Dr. Glenn Miller, host of the Leadership and the Church podcast, and CEO of Miller Management, is joined by his colleague Tracy Hale, CEO at Youth Volunteer Corps.
Tracy and Glenn wrap up their discussion on Hiring in today’s episode. If you’ve missed the first three episodes, listen to part one: the intro, part two: success criteria & ministry descriptions, and part-three: recruiting and interviewing.
Assessing the Candidates
Utilize a Comparison sheet. Rows of candidates on top, and include job fit or company fit – look at the big picture. Then our host states to pray over the list before you decide.
Remember to not hire your Russian Doll counterpart. Our guest reminds us that hiring someone who doesn’t think like us can actually be a healthy thing for our organization.
When you are in the interview state, try not to think for the applicant. Don’t project your thoughts, feelings on them. Make the offer and let them decide on their own.
“Nobody is better than somebody,” Tracy warns. If you don’t have the right fit, be patient and wait for the right person. Trying to make a bad hire work is worse than having nobody in the seat.
5 C’s of Hiring:
Acid test for incoming folks. If there is ever a question or concern about a candidate, use the 5 C’s: Competence, Character, Chemistry, Commitment, and Called. To learn more about those, we encourage you to visit this post. Match these ratings of the 5 C’s with the matrix from the assessment you made at the beginning of this episode. Then, look at their total score after that.
Check up on References
Word of warning: call references. Most of the time you won’t be surprised what the reference says, but the one time you don’t call, will be the time you wished you had. If you are honest in why you are calling and ask for their help, they will be honest and willing too.
Some questions our hiring expert likes to ask:
- Find out how long they’ve known the candidate.
- Ask a question about what you need to know. “What can you tell me about their strengths?”
- Let the reference know the specifics of what that person could be doing for you. Then ask, do you think that would a good fit for them?
- Ask how the termination went and would they re-hire?
- What else could they tell you?
A personality assessment might also come in handy. Not based solely on the assessment, but as part of the total. Could help balance out your team.
Making the Final Offer
Our host talks about the three E’s they use when hiring at Miller Management. Those are: Expertise, Experience, and Education. Those three things together can help with your assessment of picking the candidate, but also on figuring out the salary range.
Our host and guest both agree that putting your best offer out there is the better option. Negotiating salaries can be a bad game, but be willing to keep the door open. You first need to figure out what’s best for the ministry; but also, where is your current staff? Maybe what the new candidate is asking for is the best for everyone else on the team as well.
Final words of wisdom
Thanks to Tracy that we went just went through the 6 steps of hiring. “Do you have any other words of wisdom before you go?” our host asks.
- Make sure your culture matches your mission.
- Pray before and during the process.
- As the leader, do the work to hire the best candidate.
We hope this series will help with your batting average in your ministry. And we encourage you to stick around for our next series: Balancing Grace with Accountability. Now that you’ve made these great hires, what do you do when a performance issue arises? We will spend next month tackling those issues.
Join the conversation, see behind the scenes, and learn more on our Instagram and Twitter.
Special thanks to our guest, Tracy Hale, and our master of all things podcasting, Chris Miller, for this introductory episode in The Discipline of Hiring in Ministry series.