After understanding your core philosophical convictions, building a healthy staff team requires an interview and hiring process.  At The Austin Stone, we have a process of candidacy, interviewing, assessment and hiring:

1. Do We Need To Hire?
2. What Role Are You Trying To Fill?
3. Identifying Candidates for Your Team
4. Recruiting Candidates for Your Team

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Recruiting Candidates

The following are the places to look for candidates, ordered according to priority and likelihood of finding a match:

1. Internal to the church
2. Direct relationship to our team (Friends)
3. One relationships removed from our team (Friends of friends)
4. Unsolicited or unknown candidates

Briefly, I will highlight the opportunities and possible difficulties of candidates from each area.

Internal Candidates

In an ideal world, we would always have someone ready to be hired for a position who has been developed internally in our churches.  Internal candidates are a symptom of a healthy culture of leadership development and are most often the most consistent with the DNA of the church.

With respect to hiring internally, there are several observations that I have made.  First, there is both a pro and a con with an internal candidate in that you typically know both their strengths and weaknesses very well.  In a hiring process, I have found that most people tend to weight the weaknesses of an internal candidate more heavily, and look more favorably on an external candidate.  Most people are predisposed to look favorably and hopefully on the unknown, so ensure that you take this into account if you are comparing two candidates.

Pros on Hiring Internally

• Candidates have a much higher of likelihood of having the culture you are looking for
• Preexisting relationships and community can make for a seamless transition in community
• Typically you know what to expect with the individual

Cons on Hiring Internally

• Because of a relationship, you may have a tendency to overreach on a candidate without the requisite skills or capacity you want
• Assumed knowledge of the culture can often lead to conflict

Direct Relationships

This kind of hire has been the best pipeline for high-capacity, strong culture fit individuals who can contribute to the team right away.

Pros on Hiring External Direct Relationships

• The preexisting relationship sets a good tone for culture fit
• Higher likelihood of high capacity individuals with experience
• Outside experience can contribute helpful knowledge and culture to your team

Cons on Hiring External Direct Relationships

• Depending on the dynamic of the relationship, it can be difficult to cultivate an employee/employer dynamic
• A possibility of unmet expectations based on the candidates understanding of the organization

Friends of Friends

This pool of people is most often tapped for most organizations.  Candidates are recommended based on knowledge of your organization and the candidate from another person.

Pros on Hiring Friends of Friends

• The preexisting relationship sets a good tone for culture fit
• Higher likelihood of high capacity individuals
• Outside experience can contribute helpful knowledge and culture to your team

Cons on Hiring Friends of Friends

• Depending on the dynamic of the relationship, it can be difficult to cultivate an employee/employer dynamic
• It can be tempting to not fully explore the area of culture fit, making assumptions in this area based on the word of the outside recommender.

Unknown Candidates

Unknown candidates are interesting, because they are completely unknown quantities.  For the optimist, and unknown candidate has all the potential in the world, but for a pessimist, almost no potential.  Regardless of which way you see the fullness of the glass, these kinds of candidates present some interesting opportunities and challenges.

Pros on Unknown Candidates

• A distinct possibility of a high capacity candidate emerging
• If the role is well defined, there is a higher likelihood for expectation match
• Outside experience can contribute helpful knowledge and culture to your team

Cons on Unknown Candidates

• Unknown candidates carry a great risk when it comes to culture fit
• A possibility of a person becoming a “hired hand” rather than a shepherd of the church

What else would you add to this list?

After understanding your core philosophical convictions, building a healthy staff team requires an interview and hiring process.  At The Austin Stone, we have a process of candidacy, interviewing, assessment and hiring:

1. Do We Need To Hire?
2. What Role Are You Trying To Fill?
3. Identifying Candidates for Your Team
4. Recruiting Candidates for Your Team

—–

Identifying Candidates

After understanding yourself and the role, the next step in building a staff team is to begin looking for individuals who might fit into your culture. Before we get into the details of searching, first let me highlight a few convictions about identifying candidates.

Beginning with Prayer

If there is one thing that I have learned in hiring people, it is that God is absolutely sovereign and the best thing we can do is pray for Him to act.  If you believe that you are in a place of needing to hire, begin to beg God that He would confirm that clearly by providing the called, qualified and gifted individual to join your team in that role.

Our Heavenly Father knows exactly what we need, love to give His children good gifts, and delights when we ask Him.  Additionally, being committed to prayer throughout the process will keep your firmly resolved in patiently waiting upon the Lord, rather than simply filling a role out of necessity or obligation.  Some of the most difficult times in leadership have come from being obedient to wait upon the Lord, but the team He has assembled is far better than any of my meager human efforts.

Always Looking for Good People

Adopting a posture of waiting is crucial, but so too is proactively pursuing opportunities the Lord may be putting in front of you.  I never want to miss a moment the Lord might be working, so I try to be diligently alert to His provision in circumstances and relationships.  Practically, I do this in two ways.

First, if someone is searching for a job and wants to talk to me, I try my absolute hardest to never say no.  Quite simply, I want to trust in God’s providence that the circumstance of someone reaching out to me may just be God’s nudging to consider this person.  At the very worst, I’ve been given an opportunity to encourage a brother or sister in Christ and provide some clarity in their calling, even if they would not be a good fit.

Second, regardless of available roles, we are always identifying candidates that would make a good fit for our team internally and outside our church community.  When you are on the lookout for candidates before a position is open, you typically have a good running list of people before the search ever begins.

Relationships Matter

Because we place such a high priority on operating as a family together, we highly value a prior relationship with a candidate and place a strong preference on knowing an individual over time.  Although you may receive an impressive resume, we’ve found that relationships matter far more with respect to long term performance and health.

Some folks would disagree with me on this particular issue, saying that I am limiting my available options.  While I would not discount a cold-call, a random resume, or a person I don’t know that is serving somewhere else, I have to focus my search somewhere.  The relationships that God has given me and my team, while small relative to the “open market”, represent the best possible place to search for those individuals who might fit well.  Secondly, those people we know have a much higher likelihood of joining our team for the sake of calling and culture, rather than a simple progression in their career.

When it comes to identifying candidates for positions, what have you found to be helpful to consider?