By Anil Patel
While no one can replace Emily Hazell, a valued team member for the past three years, we are in the midst of seeking someone to take-on her roles & responsibilities. In under two weeks, we received nearly 150 applications for the role of Resource Development Coordinator. You can view the job description at http://www.frameworkorg.org/jobs.html.
The purpose of providing the specifics of this story is threefold:
In speaking with my colleagues who also must manage a small staff and largish volunteer core, one of the biggest points of pain is keeping position descriptions up-to-date. Best practices would suggest all position descriptions are updated once per year, which will become part of a national Standards Initiative across Canada. (Please view section D and E of Imagine Canada’s Standards Initiative. Framework falls into Level II - an organization with between 1 to 50 staff and under $5 million in revenue.)
Prior to our cloud deployment, which I’ll describe shortly, it was challenging to share the position descriptions, signed contracts and other HR related files & documents with my board and certain HR volunteers who helped manage the process. It was also tricky to engage my staff in the past to help write new job descriptions - like the one currently posted - in a collaborative manner. This time around, it was easy to get input and consensus for the final version.
It was then dead simple to post the description, broadcast through Charity Village and LinkedIn Jobs, and collect applications. The online form publishes entries directly into our SmartSheet environment. Within the SmartSheet, we’ve used a series of check-boxes, green-yellow-red dropdown and stars to denote who we want to interview. Using SmartSheets sharing features, it can be shared externally to our HR volunteers who can also assist in the vetting process. This is critical because other HR recruitment software applications are either robust (but expensive) or expensive (and siloed).
While I’ve been in San Francisco, my colleagues have been scheduling meetings using our Salesforce.com calendar and chatter environment. There are 10 people that we’ll be speaking with in the next two weeks, with the goal of extending an offer for mid-fall.
We will be using EchoSign to turn an offer into a contract in minutes/hours, and then I can report back to my board with incredible metrics about the candidate and the process. As you can see on our Sharesies page, Framework provides transparency on the nuts-and-bolts of HR management (click here).
Then, once the candidate-in-waiting officially joins our team - where ever he or she lives (it does not have to be in Toronto), we’ll have them ready to roll in our cloud Infrastructure - Salesforce.com, GoogleApps, Box.Net, & SmartSheet.
The illustration below pulls this together:
While no one can replace Emily Hazell, a valued team member for the past three years, we are in the midst of seeking someone to take-on her roles & responsibilities. In under two weeks, we received nearly 150 applications for the role of Resource Development Coordinator. You can view the job description at http://www.frameworkorg.org/jobs.html.
The purpose of providing the specifics of this story is threefold:
- to share the process of writing, updating, and publishing position descriptions for staff and volunteers online.
- Share a model of participant engagement so volunteers & other staff can be involved with the vetting/evaluation/interviewing process.
- Show how cloud-based low cost and scalable tools make hiring staff and engaging skilled volunteers a transparent and inclusive process
In speaking with my colleagues who also must manage a small staff and largish volunteer core, one of the biggest points of pain is keeping position descriptions up-to-date. Best practices would suggest all position descriptions are updated once per year, which will become part of a national Standards Initiative across Canada. (Please view section D and E of Imagine Canada’s Standards Initiative. Framework falls into Level II - an organization with between 1 to 50 staff and under $5 million in revenue.)
Prior to our cloud deployment, which I’ll describe shortly, it was challenging to share the position descriptions, signed contracts and other HR related files & documents with my board and certain HR volunteers who helped manage the process. It was also tricky to engage my staff in the past to help write new job descriptions - like the one currently posted - in a collaborative manner. This time around, it was easy to get input and consensus for the final version.
It was then dead simple to post the description, broadcast through Charity Village and LinkedIn Jobs, and collect applications. The online form publishes entries directly into our SmartSheet environment. Within the SmartSheet, we’ve used a series of check-boxes, green-yellow-red dropdown and stars to denote who we want to interview. Using SmartSheets sharing features, it can be shared externally to our HR volunteers who can also assist in the vetting process. This is critical because other HR recruitment software applications are either robust (but expensive) or expensive (and siloed).
While I’ve been in San Francisco, my colleagues have been scheduling meetings using our Salesforce.com calendar and chatter environment. There are 10 people that we’ll be speaking with in the next two weeks, with the goal of extending an offer for mid-fall.
We will be using EchoSign to turn an offer into a contract in minutes/hours, and then I can report back to my board with incredible metrics about the candidate and the process. As you can see on our Sharesies page, Framework provides transparency on the nuts-and-bolts of HR management (click here).
Then, once the candidate-in-waiting officially joins our team - where ever he or she lives (it does not have to be in Toronto), we’ll have them ready to roll in our cloud Infrastructure - Salesforce.com, GoogleApps, Box.Net, & SmartSheet.
The illustration below pulls this together:
- All position descriptions stored in Box.net (analytics & HTML embed is key)
- SmartSheet Form wizard to accept applications online (URL sharing & HTML embed is key)
- Current staff & skilled HR volunteers can vet & rank applicants (SmartSheet sharing permissions)
- Efficient scheduling of meetings in Salesforce.com (permanent record of interviews & schedule)
- Turn around signed contract effectively using EchoSign
All of this to say, we hope that this process is scalable internally and shareable externally with other NGOs who face similar situations. Our goal is grow Framework & Team Timeraiser to live the values that we are promoting. We think this prototype - our 5th People Lens experiment - get us closer than ever. And while at first glance this might look complicated, we can promise you that in the long run the integrations are in fact simple and intuitive.
What your thoughts? Is there something that we’ve missed? Can you recommend any way to improve this?
What your thoughts? Is there something that we’ve missed? Can you recommend any way to improve this?
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