advertising: $0. Craigslist, an ad in our newsletter, emailing some job postings to local universities and non-profit job placement agencies, word of mouth. We aren’t hiring the pope, so we’ll find a worthwhile candidate.
reading applicants materials: $0. Nobody charges us to read their materials. Volunteer officers will do the first pass.
phone interviews $0. Cell phones have unlimited minutes.
in-person interviews $0. This is unbudgeted overhead. Yes, our executive director will have to do a few interviews. It’s part of her duties and she’s on a salary.
reference checking $0. Same as above.
negotiation and hiring: $0. We wouldn’t hire a candidate who charges us to negotiate.
orientation and HR paperwork: The payroll processor does the worst of this and we pay a few bucks for that. $30?
on-the-job training. Minimal. We’ll hire someone with the basic skills to do the job. Given that this discussion started talking about solicitors for a charity who generally quit or get fired in a few weeks, you can bet that they don’t offer intensive on-the-job training.
I forgot to list the background check fee: $7-13. We buy hundreds every year because we screen all our volunteers too. We’re satisfied with the quality of our services.
Heath aides have to a background check where I worked but this wasn’t done when I was first hired . It was a few years later when clients were having money and meds stolen , I have a clean record and wasn’t worried about having this done.
Does “phone screen” sound better? Yes, our manager calls candidates as a screening before bringing people in. We don’t get a lot of applicants and have to talk to people whose backgrounds aren’t exactly what we’re looking for, so the screen is to see if we’re even close as far as expectations of the job, if there are any dealbreakers, etc. Then we would spend the time to bring someone in, since they would be meeting with our team and a number of other administrators.
And yes, references are checked for the final candidates. Why wouldn’t you?