IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

H U M A N C A P I TA L S T R AT E G Y

Module 3
Readings
2 HRS
AT T R A C T I N G &
H I R I N G TA L E N T
Case Study: How New Story
Charity Tackles Hiring
Hiring the right people for your organization
takes time. In the early days, New Story
consisted of just Alexandria and her two co-
founders. Everyone did a little of everything.
“We realized that, especially when you’re
small, each new hire has a significant effect
on the culture so you have to be really
careful to get it right. If you wait, you start to
see where the real holes are and to identify
what you need to have versus what you
want to have.”
Alexandria admits that having the discipline
to hire slow can be difficult. Right after they
came out of Y Combinator (the Silicon Valley
accelerator), the startup was getting a lot of
publicity and gaining momentum fast. They
decided to hire someone to manage PR and
marketing. “But we ended up not continuing
with that person,” Alexandria says, “We
realized that, at that stage, marketing and
PR were a nice-to-have, but not a core
competency. We also learned that we were
so overworked and overwhelmed that we
rushed that process and moved too quickly
to bring someone new onboard. Now we’ve
learned that no matter how long it takes, we
have to get to a point where it is a ‘Hell yes!
We have to hire this person.’ Otherwise, it’s a
‘Hell no.’”
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David from Ethiochicken agrees. One of the
things he thinks his company has gotten
uniquely good at over time is hiring people
who fit their culture. “We don’t get a lot of
misfits or people who don’t mesh,” he says,
“I’m not sure if it’s an instinctual thing
(among our hiring managers) or that the
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
culture is strong enough that we can sense
(who will fit). But I think we do a good job
of not hiring mediocre candidates if only
mediocre candidates are available. We’ve
learned that it’s better to build patience and
avoid panic when trying to get positions
filled.”
In the last two modules, we’ve explained
how your organization’s mission and
core values should be reflected in the
behaviors that your employees exhibit
every day. We’ve also covered how your
organizational structure should help your
employees collectively achieve success. In
this module, we’ll move on to discussing
recruiting, hiring, and onboarding. You’ll
learn some best practices for finding the
right candidates—and you’ll get to consider
whether “cultural fit” is at odds with hiring
for diversity and originality, or whether
these two goals can be balanced.
2
WHY RECRUITING AND
O N B O A R D I N G M AT T E R S

Why Recruiting and Onboarding Matters REFLECTION

Recruiting can be exciting. Fundamentally,
it’s about bringing in people who can help
your organization grow to the next level.
You should be hiring people who align with
your organization’s culture and values—but
who should also ideally be able to contribute
If you are already running a nonprofit or
have worked in one before, take a few
minutes and reflect upon the recruiting
and hiring processes that you have run or
experienced as a candidate.

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

original ideas that might end up changing + How did the managers assess “fit”
your organization for the better. You want to between the organization and the
hire people who are going to add value. potential hire? Do you think this
was effective? Why or why not?
Yet, because individual employees can
+ Have you ever hired the wrong
dramatically influence culture and results—
person or realized you were the
especially in a organization’s early days—
wrong person for a job you’ve
recruiting and hiring are also some of the
been hired for? If so, what would
most risk-intensive processes you will
you do differently?
undertake at the beginning of your journey.
If you get recruiting, hiring and onboarding + Have you ever worked with a

wrong, you can end up having wasted time, new hire who was not able to

money, and energy. Poor hiring decisions understand the bigger picture

can lead to high employee turnover, inflated of the organization’s mission

overhead costs and declines in workplace or goals? Have you ever seen

productivity. And, if you’re a leader working people who were underutilized in

in a resource-constrained environment, their role? Why do you think these

you have even more reason to deploy your misalignments happened?

limited time and budget thoughtfully. But + Have you ever worked in an
don’t worry. In this module, you’ll start organization that suffered from
to reflect on common pitfalls that social “groupthink” or lacked the
entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders face necessary level of dissonance
when recruiting and hiring so that you can to push each other’s thinking in
learn to how to avoid them. innovative ways? Why do you
think this happened?

3
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HOW THE TYPICAL RECRUITING
AND HIRING PROCESS UNFOLDS

These reflection questions should get on the job description. Internal

at some of the common pitfalls that stakeholders should understand
organizations of any size and scale face what the person being hired
at various points in their life cycle. The root will do, who they will report to,
causes of many of these issues often stem and what characteristics ideal
from recruiting and onboarding processes candidates might possess.
that have not been designed to be

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

+ Sourcing Candidates: You recruit
consistent or scalable. It’s time to fix that. If
as many qualified candidates as
you’re concerned that your organization
possible using multiple targeted
has not had time to think about these things,
channels.
it’s not too late to get started. The earlier
you can become intentional about your + Screening Candidates: You
recruiting and hiring practices, the better. efficiently and effectively
determine who is worth
How the Typical Recruiting interviewing and roll out a
and Hiring Process Unfolds consistent process to screen
We assume that almost everyone taking candidates.
this course has participated in a hiring + Selecting Candidates: You
process before—either as a candidate or interview and issue trial tasks
as an employer—so you’ll know that the to determine who among the
process typically breaks down into 4 phases, candidates is best fit for the
which our partner ReWork, a talent sourcing role and evaluate them against
organization, has helpfully summarized as: standardized criteria.

+ Scoping the Job: The future

This list is adapted from ReWork’s website.
manager will typically draft a
role and seek internal alignment

4
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BEFORE YOU SCOPE A JOB,
I D E N T I F Y Y O U R TA L E N T N E E D S
Ethiochicken follows the process outlined
in Who: The A Method for Hiring, a bestselling
book by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.
David, the CEO of Ethiochicken, highly
recommends it to other social entrepreneurs
and you can download the first chapter for
free. Smart and Street’s 4-part framework for
recruiting and hiring candidates is similar to
ReWork’s, but includes a crucial last step—
sell. Here are the steps they outline:
+ Scorecard: Create a document
that describes exactly what you
want a person to accomplish in
a role. “It is not a job description,
but rather a set of outcomes and
competencies that define a job
done well.”
+ Source: Find great people.
+ Select: “Use structured interviews
to gather relevant facts about
a person so you can rate your
scorecard.”
+ Sell: Persuade the right people to
join and “avoid losing your perfect
candidate at the eleventh hour.”
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We’ll walk through each of those phases in
more detail. However, remember, that there
is no one-size-fits-all solution. As you review
the materials in this module, you need to
actively imagine what process would work
best for your organization. You should also
stay open to making any changes to your
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
recruiting strategy in the future—based on
the lessons you learn and any fluctuations
in the market dynamics within/around your
organization (i.e. change in the type of talent
needed for your organization, competitive
landscape in the hiring market, etc.).
Before You Scope a Job,
Identify Your Talent Needs
Before you initiate a hiring process, you first
need to determine what roles you actually
need to hire for. This can be tougher that
it might seem. To figure out what new
talent he needs to bring onboard, David of
Ethiochicken recommends that the CEO
should actually do some self-examination.
“Some of the best advice I got is that the
CEO shouldn’t really do anything.” David
says, “If you find yourself doing a lot in a
certain area, it’s a good indicator you’re
probably thin there and you should hire for
5
IDENTIFY THE RIGHT
JOBS TO FILL
that role. As CEO, you should be guiding the
team, helping them solve the right problems,
making sure people are playing well together
and are happy, but in terms of the day-to-
day functioning of the organization, you
should be fairly hands-off. So look at where
you spend your own time and use that as an
indicator of what new roles and talents you
need to bring on.”
Read on to learn how New Story Charity
also develops a sense of what roles they
need to fill.
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Case Study: Identify the Right Jobs to Fill
One way New Story determines what
new roles they need to build into the
organization comes from looking at the
distinct skills their current team members
have and the percentage of time they
actually spend tapping into those abilities.
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
“You want to avoid a situation where you
have Steve Jobs doing the accounting,”
Alexandria says, “Sure, maybe he’d be
good at it, but that would not be using his
superpower and so it would ultimately hurt
the organization.”
6
S TA G E 1 : S C O P I N G T H E J O B O R
DEVELOPING A SCORECARD
To avoid having Steve Jobs balancing
the books, you need to look closely for
everyone’s core competencies. These are
the things that these people do better than
almost everyone else on the job market. For
example, one of New Story’s co-founders,
Brett is distinctly good at building large-
opportunity relationships, such as finding a
corporation to underwrite the construction
of an entire community. At the same time,
New Story’s crowdfunding model requires a
constant stream of smaller donations from
individuals. For a time, keeping this small-
scale fundraising was clogging up Brett’s
time, distracting him from being able to
bring in the big deals that he was uniquely
able to close. At that point, Alexandria says
the team realized that they needed to hire
someone to manage the grassroots growth
so that Brett could adequately execute his
“superpower.”
Similarly, they realized that their CTO was
incredibly passionate about developing
technology strategy, and less enamored
with troubleshooting individual lines of
code. “When he’s bogged down fixing bugs,
he is not only not leveraging his highest
potential, but he’s also not going to be happy
in his role,” Alexandria says. As a result,
she recommends looking at the distinctive
passions and strengths each person on your
team brings to their role. If their time is
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getting crowded with things that do not tap
into their strengths, that is often a good sign
that it might be time to hire someone new—
both to drive your organization’s continued
growth and to keep your current workforce
feeling that their roles are interesting and
meaningful.
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
STAGE 1: Scoping the Job or
Developing a Scorecard
Once you’ve recognized what roles you
need to hire for, it’s time to identify exactly
what competencies you’re looking for in the
person you hire.
At Ethiochicken, they have the hiring
manager create a “scorecard” for all new
positions they are hiring for. This scorecard
lists the outcomes they want the person
to achieve in the role. David says that
developing this helps “keep the hiring
process from becoming a popularity contest.
We try to make it as rigorous as possible.”
The A Method of Hiring defines a scorecard
as “a document that describes exactly what
you want a person to accomplish in a role.
It is not a job description, but rather a set of
outcomes and competencies that define a
job done well. By defining “A” performance
for a role, the scorecard gives you a clear
picture of what the person you seek needs to
be able to accomplish.”
7
S TA G E 2 :
S O U R C I N G C A N D I D AT E S

Look at this example adapted from The A assessing whether someone can achieve the
Method for Hiring to see why it might be more desired outcomes, not just whether they
effective to evaluate candidates against a possess the desired characteristics.
scorecard than against a job description:
STAGE 2: Sourcing Candidates
Option 1: Job Description Once you’ve defined the outcomes you want
+ Fast, strong swimmer someone to be able to achieve in the role,

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

then you have to source candidates who
+ Experienced with all swimming
can actually accomplish those objectives.
strokes
Depending on what market you’re operating
+ Competitive in, the supply of qualified candidates can
+ Team Player widely vary. For example, in New Story’s
case, they are headquartered in Silicon
Valley where there is lots of engineering,
Option 2: Scorecard
tech, and design talent, but luring that
+ Win three or more gold medals in
talent away from higher-paying tech
the Olympics across four or more
companies like Google and Facebook can
events
be tough. In Ethiochicken’s case, David
+ Break world and Olympic records has found that recruiting is “very hard” in
in at least 60% of races his Ethiopian markets. “We don’t get best
+ Win and break records when candidates from the open job market,” he
swimming for team events says, “Our best people are ones we’ve taken
right out of school and grown into their
positions. So as a result we are a very young
If you just use the job description to
company.”
evaluate outcomes, you could end up with a
high school swimming champion. But if you
David’s experience is corroborated by larger
use the scorecard that focuses on desired
trends across the sector. An Intellecap report
outcomes, you would end up hiring Michael
on growing social enterprises found that 70%
Phelps, the decorated Olympian. This is
of companies felt that recruiting qualified
obviously an exaggerated example, but when
staff was the most difficult HR challenge.
you’re thinking about who to hire, focus on

8
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S TA G E 2 :
S O U R C I N G C A N D I D AT E S

So what can you do? Obviously, there are no trying to hire an Operational
magic bullet solutions, but here are a few Associate, they identified that
best practices for sourcing candidates: they wanted someone who was
experienced with cross-cultural
+ Empower your current staff as communications and had worked
ambassadors and get them to with international organizations
recruit others. Offer a referral before. So they decided to

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

bonus. specifically target Kiva Fellows and
returned Peace Corps volunteers.
+ Enlist your board and investors to
“We got a ton of inbound requests
help with recruitment if they have
just by putting out job descriptions
connections in the markets where
through those two channels,”
you’re operating.
Alexandria says, “Similarly, if
+ Build a pipeline of young talent we’re hiring for a tech role, we
that you grow internally, like David make sure that it goes out in
has found to be effective. Hacker news and we’re looking for
+ Target the right channels. communities that already exist for
For each job, think about the people who are in tech and care
kinds of outcomes you want about social impact. We’ve learned
candidates to achieve and then that you don’t have to get your job
think about places where people description out to every channel—
might have done those things you just want to get it out to the
before. Then target those referral right channels. And those may be
channels in a dedicated way. For different for every job.”
example, when New Story was

9
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S TA G E 3 : S C R E E N I N G A N D
S E L E C T I N G C A N D I D AT E S

STAGE 3: Screening and that your company survives. It can also be

Selecting Candidates
In the ideal scenario, you’ve targeted all
the right channels and been flooded with
resumes of qualified candidates. Now, how
do you choose the right person to bring on
board? Think back to the reflections you
a powerful recruiting tool that motivates
other “A” players to join because they see a
company where people are passionate about
their work and dedicated to a mission. But
how exactly do you screen for people who
will be effective culture builders instead of

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

completed earlier and consider again: detractors? How do you evaluate “cultural
fit” while recruiting a workforce that will
still be diverse and bring their own original
+ Who were most of your successful
ideas?
hires? Who were some of your
least successful hires?
Importantly, you also need to avoid having
+ What made them successful or “cultural fit” become a euphemism for
unsuccessful on the job? hiring from the same “old boys club” or
+ At what point did you learn that alumni network. These questions are real,
they were going to be successful or important, and challenging. To build a strong
unsuccessful in their role? organization, you need to screen for people
who are committed to your mission and
+ How was the recruitment process
who will take ownership of your values, but
structured to get you both
your workforce will also be stronger if you
successful and unsuccessful
can hire people from diverse backgrounds
candidates and what would you
and experiences. When companies are more
do differently to optimize for
diverse, they’re also better able to anticipate
success?
market trends, tap into new customer
segments, surface original ideas, and avoid
In Module 1, we covered why culture and being caught flatfooted.
values are so critical to building a social
enterprise. Having a strong culture can keep You should not screen by cultural fit just by
people motivated through tough times. It asking: “would I enjoy spending time with
can help you present a more compelling this person?” And you can’t get a good read
brand to the world and translate into a more on cultural fit just by reviewing a candidate’s
robust bottom line and increase the odds resume or CV.

10
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S TA G E 3 : S C R E E N I N G A N D
S E L E C T I N G C A N D I D AT E S

Instead, you need better strategies to gain
a sense of how an employee with engage
with the dynamics of your organization. In
the workshop for this module, you’ll work to
develop an interview guide that you can use
to screen for the right types of candidates.
and perspectives, leading to better decision
making and problem solving. Diversity
can improve the bottom line of companies
and lead to unfettered discoveries and
breakthrough innovations. Even simply
being exposed to diversity can change the
way you think.”

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

As we mentioned before, while cultural fit
is important, you shouldn’t confuse it with REFLECTION
hiring people who are all the same. Some + What does diversity mean to your
companies confuse these two things—but organization? Keep in mind that in
it’s important to avoid this mistake. In the context of social enterprises,
fact, hiring for diversity is essential. As diversity should often go beyond
a recent New York Times article stated: mere demographic differences in
“For jobs involving complex decisions and things like race, gender, or age.
creativity, more diverse teams outperform You’ll also want to attract original
less diverse ones. Too much similarity can thinkers or perceive the world in
lead to teams that are overconfident, ignore novel ways so that they can help
vital information and make poor (or even achieve breakthrough innovations
unethical) decisions.” or tackle systemic challenges.

+ Read Adam Grant’s “Interviewing

Companies must have a diversity of
to Hire Trailblazers, Nonconformists
perspectives or they will risk being exposed
and Originals.” How do the
to vulnerabilities like blind spots in
practices described in this article
decision making or the inability to relate
compare to your current hiring
to customers. As a Scientific American article
practices?
put it: “Diversity enhances creativity. It
encourages the search for novel information

11
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S TA G E 3 : S C R E E N I N G A N D
S E L E C T I N G C A N D I D AT E S
Case Study on Screening and Selecting
Candidates: New Story Charity
At New Story, once the team has recruited
a volume of candidates, they begin the hard
work of identifying the right person for the
role. One strategy Alexandria recommends
is having candidates submit a two-minute
video as part of their application. “You can
assess communication and how someone
expresses themselves quickly,” she explains,
“Can they clearly articulate why they want
to join New Story and why they’re a fit for
the role? In two minutes, you should be able
to get that.”
After reviewing the videos and applications,
she typically conducts a standard
30-minute phone screen with candidates
before assigning them a performance
task. “Typically the task is actual work,”
Alexandria says, “For the last person I hired,
I thought through what they were going to
be doing in their first few weeks and gave
them a real assignment. So then when the
person started, they already had something
to work on. We also give them access to all
of the feedback the team had about their
assignment. That creates transparency and
enables learning right from the start.”
After someone passes through the phone
screen and performance task, New Story
brings the candidate in for one-on-ones
and team interviews. They’re asked lots
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of scenario-based questions designed to
assess how well the candidate aligns with
the organizational values. For example,
to assess the “team of founders” value,
Alexandria will pose the question: “Describe
a time at work where you have done
something outside of your job description.”
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
Finally, the top candidate reaches a
“capstone” phase where they ask the
individual to come and spend a whole day
with the team including doing real work
and having lunch. “Having them work in
our space is important not only for us, but
also for the candidate,” Alexandria says, “We
want them to try the dress on before they
buy it, so to speak. We want them to figure
out if they’re comfortable in our office.”
New Story also places an emphasis on
having other team members participate in
the interview process by doing things like
taking the candidate to lunch or visiting a
museum with them so that they can assess
whether the person is someone they would
genuinely get along with. “Because we’re
still so small, the organization is still like a
family,” Alexandria says, “So everyone should
be able to have a vote as to who joins the
family. We hire people whose opinions we
really value. So we reinforce to the team that
we expect them to step up as founders and
have a say in who else joins.”
12
S TA G E 3 : S C R E E N I N G A N D
S E L E C T I N G C A N D I D AT E S

EXERCISE: AVOID UNCONSCIOUS BIASES

Review the checklist below to make sure
unconscious biases are not creeping
into your hiring process. The following list
summarizes many typical biases. Reflect on
what these might look like in the context of
What can you do to minimize the risk of
practicing these biases? After carrying out
the previous self-reflection, you can think
about various interventions you could carry
out in your company to help reduce bias,

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

your organization. such as:

+ CONFIRMATION BIAS: tendency + Have you considered “blind

for people to seek out information auditions” or skills-based tests that
that conforms to their preexisting allow you to assess applicants’
views, and ignore information that skills and experiences without
goes against their views seeing anything about their
personal information?
+ IN-GROUP BIAS: tendency to favor
members of your own “group” + Have you developed a rubric
or scorecard to rate applicants
+ PROJECTION BIAS: thinking that
rather than having interviewees
others have the same priority,
submit gut feelings?
attitude or belief as you do
+ Is there a structure that
+ SELECTIVE PERCEPTION: the
interviewers can use to share
process of perceiving what
notes taken from the interviews?
we want to when taking in
information, while ignoring stimuli + Check out this additional
that contradicts our beliefs or resource: Harvard Implicit Biases
expectations (help uncover your hidden biases
against people of different gender
+ STATUS QUO BIAS: a preference for
or ethnicities)
the current state of affairs)

13
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S TA G E 4 : “ S E L L I N G ”
C A N D I D AT E S O N T H E J O B
STAGE 4: “Selling” Candidates on the Job
Once you find the best candidate for the job,
how do you “sell” them on the opportunity
or convince them to join your social
enterprise? The social sector cannot always
compete with the private sector in terms of
compensation, but as most people taking
this course can probably attest, there are
many other rewards that can come with
working for a purpose-driven enterprise.
David of Ethiochicken reflects, “We don’t try
to trap people into joining our company with
golden handcuffs. We’ve found that offering
huge salaries and bonuses is not required.
We can attract and retain great people if we
offer a good work environment, if people
feel like they are growing and learning, if
they are having fun, if they care about the
company’s mission, and if they’re being paid
so that they feel like they’re valued. Then
you don’t need to try to lock people in with
strictly monetary incentives.”
In the following case study, Alexandria will
talk through how New Story convinces the
right people to join their team.
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Case Study: New Story Charity
Alexandria says that the most significant
thing New Story offers prospective
employees is growth potential. “You want to
excite people about the opportunity to work
on a team with an ambitious mission and
the opportunity to be a leader in that effort,”
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
Alexandria says, “In a small organization,
you have the opportunity to exceed your
experience. The growth potential is major.
When we were hiring our Impact Manager
we told her that she could definitely go
work for a more-resourced team, but she
also had the potential to build something
from the ground up at New Story and be the
one positioned to deliver the TED talk a few
years down the line. That was exciting to
her.”
As a non-profit, New Story Charity is unlike
other startups in that it can’t offer equity to
their employees. Yet Alexandria actually sees
that as an advantage in the hiring process.
“Because we’re not giving equity and paying
as much, we have a self-filtering mechanism
to find the people who are looking to achieve
social impact. A lot of companies in Silicon
Valley say that they’re changing the world.
But when you’re a nonprofit, you naturally
screen for the people for actually care about
impact and not just profit.”
14
S TA G E 4 : “ S E L L I N G ”
C A N D I D AT E S O N T H E J O B
That said, Alexandria has said that she’s
learned to fight the stigma of high salaries
in the non-profit sector. “The team is the
most valuable asset to any organization,”
she explains, “In nonprofits penny-pinching
feels natural because you’re not generating
revenue but I’ve come to believe it’s a get-
what-you-pay-for-situation. We’re already
filtering for the kind of people who care
about social impact and don’t put a high
salary as the first criteria in their job search.
But there is a threshold of people knowing
their worth. You’re not going to be able to
get extremely talented people if they can’t
make ends meet.”
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In fact, New Story’s board has actually told
them they have to spend more on talent. “A
happy team is one that doesn’t constantly
have to think about finances and can use
that energy to perform better at work,”
Alexandria observes, “There is a stigma
associated with comfortable salaries in the
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
non-profit space, but that’s to the detriment
of our sector. Top talent is going to be what
helps us achieve our theory of change more
effectively. Investing in people should be
a top priority so we work hard to make
resources in our budget available.”
15
STRUCTURING AN OFFER
& C O M P E N S AT I O N
Structuring an Offer & Compensation
Once you’ve found the best person, you need
to make a competitive offer—which can
include both monetary and non-monetary
compensation. Compensation is often a
controversial topic in the nonprofit world,
and it can be a particularly stressful topic
for small nonprofits and social enterprises
who want to focus their limited financial
resources on creating impact. However, this
is a situation where strategic, reasonable
investment is key in establishing your
ability to create sustainable impact. This
section will focus on how organizations
with constrained financial resources can
approach offering compensation that is both
appropriate and competitive.
As Bridgespan’s former Executive Search
Senior Director Karen DeMay states, “most
people seeking employment in the nonprofit
sector expect that they will make less
money than if they worked in a for-profit.”
It is important to remember that people
working in (or seeking to work in) the social
sector are already choosing to balance their
desire to work on a social mission with
their other expectations, such as those
about compensation. Many employees
won’t expect you to precisely match the
compensation opportunities for a similar
role in the private sector.
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But you’ll still need to create compensation
packages that are competitive when
considered holistically. In order to attract
top talent, you need to be financially
competitive with similarly-sized social
impact organizations, and to create
comparable appeal as compared to for-
+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy
profits competing for the same talent.
This starts with emphasizing your social
mission, and presenting it as a key
component of any offer. This should be
presented along with a compensation
package that, while not necessarily the
highest available for that type of position,
remains reasonable and livable. Consider
the ways that you can provide other benefits
that contribute to the holistic appeal of an
offer, even if the salary number isn’t as high
as possible. In this section, we’ll discuss
all of the components of a compensation
package: salary, other forms of monetary
compensation, and non-monetary forms
of compensation, like vacation time and
flexibility.
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STRUCTURING AN OFFER
& C O M P E N S AT I O N

Structuring Salaries Non-Monetary Compensation

Molly Graham, a former executive at
Facebook, suggests these key tips for
considering how to structure salary offers
in a startup environment that can useful for
nonprofits and social enterprises too:
In structuring a compensation offer, money
is not the only thing you have to offer.
Consider whether you can be more generous
in other areas of a compensation package,
such as:

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

+ Create a formula. Before you + Relocation assistance
talk to any specific individual,
+ Housing assistance
decide what you’ll offer for each
level at your organization (junior, + Transportation assistance

mid-level, senior, VP, etc). This + Medical, dental, and vision

strategy also addresses the issue insurance
of compensation gaps between
+ Life insurance
employees doing similar work.
+ Retirement savings plans
+ Use this formula to avoid
negotiation—you’ve clearly + Flexible working hours
defined what you can offer + Remote work options
financially.
+ An occasional leave of absence
+ Make it clear that you’ll revisit
+ Vacation time
compensation only once or twice
a year. + Family leave

+ Don’t make exceptions. + Tuition reimbursement

+ Learning/training opportunities

17
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STRUCTURING AN OFFER
& C O M P E N S AT I O N

Overall, designing competitive compensation Conclusion

offers in a nonprofit or social enterprise
context is about approaching compensation
as broader than salary, emphasizing and
understanding the role of your mission
in your candidates’ decisions, and finding
ways to engage with the specific needs and
Congratulations. You’ve finished Module 3.
In the next Module, we’ll discuss
Performance Management. How do you help
the people that you’ve hired set and reach
ambitious goals?

+ACUMEN Human Capital Strategy

goals of the people that you want to hire.
Approach compensation as a conversation,
even when you can’t negotiate on salary—
money isn’t the only thing you have to offer.

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