 Welcome to the non profit show. We're glad you're here and today we have back with us Dana Skirlock from staffing boutique. One of the staffing boutique ladies joins us each and every month and we're so glad to have Dana here today to talk to us about what it's like to vet your nonprofit staff candidates so she's got a plethora of information and insight and wisdom to share with us. So I'm excited to learn from you Dana because this is an area of expertise that I don't usually play in. So it's really good to get your professional insight on this. And we also want to remind you who we are. Thank you to Julia Patrick CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. So grateful that you created this platform. You know yesterday was episode 850 so today is 851 we are marching fast towards that 900. I know Dana I see your eyeballs and they're getting big my friend like amazing and again thank you for allowing me to serve alongside you Julia as your co-host I'm Jared Ransom the nonprofit nerd and CEO of the Raven group. We have showed up day in and day out. Thank you also to our amazing presenting sponsors that also show up right alongside us for these conversations. So thank you to Bloomerang American nonprofit Academy fundraising Academy at National University nonprofit thought leader your part time controller staffing boutique where Dana joins us from also nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. I like to invite you to please check out these companies they're not only here for us in these conversations during the episode but they're here for you and your mission to help you do more good in around and throughout your community. I mentioned 850 episodes marching towards 900 and you are in luck my friend because you can find them. If you download the app you can scan the QR code right now. Thank you Vanna White and see that QR code you can scan that download the app and you'll receive a notification in just a couple of hours that our conversation we're about to have with Dana Skirlock has been uploaded and available to you. We're also on podcast and broadcast platforms and you can find us just about anywhere you consume your information. I'm not quite yet. You know the newspapers I don't think we're going to go to the newspapers but we're still working on the hologram which gosh maybe that'll happen soon. It's close I mean you gotta be. Yeah because you can speak into your remote if you have a smart TV and just say the nonprofit show and we pop up and it's a little jarring because most smart TVs are enormous. Right. So I mean yeah we will show up we're on your sofa next to you. Well we're excited again to have you back with us Dana. For those of you watching and listening maybe this is your first time learning about Dana. She is the director of recruitment at staffing boutique. And I mentioned she and Katie they join they join us each and every month and they have brought to the conversation so much wisdom so much experience. I am so grateful for you and Katie to continuously share your time and expertise with us. So welcome back. Well thank you so much for that lovely intro. It's always a pleasure to be here with you guys and I love our conversations. It's really uncovered. It makes it keeps us both sharp I think for us to share what Katie and I have experienced over our years of recruiting and then also hear you know bounce ideas off of each other. It's really it just enhances our business as well. So it's wonderful being with you. Well good you know when I think about you Dana and your your team over at staffing boutique you seem to be one of the companies that you've been in the middle and you have this whole pandemic and you've had to embrace change and be super flexible. And when we talk about things when we talked about things in the beginning they are completely different than what we're talking about now because of the the ecosystem of the pandemic and so it's been really interesting to hear from you and to hear from our viewers and listeners about what their questions are because things are changing now. Oh yeah so quickly and now we're in this like you know big push of course we've been talking about labor shortages and all that but then things are kind of changing yet again a little bit. And we're to the point now where we can even talk about recruiting strategies and background checks which I got to say Jarrett it seemed to me we were like background checks get a man we don't have time right. Yeah well and I still feel we can't get people in fast enough. Yeah you know. I mean this is an issue that I've seen just anecdotally from other people that are in other industries. I have someone close to me who works in securities and just at a location that you have to do a lot of background checks for and the issue of staffing shortages people sort of not being committed to jobs leaving with no notice. It's a lot of money time and effort to do the background checks for people to not last very long in the job or never make it to the finish line once they've been offered the job to then start. And so and I see those things. It's great that you guys saw that staffing fatigue and that's a testament to Katie being so flexible and willing to change and adapt with the time so quickly. I think that's been a blessing for us that she is a leader that leans that way. It's also helpful that we're a lean staff you know there's only five of us so making those maneuvers has been a lot simpler. I feel very much compassion for large institutions that are having to make these really sharp times and it's very difficult when you're employing 500 people to make those types of changes. And so I think sometimes you know and I think people listening today even may hear some of the things that I'm describing and say that's great. Don't know if I can do that though because I've got myself a team of 10 people that work under me and then the overall organization has a few hundred people so you know I am sensitive to that as well. Yeah I'm glad you mentioned that and I know that you know still in a lot of sectors but I want to say predominantly the nonprofit. We maintain the this is the way we've always done it and I'm still seeing that through the interview process and again I know that you and Katie have brought a lot of insight so we can go back and watch a lot of the previous episodes. You know but really looking at okay this person needs to have this conversation with this person first and then they moved to this conversation with this person and then by the time you like maybe get to an offer it's been weeks maybe months it's been hours maybe days. You know like we're really putting a lot into it so let's dive deep because today we're going to talk on really three main topics of background checks drug testing and references so let's start with that background check. And I'm curious can this also be viewed as discriminatory what what are you seeing. Yeah I mean what I would say is that number one I completely agree with hiring managers there has to be some sort of concrete vetting process just to you know make sure that they're covered legally on their end when they're bringing people in with with access to proprietary donor information proprietary financial information about the organization. I would say everyone from the administrative staff to certainly the fundraising and finance team which we you know staffing boutique we place all different types of roles within the nonprofit sector. All of those roles are going to be privy to a lot of important and sensitive information. I encourage you know hiring managers especially when it comes to those types of roles where they're going to have a lot of access to those things to absolutely do a background check. Not even that the background check necessarily is going to bring back anything that would you know preclude being able to hire somebody obviously a will if that's back in their background you will be able to spot check that but most people don't have anything bad in their background they do they know and so they're going to probably you know like let you know before you run it if you're telling them that they're going to have a background check. I think it's also just about liability so that you can at least have on the record we went through all of you know we crossed all our T's and dotted all our eyes in terms of hiring. So that if something were to go awry you you did follow protocol. So I'm not you know I view none of this with any sort of higher towards like background checks being not useful or important. I would say that the depth of some background checks and be viewed as discriminatory particularly when it skews towards like credit checks things that are more personal. There have been a few me not a few that there's been a lot of pushback, at least in New York City anywhere I'm in the heart of Manhattan so what I'm hearing a lot about are recently for example they made it illegal for us to ask what your previous salary was because what they found throughout the studies was that the wage gap between men and women continued to be divisive. So that's part because women had traditionally been getting paid less and the biggest determinant of what your new salary would be would be what you've been paid before, and so they found that it's just we're just perpetuating the cycle. So now we had to change our entire, you know, conversation with candidates from the moment one, where we're removing that question and more find letting them lead as to what salary they're looking for. Obviously that's a separate issue from background checks, but it's a similar issue with, you know, doing background checks that dig deep into their personal lives. If you're considering it could be considered like, are you looking at whether I'm married as a factor are you looking at, you know, my credit score and when I first started recruiting, I would get asked to run credit checks on people often. I would say two to three years certainly before the pandemic and I think part of it is that there is some backlash in terms of like employment law led by the candidate side, you know, saying why is that relevant what you know why are you looking at your credit just to get a job. How can I get out of debt because really what are you looking for in a credit check other than whether the person's in debt. And the theory was, if they're in debt, they're more likely to either commit fraud or try to, you know, make money out of an account or something like that. I personally am kind of of the mindset of like, people are going to do it if they're that type of person, not necessarily how much money they have in the bank, however, that was a theory for why you were checking credits. Now, that then I think, at least in New York City, and I don't know where you guys are if this is on the books legally or not and where the listeners are coming in from. But it's now something where you really have to prove a case why you need to be checking credit for someone it's not just a given that you can do that. When I first started recruiting in 2006 2007. I sat down at the interview and would give them a background check form to fill out before they'd even gotten a job. And part of it was like, you know, that you would like, just so you know that we might have to run this at some point so let's get the form now and that was just kind of the culture of recruiting. And that organizations felt they were entitled to that information. And so what I've seen overall and you guys tell me if you've seen this as well I've seen a lot of backlash on the candidate end. And by backlash I just mean pushback, you know that they're questioning that process and saying, hey, we don't we don't think that that's necessarily right why are we doing that. I see that in forums all the time and which by the way ladies did you see me I tried to help put up your jaw Julia because you were like, oh my God, your jaw hit the floor for sure. But you know, I'm curious with this Dana because with a lot of companies nonprofits included, hiring remote from different places right the employee is working in different states, right like, do we need to be abreast of the hiring state of the of the employer or the employee, which do we fall upon. I think so when you go in to do a background check, you can do both a statewide check and you can choose which, which state you want to run their background on. You can also do a national check. So, let's say you're hiring out of an organization in New York with the person's going to be working in California. I see it like you're saying all the time. I would say you could run a state check if they've lived most of their adult life in California I would run it for California. Okay, you can also spring for the national check which is going to be more expensive when you go on the site like because we've not just it's having fatigue at every agency I've worked for you have a membership to a background check company. And you go in the recruiter is responsible for going in and filling out that information and actually running the check on the on the candidate. And so I've done it many times. So what you could do is do a national check it's going to take a little bit longer they have to go through all 50 states, but it is a more thorough check. You're really just looking for major like warrants. Is there anything outstanding, have they been accused or convicted of any sort of felonies. I mean that's basically what you're looking for but even that I'm saying that and I feel guilty even saying it because does a felony precludes you from being able to get employment you know so it's, we're kind of flipping over all of these paradigms right now. It's a lot of people, you know, felons can now vote again you know so it's, it's a different world now. Well and there's a lot of companies that are hiring second chance employees right and they are second chance employers. And so really looking at okay what are, what are the backgrounds that we will consider we cannot consider some of this might might be related to you know the funding parameters. But whether it's a federal funding and things like that so really, there's just so many options and I don't know about you Julia but I'm so grateful I'm not in HR or in hiring because there's a lot of eyes to dot and teased across. I think that every time I have the staffing boutique ladies on I'm always like, whoo, you know, before we go forward, can you give us an idea of what it costs to to have these background checks conducted. If you have a membership and by membership I just mean that you are an ongoing client of one of these these large companies that that basically sell these checks, you could get a national check for like maybe under $50. That can be very, very inexpensive. Now that's in bulk. I, you know, I can't quote their complete pricing but as a one time as an organization, especially as a nonprofit you also could probably negotiate a rate that's better than for a corporate entity that's using these types of sites. There might even be some government agencies you know I work technically on the for profit side and sometimes I even forget that. So if you're working directly for a nonprofit, there may be some government agencies that help subsidize this for you. Certainly I would talk to you know the marketing rep or your sort of like CSR for those background check companies and see what kind of deal they can cut you. Because if it's a small place a small organization you're probably not doing background checks at often staffing agencies like ours are doing dozens so you know the rate is a little bit better. But I would say for like some of the smaller checks like a social security trace or a statewide check, it could be under like $20 or even cheaper for a full national check it could be, you know, but there are some that are very, very detailed. I mean you could, if you chose to run something very detailed on someone you can do three or four different checks and very quickly on one candidate it can turn into $200. So it's also I think about getting with your team, having somebody who is an HR expert or somebody who's a consultant that you're able to call that is an expert on HR law. So whether you have general counsel within your organization or have a person on the board maybe that is able to speak to that expertise and coming up with a plan of like, here's how we are vetting candidates going forward. And so, this is what we can afford this is what the cost is. This is our liability. How do we, you know, navigate deciding what checks on this, this website that we're going to be doing as a and I think keeping it consistent between candidates because if one finds out that they were, you know, had a background check and then the other finds out they didn't have to have one. And that could cause friction too. So do you have to streamline it so everybody has to think all of those things I think it's helpful for an organization to sit down and decide and then start the hiring process. So then let's move on to the next thing because this kind of tags into it and you know and I, I love you saying, you know, we need to have an understanding and a policy and what what we're going to take and what we're not drug testing is a big part of this because depending on your insurance depending on if you have federal grants. There are a lot of things in place in the nonprofit sector that don't allow us, in essence, much leeway when it comes to recreational marijuana, understanding, you know, if we're going to disclose what types of drugs or pharmaceuticals our employees are on versus our clients. This is a huge, huge topic that I feel like we're almost in the middle of that it hasn't it that it's changing and I'm wondering if you could talk to us about that. It absolutely is a living breathing entity that is changing and morphing all the time. As every state is grappling with recreational drug use and legalizing particularly marijuana. I've had drug testing be done on candidates in years past. You know, something comes up positive, and usually it is a recreational drug that isn't viewed as that bad so like we don't want to, for example. And I've had it, you know, make, you know, a job offer to disappear. I've had clients say, actually of all the, you know, we actually don't worry so much about that we're looking for other drugs. So, I think it depends on what type of organization it is obviously hospitals, possibly higher ed some of the older, more like sensitive direct service organizations that have bigger liabilities you know I think sometimes the amount of checks we have to do are directly proportional to how much liability you have. So certainly a hospital where you are servicing children, the elderly vulnerable populations. There's so many legalities. There's so many ways that, you know, you could end up in litigation by servicing patients. You would have to drug test everybody and make sure that they've had a very extensive background check there's kind of no way around it. I do not know legally how marijuana being legal in so many states affects that. So, if you have somebody working remotely somewhere, but your date where something's not legal. I really don't know how you, how you navigate that I wish I had a better answer. I think it's a question for for somebody with a legal background to be honest, and I don't even know it. I don't even know if, if, if we've gotten that far, I think we're just at the phase where people are pushing for legalizing jugs and and and it's now trickling down even to the hiring process and we're all kind of playing catch up. Is that could that be viewed as, as, you know, discriminatory, if I'm in a state where something's legal and you're telling me that it's a problem for it to even be in my system you. I mean, does that leave the organization open to litigation, you know, I really don't know and I need to advise people a certain way, other than to say, have you thought about these issues. And if you've thought about them, how have you, you know, worked on sealing up that liability that may be open. As you're screening people, I think it's probably a bigger issue for like line associates so meaning like people who are doing like customer service administrative support where there's a lot of people doing the same job. I think for like leadership positions. You know, like director level C sweet people. I don't think this issue is as much of a problem because they probably will have vetted you so carefully. Prior to that that getting into the drug testing in the background checks will probably just be sort of the final piece. And I think that they would be able to work around any issues. I think in general though when you're looking at like, I have to hire 20, you know, customer service reps for this program that's coming out. I want to make sure they're only going to work for the summer, but they're going to work for our organization and they're going to come in contact with our constituents. How do I make sure that they are vetted clear, free from any drug views. Am I in a state that's legal like all those questions I think are tricky. And so I wish I had better answers but I will say I think even just bringing it up. And if there's listeners who are thinking about those types of things, just if you haven't thought about it to start thinking about it I think is helpful. And I think you must include your risk assessment in there because a lot of, I mean, driving vehicles operating equipment, you know, on your campus, off your campus, your insurance will change. And they might have their own structures, whether it's legal in your state or not. And so yeah, I think you're right. It's a big, big issue and it's continuing to plague a lot of folks, even on the federal contract basis too. I mean, Oh, wow. So I mean, for grants. So I mean, it's a big, big topic and something you're right, Dana, we need to be aware of and really understand. I don't have, we don't have much time and I'm, I love this question because I think you're in the thick of it. And I'm really interested to find out what goes on with personal references. I mean, give us the dirty. Spill the tea. Yeah, spill the tea because what's up with this? I mean, I, to be perfectly candid, I have never, and I continue to feel this way have felt that personal references are of very much value. Now, I know that's controversial. I know that every hiring manager that I talk to one, two and three references and they will not hire without it and I am happy to follow their lead on. I cannot imagine giving a reference to anybody who wasn't going to say nice things about me. That we're talking about personal references where somebody's going to call a previous manager of yours or if you're a manager, a previous subordinate of yours, that presumably you are close with and have stayed in contact with. Right. And, and they're going to speak to them about your, their experience with you. I just think there's so many factors that can make it's their impression of working with you. And what I found in speaking with people over like 20 years of recruiting. There's one side of the story. There's the other side. And then there's the truth that's like in the middle. Like, I'll talk to a candidate about something that I've been told they did. And they will have an absolutely different story that completely paints it in a different light that they were completely justified in doing what they did. The client will call me and tell me like a list of horror stories about what this person did. And then when I talk to them, or sometimes bring them together and, you know, act as an intermediary. It's like the truth is definitely in the center so like to me talking to a reference. They're either going to give me a glowing reference that is out of loyalty to a person that they like. Really give you any concrete information or is going to be could be considered slanderous if they're telling you negative things because it's their version of things and how it affected them. And I think sometimes people can be sensitive about oh so and so, you know, worked with me and they, you know, we didn't get along or what have you like, did you just disagree? I just say things that you didn't want to hear or were they actually difficult to manage or rude or what you know what I mean like I find that a difficult way to siphon through so to me asking for somebody's references is just asking them for three people that they have enlisted loyalty from right is essentially what you're getting now is that a good thing maybe maybe that is a good thing but I've never hired anybody and like place them and the references was what made them a good fit for the Let's put it that way. So, sadly our time is coming to a close but you shared a statement with us in the green room chatter. If someone does reach out to us for a reference and we're not too keen on that person and not quite like, you know, as I was raised, you know, if you don't have any nice to say don't say anything at all. What is that statement as as we wrap up today show. What I have said in the past is, thank you so much for reaching out to me. I think that this particular person listed me as a reference, but I think that there are other people who could be a better reference for them and so I wouldn't I'm going to encourage them to find somebody else to speak for you to speak with. So if you could relay that to them or I can shoot I'm happy to shoot them an email and let them know hey like, I'm probably not the best person to use as a reference. I'd rather that then get into a situation where I am. I'm doing what I just said people do which is giving their version of thing, and it may paint somebody in a negative light unfairly. Well, and that's a very professional statement right it's just I don't think I'm the best person to provide this reference and I encourage you, you know, to find another reference for this candidate. Dana, as always, amazing. Thank you to talk to you forever. I feel like, you know, even the three topics we talked about today, you know, the background checks the drug testing as well as the references could be broken down into their own individual episodes. I think it's riveting and, you know, I feel and Jared and I talked about this offline but I feel like when we can get staffing boutique. When we chat with you, I feel like we get ahead of a whole arc of information before as the marketplace is changing because I feel like you're on the front lines of it. So you all see things kind of like maybe before it's being reported out or, you know, all these issues. So for me, when I get to hear your voices, I'm just like, wow, it's a real insider's view. And so thank you. Dana Skirlock, director of recruitment for staffing boutique. Check out staffing boutique.org. You know, they do national work in our sector in the nonprofit sector and what an incredible thing because it is such a different type of business. And so, again, Dana, thank you. You get to hear from somebody from staffing boutique every month and it's just a really, I think, invaluable. Whether you're actively searching or not, I just think for the health of your organization, it's a really important thing to hear and learn about. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. We've been joined today by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group. And again, we are here because we have amazing support from Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These are the folks that join us as I like to say day in and day out. Yeah, 850 shows was yesterday. Nelly. That's right. I know. It's been a lot of fun and we wouldn't be here if it weren't for our sponsors, truly all of our guests and all of our viewers and listeners. So thank you for playing a part in this amazing journey. Yeah, absolutely. You know, every day as we end another wonderful episode of the nonprofit show, we leave everybody with this, I call it a mantra, Jared, but it's like words to live by. I don't know what, but it goes like this. And I really believe it and our message is to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.