 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you're joining us today for another episode of the nonprofit show, we are so glad to have you here. Today we're talking about nonprofit staffing and this isn't ask me anything popular demand because last time our guest, Dana Skirlak was on and Dana Sers is the director of recruitment at Staffing Boutique. We had tons of questions from one of you, our loyal viewer and guest and so we decided to capture those questions and use them for another episode. So before we dive into these questions, we wanna remind you who we are. Julia Patrick is having a much deserved day off and I hope she's having a fantastic time, hopefully in her garden because this is the time of year to definitely spend some time in the garden. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm her sidekick, Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group, honored to be here alongside for the show and all that we're able to offer. Hey, if you missed any of our episodes, you can find them on many streaming platforms. Those include Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, as well as Vimeo. For those of you that enjoy your podcast like I do, you can also listen to the nonprofit show wherever you stream your podcast. We want to give a huge shout out to our amazing sponsors including Staffing Boutique that has been with us from the very, very beginning. So very honored to have them with us. I also wanna give a shout out to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Be Generous, Your Part-Time Controller, Nonprofit Nerd, Nonprofit Thought Leader and another well-deserved shout out to Staffing Boutique. So glad to have our sponsors with us. Today we have, again, Dana, you've been sitting so patiently and I'm so excited to have you back. Dana Skirlock, Director of Recruitment and Staffing Boutique, welcome. Thank you so much for having me again. It's a pleasure to speak with you. Absolutely, for those that maybe are just hearing about Staffing Boutique, would you share just a little bit of time and tell us a little bit about what Staffing Boutique does? Oh, sure. So we've been open for over seven years. Katie Warnock is my long-term colleague and CEO and founder of the company. And we are a small four-person staff staffing firm that works exclusively with nonprofit organizations. Katie and I actually come from a background of Staffing for Nonprofits at some other agencies before she broke out on our own. And so we bring over 20 years of experience, each of us in staffing for this particular industry. And we handle searches everywhere from short-term entry-level positions all the way up through C-suite executive searches. And we handle both temp, temp-to-perm placements in addition to direct hire as well. And our clients are mainly in New York City metro area. So that includes the five boroughs, upstate, Westchester, in New Jersey as well, Long Island when they come up. But definitely the highest concentration of nonprofits ends up being within the five boroughs and specifically- Fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. And I see constant post from Katie herself and the staffing boutique on LinkedIn. And so if you're not following Katie or you're not following Dana or staffing boutique, go ahead and do that. It's amazing what they share and what's out there. So I shared a little bit earlier. Today what we're doing with Dana is something a little different. So you know, on Fridays, we reserve that for our ask and answer episode. But what we found is Dana is just a wealth of knowledge. And there's a lot of questions that come in. And so we decided to put her in the hot seat. We're going to ask these questions that came in again from you, our viewers, our listeners. And we're going to start off with this first one. We have four questions. Hopefully we'll make them through all four Dana. Yeah, no pressure, no pressure. So the first one is how can you initiate the issue of salary scale with a reluctant manager? Wow, I mean, listen, uncomfortable conversations are not fun for anyone. I think we have to, as the job seeker or as the employee going to a boss, remember that your boss is a human being too. They've maybe had to have these uncomfortable conversations with their managers in the past. So maybe that'll help alleviate some people's fear when approaching that. But anxieties aside, I think the strategy in terms of coming to an organization and addressing issues of either pay and equity or performance-based raises is something that, if you do your research on your end, I think you can approach it in a very professional and well thought out way and hopefully have a better shot at success. Because organizations definitely don't want to have to rehire for a position, retrain someone. You know, I was talking to my father one day because he was in chemical engineering but he worked as a manager and a director for a very long time. And he was saying, you know, I really think it takes about a year for, especially like middle management and above for you to get the same workload from a person once they start a job. So, you know, between all the training, if it's a comprehensive, you know, management level position, it may take months before the person is really up and running fully. So the onus is on the organization to retain their staff, you know, long story short. So I think that as a job holder, the way you can approach it is number one, researching the market. So looking into what the average salaries are at similar sized organizations or companies, similar titles, maybe checking out on idealists or Indeed or LinkedIn, like different jobs that are similar to your title, seeing how much they're offering. Just to ballpark, like, is this even something that makes sense? Like, yes, I want a raise. Why do I want a raise? Like, is it based on my performance that I've excelled in the position? Is it because of longevity? Is it because of, it's that the job is placed under market from what you're seeing from the other jobs that, you know, or from research that you're being able to review. So identifying the kind of the why you're asking for a raise, essentially. And then once you're armed with that information, I think you can then approach it depending on the situation. So for example, if I felt I was really killing it at work and I think I deserve a raise, I would compile all that information and present that to my manager and say, here's why based on my performance, I believe I, you know, would be a candidate that you would want to retain and provide a raise for to keep me retained. I think a good way to segue with those things is just to ask for a performance review. If you don't have an organization, and I've heard this from candidates too, that they don't feel like they have a lot of built-in feedback coming from their management. And so you can push for that on your end to say like, hey, every six months I want to sit down and have a performance review with my manager. Is that something that we can commit to? Everybody has an hour in their schedule to do that, you know, and that hours that are set aside for, as a manager for a professional development of your staff. So in the midst of a conversation about your performance, you know, we can then talk about, you know, you can broach the subject of, now I wanted to talk about like my compensation and hear the reasons. And, you know, depending on how the performance review goes, you know, you may be able to leverage for a higher salary in that meeting immediately or at least get some more information about what they're looking for from you to then be able to push for that. If it's a longevity issue, you know, this will be the other side of it. If you've been with the organization for several years and, you know, you feel like there haven't been incremental raises that are commensurate with the value you're bringing to the position, that's totally something again that you can, I would approach it from that way and say like, hey, you know, refilling my position obviously would take a long time to get the person, you know, up to my level when I've been here for five years, you know, here's monetarily how giving me a raise would be cheaper than hiring any person, you know, if you are met with a lot of opposition. So I think just coming in and instead of just asking for a general raise, like researching the market, having, you know, a background of information about your experience with the organization and your longevity, where you stand with your performance, and then having an idea about how much of a raise you're looking for. So if you wanna, you know, maybe ask for a 10% raise but you'd settle for 5%, you know, you start with that and then hopefully you can either be met with that or negotiate down from there. Great tips, Dana, and you make it sound so simple. Right. Which is, you know, why you're in this position, definitely, but this is your zone of genius and great tips and so many different scenarios here. I know there's a lot going on in our marketplace and so this is a great question to have, you know, our viewers and listeners have access to. So thank you for that. We're gonna jump to our next question. Jordan, I know it sounds easier. It's easier said than done, a lot of these things, but. But as you said, they too are humans and they too have gone through a similar situation and I think that's a really good thing to remember. Yeah. Yes. All right, well, let's. What I'm thinking in general is it's not just about the organization evaluating you. It's also the candidates evaluating the organization and deciding if they wanna work there. So. Keep that in mind. Yeah. Let's move into salary equity. How can you encourage salary equity between comparable positions? I feel like this is kind of tags onto the other question. Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, I think that sort of the move towards equity is a good one, of course, as a woman, as a person of color, obviously I'm excited to see those things. I think that transparency is something that a lot of the workforce is pushing employers to move towards. So for example, when we started working, it was like you wouldn't know what the person who sits in the desk next to you is making. And you guys might have the same title, you may have started at the same time, they trained you at the same time, and you just have no idea what they're making and maybe you go out to lunch and find out, like, oh, that person's making $5,000 more than me. So I think employers have to keep in mind, number one, people do speak to each other. So things that are attempted to be kept under wraps, some things, of course, do need to be confidential, but there's other things that are in the interest of transparency, I think encouraging companies and organizations to just have tiers of salaries for certain positions so that there is equity between everybody who's an associate, depending on their longevity with the organization may vary the salary a bit, but like a starting associate makes X or a starting manager makes Y. Now, I think with some structures within companies and organizations, that may be impossible just depending on how much experience the person brings into the job. Is it entry level versus like, we required a few years of experience and one person has one year and one person has three, of course the person with three years may get a better offer. So I think like keeping all of those things in mind, but also making the effort towards transparency is something that the industry, not just nonprofit, but in general the workforce is moving towards. You as an individual, obviously like, it's gonna be hard going up against an organization that is reluctant to make those types of equitable changes. If you're working for a nonprofit, though, most likely that's not the case. I hope they're a mission-driven institution that has already been making strides towards how can we improve our equity within the organization so that it mirrors the mission that we're looking to accomplish. And so I think you hopefully are going to be met with, if you approach upper management or you're a direct supervisor with, thoughts about making salary more transparent and equitable for everybody within the organization and how that effect would kind of trickle down to you, which is ultimately why the person is probably bringing it up. I think should be met with a lot of interest from, I see people starting diversity, equity and inclusion departments all the time and hiring for those types of roles. Maybe that's a person that can have an open door policy where people can go to them and talk to them about how to move the organization forward. Maybe talking to the organization about, you know, designating a deputy, maybe a person who speaks on behalf of the overall workforce about some of these equity issues so it doesn't feel like one person that has to go up against the entire organization. You know, how that would work within each institution obviously may vary, but, you know, I'm hoping that there are enough people within the industry that have that hutzpah and have that, I know a lot of candidates that just sort of have no problem approaching people about issues and advocating for themselves. So, you know, I'm hoping that there's enough people within that industry to help move us all forward and that's gonna trickle down to, you know, even the more reticent of us that, you know, aren't as comfortable having those types of conversations, but I think it has to come from like management down. And I love, I mean, even the simplest when you were posting a new position, having the salary range of that, you know, new position, that one is transparency from the beginning, but what it does also, and I know you know this Dana, is it also shows the staff that's currently in that position, what the new hiring range is. And so that opens up conversation, the ability to be a little bit more transparent and maybe, you know, it's just, it's time. I'm gonna say it's time for this and we have to keep moving this forward. So I appreciate all that you shared here, you know, especially as a female and a person of color, thank you so much Dana, for all that you do to advocate for this as well, because we really, we need to move this forward, but okay, let's jump into this next one. How can you balance the need for remote work for staff that is client facing and versus the client, sorry, versus the non-client facing? So essentially looking at, you know, a nonprofit organization, you have some staff that, you know, they really just do everything kind of behind the curtains, as I would say, not interacting directly programmatically or directly with the client. So how do you balance this, you know, remote work for all of your staff? Sure, again, a new frontier that we're all in because, you know, when I started recruiting, you know, in the 1950s, it was, you know, remote work was something that we didn't even have to deal with and now it's become more prevalent and then of course, since the pandemic, it's like rampant. So I think we're all like catch up, which is totally fine. And I think that that's a really great consideration for managers is the amount of remote work, is it proportional to how much front facing work the person has to do? Like, is it an organization where remote work is even possible? Like I work with a lot of charter schools and educational programs where they're doing in-person instruction, there's really no one that can just work from home the entire time. Except for maybe, you know, a very internal staff like finances or something like that. But even then, I think a lot of them are in the office. So I think number one is evaluating your organization because the call of the marketplace is to have remote options. That's what every worker is looking for. You won't be competitive to hire candidates without, you know, offering that. There are a few industries like schools, universities where like that's not gonna be possible. So like, you know, them aside, you know, I think the managers of the organizations have to then say, okay, what is gonna be our hybrid, you know, policy from here on out? And then once you decide that you are gonna move towards a hybrid schedule where people are able to do remote work at least part of the time, taking it department by department and maybe getting with those, you know, line managers and discussing what's gonna be the most productive. Like are there days where everybody does need to be in the office? I think some of the organizations that do it really well, what they have is a structure of like two or three days that everybody can work from home, but everybody converges on like, let's say Wednesdays and Thursdays and everybody's in the office together, important line items that have to be done in person in terms of meetings and just like team building, things like that, they all happen during that time. I think it gets a little bit wonkier when it's like people are coming and going and you know, people are working from home, some people are in the office and it's just nobody's crossing paths. I think that that's somewhat less successful, but then I understand sometimes people are working around family schedules. So like, you know, having some people out on Monday and some people not might be a necessity depending on the personal situation of your staff. But in general, like if I could throw out some advice, yeah, I think having a set schedule of if it's gonna be hybrid, there are certain days that you work from home and there are certain days that you come into the office. So it cuts down on the contact time, which is what we're trying to avoid is, you know, infecting each other with COVID and flu and these other communicable diseases and hopefully no further ones, but you never know. So I think that it's, but having a consistent schedule where people are convening, I think that that can work very well. Now there are some customer based positions where it's gonna be difficult to do that and there are gonna be some people that have to be in the office more than others. I think they just, number one, the workers have to understand maybe during the initial interview process, like, hey, this is a front facing job. There are gonna be other people that are able to work from home more often and just screening people to make sure that they're comfortable with that and that they're okay with that. And then maybe incentivizing them in other ways. Like for example, if it's busy season and they had to work front of office, you know, four days a week out of five for, you know, a couple of months, maybe for the month of January, when you're slow, they get to fully work from home, you know, and not come in at all. There's, you know, you could maybe make or maybe only once a week they have to come in when it's the slow period, you know, you can kind of play with those things and make it as enticing as possible. But yeah, I definitely think thinking about as an organization or an institution, thinking about who is getting to work from home, how often and how it relates to their specific job function is gonna, and incentivizing people through it, through the remote work is gonna be really important because it's just even entry level candidates, you know, that I'm speaking to, which, you know, we kind of feel like, oh, okay, they're entry level, they should, you know, they're fresh out of college, they should be willing to kind of do whatever. That's not the case, you know, people are definitely making, advocating for themselves and they are looking for options to work from home. So we, I think us as managers and we just have to make sure that we're thinking about those things as we're hiring new staff and as we're dealing with our incumbent staff, like how do we make the hybrids go, like adding time for them to have- That's some solid advice, because you're right, it is our marketplace now. It absolutely is. And whether it's a new hire coming in or an existing hire looking to use that as a negotiation opportunity currently, right? Like again, it kind of goes back to, do you wanna retain your staff, especially your staff that's doing a phenomenal job? And this is part of the workplace currently, so. Okay, we've got one more question of today's episode. We do have a viewer that sent in a question, so we'll see if we can get to that one. I just wanna recognize that there's one more in the waiting. How long is it taking for candidates to be offered positions in this current market? It could never be fast enough, but I do think that people are, and by people, I mean like hiring managers, people in a position to be offering roles to candidates. I think they're getting the message. It's been probably what, a solid year since we've been 100% back up and running post-pandemic. And I think it's finally getting through to a lot of hiring managers that the time just has to be truncated from the time that you're posting an ad, the time that it takes you to get back to candidates has to be shorter. I found that if I don't contact a candidate within maybe like three to four days, maybe a week from the initial time that they apply, I don't hear back from them, which means they either get scooped up by another opportunity or my email is just, they've forgotten about the job that they applied to or it's just so far down in their inbox or what have you. There's always outliers to that, but for the most part, it's like you really have to call people right away. So what I would say to truncate your hiring time, being organized with your recruitment is what's gonna help you get there. So like, I think sometimes people can get inundated with resumes and then they do, I do this for a living and I get inundated with resumes and get overwhelmed. So I understand if you're a hiring manager and you've got a full-time job and then on top of that, you have to hire for two positions in your department, that can be very stressful. But having an organized system, so whether that's going to HR and saying, hey, I need help being more organized with the search, how can we streamline this process? If you're a line manager and having to deal with hiring, human resources, thinking about how you're doing benefits and compensation and employee relations and all this other stuff, your recruitment process though, the more organized that is and formalize, the better able you're gonna be able to hire quickly. That means getting back to people when they apply right away. That means setting up automated messages so that people who maybe you're not interested in right away, but hopefully they do get a response back from you and in any form is helpful. It helps retain people to apply again to you. It helps your workplace value like out there in the market to candidates improve when you have those like, we call them like touches, like that you actually contact the person. So I would say, thinking about how to get that initial contact with candidates, making sure that job postings are transparent and comprehensive and really explain well what the job is. And then once you've got them in the door and you are interested in someone, if you're gonna do thinking about ahead of time with the hiring manager, what the process is gonna be and sticking to it. So if it's gonna be a Zoom interview and then an in-person with the entire team, making sure that everybody is on the same page with that before you go into the search, because that's one of our questions when we intake a job as a firm, we immediately say, okay, what's the process for this? So we can for more than candidates before I even send their resume, they know what the process is gonna be. And that just helps steer us and streamline it. The entire team knows that that's what's gonna happen. So hopefully we can get the Zoom call done within a few days. And then shortly thereafter have the in-person and then they're ready to make a decision from there. And having a timeline, like we need to, I would say like from the time the person applies, within two weeks they need to be finding out if they have the job or not. Is kind of the self-life, I would think it makes a lot of sense. Obviously, people go through busy periods at work and it's event season for nonprofits, so I understand that a lot of people are swamped. But theoretically, two weeks would be a great turnaround time. And so how do you organize to do that would be ideal. And for temp jobs, obviously that's gonna be even shorter because for temporary work, the process should be fairly less than for something that's direct hire. Much quicker. Well, I love that. I love your very candid answer in the very beginning, I know that it's still longer than it needs to be. Yeah. And to quantify that at that two weeks, I think is really helpful. Okay, Dana, let's see if we can squeeze it in this viewer question. Yeah, and it's coming from anonymous, which after reading it, I totally understand why. So they're wanting to know what is considered a good salary or a good range for a communications and development staff, specifically in the Seattle area, at a human services nonprofit. Wow. So what would you guide this person with some insight? Listen, I love the specificity. Seattle is not a market that I've worked in before in terms of cost of living to like, looked into that. However, it's a big city. So I'm assuming that it may be on par with like Chicago, San Francisco, something like that. So a communications professional, is it, are we talking associate level that they mentioned? They didn't mention. So communications development. Okay, so, I mean, the first thing I would say is clarify what level you're speaking about. So if we're talking about an assistant, it's very different than an associate or a manager or director. I wouldn't say that there's like a slated amount that you should look for. I think that you should do some research as to other organizations that are similar, that are in the same geographic area and see if you can find out what postings they have up and what salaries they have posted. That may not be information that they have transparently available. And I understand that too. I would say that for New York, and hopefully that helps, somewhat similar to Seattle, for an associate, I would say 50 is like the bare minimum for like an assistant or associate. Like when I first started recruiting, 40K was what like most assistants were getting in and development, marketing, or communications at a nonprofit. I think that that's really notched up to around 50. For like an associate or manager level, 60 to 80. And then for a director, depending on the size of the department, for a large organization, we could be looking at like 120 to 150. For a smaller organization, maybe 80 to 100 or something like that. But again, these are very loose terms. What I like to do in terms of salary is talk to the candidate about what it is that they would like to be making, first of all, because that's gonna influence where you should apply. Don't even apply to jobs that you feel like you wouldn't be happy if you were currently making 85 and then you move to another job that's making 85 or less than that. Let's just be aggressive about, and I don't mean aggressive in a negative way, but aggressive about like advocating for yourself and only pursuing jobs that really makes sense for where you wanna be career-wise and compensation-wise long-term. So that's what I would advise anonymous to do is do some market research and then think about financially where they're at. And then when you're going in for applications, just let people know upfront, this is what I'm looking for. And it doesn't have to be an exact amount. I would always give a range. I love that. And thank you for addressing this, a time sensitive question today. I also advocate, and I'm not in HR, so I can't pretend to be Dana or Katie, but I would always say like, if there's a posting salary, as you apply to that, I would maybe even ask, is this negotiable? Is this hiring salary or the range negotiable? So that you know, as Dana was saying, if that's something that we should even consider to apply to because you don't wanna waste anyone's time. Dana, speaking of time, my friend, you are amazing, a total rock star, so grateful to have you here. Again, for those of you watching or listening or maybe podcast, Dana Skirlock has joined us today. She's with Staffing Boutique. She serves as their director of recruitment. And as you could tell from today's questions that she answered, she is just an amazing person that has so much wisdom and content when it comes to this sector. So Dana at StaffingBoutique.org, excuse me. And then the web address, I'm sorry, is StaffingBoutique.org and Phenomenal Herb, Katie Warnock, and you said there's two other staff members there at Staffing Boutique. Just Phenomenal Team, truly. We're so grateful to have them. Also as a sponsor of the nonprofit show from the very, very beginning. Again, thanks to our amazing presenting sponsors that allow us to have these conversations. So thank you to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Be Generous, Your Part-Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, where Dana is nonprofit thought leader and the nonprofit nerd. We really wouldn't be able to have these conversations like we've had today with Dana if it weren't for our amazing sponsors. And again, we did today's episode purely from your questions. So we had so many viewers, so many listeners sending questions after Dana's last episode with us. And we said, you know what? How can we harness more of your information and share that with our viewers because we hear you and we know that you're asking for that. So Dana, heartfelt thank you to you, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. I love our conversation. So anytime you'd like to have me on, I love to have that. I love them too, but they're way too short. They always go by quickly. But please do join us again tomorrow for an Ask and Answer episode. As we sign off each and every show, we'd like to remind you, our viewers, our listeners, and as well as our sponsors to please stay well so we can all continue to do well. Thanks again, Dana. I appreciate you. Thank you.