to keep in mind when dealing with candidates in this current market.Discover what sets ThinkingAhead apart, hear stories from recruiters, and browse opportunities by clicking here.
Full Episode
Well, in my experience, a lot of the opportunities that I work on are either newly created for the organization or they've been recently retooled or are the back end of a retirement that person's been in place a long time. And those are delicate to navigate. A big part of the value I think I bring to an organization
in addition to already being a specialist in the niche that I work in, is to help guide them through that process. A lot of times that means doing a stakeholder survey with everyone that's going to be impacted by the hire. And a lot of times clients don't think about that. It can be outside people that will work closely with this new person. It can be staff in another department.
It can be a whole host. And so that's a grounding to making sure we're looking for the right person. It also helps those people feel like they're
vetting into the process and they're going to be more receptive to liking the person when they come on board also navigating how to successfully recruit a candidate and that is What questions to ask in an interview not to forget that the candidates interviewing you at the same time? So be pleasant be helpful be very open and engaging.
Sometimes we forget to do that when we're focused on is the other person a good fit. I think also just keeping a very equal process for all candidates so everybody's asked the same questions, everybody's treated the same, making sure that there's a lot of equity involved in the process is extremely important.
And when it comes down to the final decision making, if you're a good recruiter, you always try to drive at least two finalists to the end. And that way, the client has two people they could potentially hire. They like them both. If something happens to one of the candidates and they happen to drop out of the equation, all of a sudden you have another person that you're equally satisfied with.
And so that journey of really helping them understand at the front end what they're looking for and navigating to make sure they end up with the right person that matches that is very important. I think I've changed my practice area six times. One or two of those were really quickly into my tenure because I came in and two years later there was the dot-com bubble burst and 9-11.
Then there was the economic downturn, the Great Recession. And then in 2019, I moved completely from one field to the nonprofit field. And I did that two months before COVID. So I went in a brand new search, had no contacts, et cetera. And but I tell you, going through that experience is really amazing.
first of all, made me appreciate how wonderful people are, how generous they were with me, with me learning the business as I went along. And those are clients and candidates and everyone that I talked to. And it also helped me appreciate how important they are to us as much as we are to them.
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