# Hiring zombie fundraisers  not!

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2013/06/07/hiring-zombie-fundraisers-not/
- Published: 2013-06-07T14:34:19+01:00
- Author: John Baguley

**When I worked at Amnesty, or was it at Friends of the Earth or maybe at the Medical
Foundation, I found that our new well organised recruitment process wasn’t working
in the way I intended. **

We had carefully written the fundraising job descriptions to fit one side of A4:
covering reporting relationships, a clear summary for the job and an agreed list
of specific tasks plus an “and anything else we ask you to do” get out clause. Then
we wrote a person spec which really showed the kind of person we wanted, and listed
how we would discover each characteristic either in the interview, from their CV
or with a test; though mostly it came down to the interview.

We set aside three-quarters of an hour for each interview with a fifteen minute 
break between candidates and set of maybe 8-10 questions; which related directly
to the person spec throwing in a human rights or a diversity question at the end.

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All that tied the interview process together with a clear explicable logic, however,
the problem was that I was faced with a set of people who answered all the questions
quite well; which meant we really fell back on who we liked best, which easily becomes‘
people like us’. Of course we diversified the interview panel but I was not a happy
bunny. Then I discovered how the zombies had slipped in – despite opinions to the
contrary zombies can be quite cunning, and the Human Resources people were dutifully
sending out the person spec with job description, so given a modicum of astuteness,
everyone could see the obvious lines of questioning and prepare themselves.

So, didn’t we ask for references? Of course we did and what a sense of relief it
was for employers to give a reference to a zombie who wasn’t much good at their 
job, even when they made it all the way in to work, but wasn’t actually so bad they
could be fired without a long haul through target setting, proof of incompetence
and the fear of an unlawful dismissal case – where is Lord Sugar when you need him?

Today you might be willing to give your right arm for a set of fundraisers with 
the right experience – though that would be a bit of a give-away in itself – but
losing the ability to really check potential employees experience and fit with the
work and organisation was a nightmare.

Have you read the biography of Howard Hughes or seen the film ‘The Aviator’? There
is tale told of how he interviewed for his director of finance. Instead of asking
the usual questions about finance he asked him questions like “How does a battleship
sight its guns?” so that he would have to think through problems instead of giving
an answer from memory. More recently Google has developed a system of questions 
with obscure answers or indeed no right answer at all, and finds that this enables
them to choose between a set of over-qualified over-achievers and find the right
person for the job. No zombies have been detected lurking at Google as far as I 
know.

“You are shrunk to the height of a penny and thrown into a blender. Your mass is
reduced so your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving inn sixty 
seconds. What do you do?” Quoted in ‘Are you smart enough to work at Google’ by 
William Poundstone.

Answering “Pray” won’t get you the job.

“You are surrounded by 25 zombies, half are drunk and half are sober but you can’t
tell which is which. Those with red hands have knives and those with staves are 
sober. Given two vampires to help you how high can you build a zombie pyramid?” 
Er, sorry that was a nightmare not a question.

I think most of us could improve our interview procedures by taking more time to
engage with our interviewees thought processes and step outside the rigid grid and
revolving door interview process, where candidates tend to blur into each other 
after a while and plausible zombies can sidle through undetected.

We may also find some of those candidates who don’t have the ‘right’ experience 
actually have experience which would enable them to come up to speed pretty quickly
and avoid us re-advertising only to end up with a new list of seemingly unemployables.
Maybe people who have done something other than climb a career ladder can cope with
the challenge of fundraising today better than the ‘right’ candidate, but we may
also need new tools to test these people’s suitability.

What so you think?

 

John Baguley 

CEO [International Fundraising Consultancy](https://www.internationalfundraisingconsultancy.com)

 

 

_Photo: [Zombies](http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-63594844/stock-photo-ottawa-canada-oct-unidentified-people-dress-as-zombies-walk-through-ottawa-for-the-annual.html)–
photo: Paul McKinnon at Shutterstock.com_