If you’ve been in the church for any amount of time, you have probably experienced the fallout of a poor church hiring process that ultimately put the wrong person in a leadership position.  Relationships are strained, community is weakened, innovation is halted, overall culture becomes inhospitable or even toxic.  The wrong hire can cost tens of thousands of dollars in donated money and set a church back in their mission by decades.

Finding and selecting leaders to be on your team may be one of the most important decisions you make as a leader, yet it still seems like it often doesn’t get the attention that it deserves.

Our church has been in an intentional learning process over the last few years to ensure that we’re doing the best we can to get the right people on the bus.  As a result, we have slowed down and elaborated our process considerably since I was hired 7 years ago.

This post is simply articulating where we currently are in our philosophy and giving you an inside look at what our church hiring process looks like.  I am not posting this as a template or as the perfect system that every church needs to adopt.  In fact, it would be great if some wiser people than myself would read this and suggest improvements!

*Spiritual disclaimer

One important thing that may not come across obviously as you read through our steps is how important humility and the willingness to listen to God’s direction is in this process.  The best system in the world will still not guarantee the right hire.

The main problem every search process has built in is that humans are the ones running it.  Our biases and impressions can distort reality and we need someone to speak truth and bring the right information into the light.  We believe the Holy Spirit can do this and we absolutely need to make sure that everyone involved in the process is listening to the ways the Spirit may be leading us.

So, despite implementing the entire process below, we humbly acknowledge that we could still mess it up and hire the wrong person.  While we will continue to learn, evaluate, and improve the things we can control, we are deeply reliant on God to ultimately bring about the right results.

Ok, enough preamble.  Let’s dive in. We’ve got 3 “pre-steps” followed by a 12-step screening process.  If you want a summarized version of all of this, feel free to scroll to the bottom and download an editable document that you can customize for your context.

Pre-Steps

 

1. Identify a position of need

The temptation here is to simply replace who is missing or to hire for a position that we have seen other churches or organizations hiring for.  We have to resist taking the easy way out.  If someone has resigned or we’ve grown to the point of requiring additional staff, this is a perfect place to stop and ask some mission-critical questions:

• Who do we need to most effectively move us towards our vision?
• What challenges have we faced in our current staffing model which could be addressed before we continue?
• Do we really need another paid hire or are their alternatives such as a more robust and developed volunteer leadership structure?
• Does this need to be full-time or would there be benefits to hiring multiple part-time staff or even a virtual assistant?
• How will this hire affect the overall team dynamic?
• Could we use this money in a way that is more beneficial to our mission?  I.e. what is the opportunity cost?
• Have we spent time praying together and discerning what God’s desires are for our church or are we simply doing what we’ve always done or what we think is expected of us?

 

2. Create a job description and detailed job profile

 This is the time for us to drill down on the details of what we need in this hire and what we need to communicate to potential applicants.  We create three documents at this point:

Job description

We err on the side of making this document longer and more detailed than usual in order to give applicants a better picture of what they would be doing. It contains at least these basic elements:

Summary and win.  1-2 sentence overview of the position and 1 sentence that clearly defines what the win is for the person in that position

Areas of responsibility.  While there is a debate out there as to how long or detailed this section needs to be, we’ve opted to define the broad areas that we need this person to take ownership of as well as a few lines of examples as to what it would look like for them to give leadership in this area.  We want to give flexibility for how different people might lead something but we also want to give enough information so that the applicant knows what type of work they would be doing in this job.

Preferred qualifications or attributes. This is a place to list education or experience requirements, but also the characteristics of a person who will excel in this position (e.g. do they need to be able to work with a team or will they be working on their own most of the time?). We need to be careful not to simply define the perfect person at this stage, as it’s easy to go overboard and just start listing all the positive things you could possibly think of in a person (can we just hire Jesus?).

Character and behavioural expectations. While closely connected to the previous section, we use this space to identify the need to be passionately committed in their relationship with Jesus and to the local church.  You can’t get away with asking about their faith in most other organizations, but it’s a bonafide occupational requirement (BFOR)  if you want to lead a church

Working conditions.  Let’s talk about office hours, physical office spaces, expectations for overnight trips, the possibility for off-site work, basic meeting rhythm, flexibility, and more.  We want to give the applicant a picture of what it will look like to actually be working with us on any given week.

Confession of Faith. We ask applicants to carefully review our Confession of Faith, a statement of theological beliefs, in order to ensure alignment.

 

Church Profile

This is our chance to communicate some things about our context and culture.  We include the following:

Information about our city. Some basic demographic data, a summary of services and opportunities in the area, and a sense of what ministry looks like in this place.  For those considering a move for the job, this is a helpful primer.

Culture and values. The applicants will have seen our vision and mission on our website and now this section details more closely how we go about moving towards that vision.  Our values speak to our unique contribution to the mission of the Church in our city and give applicants a better sense of the types of behaviours we value in our staff.

Specific ministry team information. For instance, our latest hire was for a new Programming Director on my team, the Family Ministries team, so we unpacked specifically how this team works and functions together.  This includes an org chart, team values, and a brief overview of all the positions on the team and how they collaborate together.

 

Position Insights Profile

One of the best ways to know who to hire is to be crystal clear on what type of person the job we’re offering actually requires.  This is different than the job description where we strive for clarity in responsibilities and duties.  Here, we’re testing for the personality traits that someone in this job needs to have in order to be productive and enjoy the work they’re doing.

To help us articulate and discover this, we use a tool called the “Position Insights Profile” from Ministry Insights, which pairs with their personality assessment tool, “Leading From Your Strengths” that all our applicants will take before the interview stage.

 

3. Search for the right candidate

 Our process for searching for applicants is very simple.  We have not yet opted to utilize an outside organization to help with this step, though this is certainly something we’d consider in the future.  Some options we’ve looked into include Vanderbloemen, NextGen Staff Solutions, and the Slingshot Group. The main components of our search process include:

Website presence.

Creating a new page on our site isn’t that much work and purchasing a custom URL that we can easily give potential applicants is definitely worth the small cost. This is the central place that all our job postings and conversations point people towards.  This is where they can find out more about the position, download the job description and church profile, and begin their application process.

Internal promotion.

Our first step is to look at the leaders just below this position in our leadership development pipeline and tap the shoulders of any that we feel have potential to move up. We also communicate about this hire to the whole church and use as many avenues as we can to let them know what we’re hiring for and the type of person we’re looking for.  We do this for two reasons: to enlarge our recruiting network in the hopes that others will think of potential applicants and point them our way, and to get the attention of potential applicants who may already be attending our church.

External promotion.

While we always cover the basics by posting in online job boards, on social media, through Christian colleges, and with our national denomination, our most effective external promotion has come when we personally reach out to two types of people in our networks. One, those we think can actually do the job and whom we invite to apply.  Two, the well-connected individuals who are willing to act as recruiters and will reach out to some of their contacts and endorse our church as a place worth checking out.  Finding out about a job through a respected colleague is exponentially more effective than finding it through an online job board.

 

12-Step Screening process

 

1. Application form/Resume

We begin our process with an application form, alongside a resume and cover letter, where we begin to get a sense of this person’s leadership experience and ministry values.

We create questions based on the necessary criteria for the role and weight each response on a scale of 1-5 when reviewing them.  This needs to be a consistent process so that you can compare applicants quantitatively. This keeps some of our biases in check and guards against me tossing applicants because of a few spelling mistakes or grammatical errors (which I am always highly tempted to do).

This is also the time where we communicate expectations related to our Safe Place Policy, which outlines our policies on interactions with minors and disadvantaged adults. A full criminal background check will be completed later, but they should declare anything that might show up at this point already.

After receiving all the applications within the deadline period, our predetermined search team will compare their scores on each applicant and determine who will move forward in the process.  While this team is larger for some hires than others and may include volunteers, staff, and board members, the “core 3” are the Lead Pastor, the direct supervisor, and our administrator.

A good practice that I try to implement is to read through each application without having first read the name and information about the applicant.  I find this helps me from forming an unfair initial bias simply because of their name, gender, or whether or not I already know the person.  I want to score them simply on the merits of their answers, if possible.

 

2. Phone interview

 The direct supervisor will follow up with a phone call to all the applicants that we believe have potential worth exploring.  This is pre-arranged as we would never surprise applicants with a phone call like this.  Because this is a one-on-one call, we try hard not to let this conversation cover the same ground as our full interview process later, but rather focus on these few areas:

• Clarifying understanding of job description to ensure that they are well aware of what they are applying for and what is required. Just because someone applied doesn’t mean they really know what they’re getting themselves into. This clarification step is especially important for positions that may be a bit more unorthodox, such as in the current staffing structure of our Family Ministries team (future blog post coming on this).
• Answering the questions that the applicant recorded on their application form and any others they may have about our church and the details of this position.
• Confirming basic working conditions like office hours, physical office space, etc. as well as the salary range for this position. We certainly don’t negotiate during this phone call but we want to know early on whether the amount we’re offering is going to be a deal-breaker for them
• Getting permission to contact references, both listed and unlisted.

 

3. References

We have recently moved this step earlier in the process, rather than after the interviews as it was typically done.  This allows us to address potential deal-breakers early on and hear the perspective of co-workers and bosses right up front, rather than simply the applicant’s perspective on their own strengths and weaknesses. 

Getting this early also addresses some of the issues that the anchoring effect brings into our processes. The disadvantages of doing this earlier include having to make more calls for more applicants as well as potentially not being able to call the applicant’s current employer.  We respect this and simply do that reference call later while performing the others now.

Apart from the listed references, we may contact others for a reference that we think might have a valuable perspective.  We get permission for this and record notes from the reference call just as we would any other to ensure we don’t get ourselves into any legal issues. The content for this call revolves around their strengths and weaknesses, ability to work on a team, experience with building teams and developing leaders, as well as any particular items needing to be explored further from the prior phone conversation with the applicant.

 

4. Leading From Your Strengths assessment

We intentionally utilize an online test at this point, prior to the interview, in order to narrow the pool even further before getting to the more time-consuming process of interviews.

The test we currently utilize is Leading From Your Strengths.  This is a personality assessment, which on their own should not be considered the most effective predictor of future performance. What brings value to this process is that all applicant’s results are compared to the benchmark Position Insights Profile that we created earlier in the process.  If the applicant’s results are quite different than the benchmark, this may be a sign that their satisfaction in the role won’t be very high, or that they just won’t be very good at it. At the least, the results we get from this stage heavily influence the types of questions we ask during the next interview stage.

If we really wanted to up our game here, during this stage we would also include other tests such as a cognitive ability test, an integrity test, or a spiritual gifts test.  Check out the tests that Life.Church uses if you’re looking for more examples.

 

5. Interview #1 – Panel Interview

 We finally get to the interview! Given the low level of effectiveness of most interviews for predicting future success, we’ve purposely frontloaded our process with other steps before we get to the face-to-face stage.

This first interview has a number of different people in the room, including the “core 3” I mentioned earlier (lead pastor, ministry supervisor, and administrator), as well as 1-2 representatives from our leadership board, and 2-3 others from our church. These may be volunteers from the applicant’s future teams or simply individuals with a lot of hiring or leadership experience.

This will be a chronological interview where we review their entire work history, starting with their educational years.  We’ll ask many questions about every job, including successes, failures, key decisions, key relationships, boss ratings, and reasons for leaving. This would be very similar to what is referred to as a “Topgrading” interview.

Only two people are asking the questions in this interview, while everyone else simply takes notes and scores the applicant from 1-5 on each question. We often leave space in this interview for the applicant to ask further questions of us, though many of these should have been clarified in the phone conversation earlier.

When it’s all said and done, each person in the room tallies up their scores and gives their impression as to whether or not this person is worth moving on to the second interview stage.  After individual assessments have been made, we have a brief group discussion to see what others were picking up on that individuals might have missed. This helps counteract tendencies like groupthink and confirmation bias.

 

6. Role-based Exercises

If you were hiring an extra runner for your Olympic relay team, you wouldn’t sit down and talk about how well they run, you would get them out on the track with a timer.

For every position we hire for, we try to give them various job-related tasks to complete so that we can observe them in action.  These tasks would be completed prior to sitting down for a second interview and their performance in these roles would be reviewed during the interview. Some possibilities for tasks include:

• Reading and responding to emails
• Set up a phone call between them and a volunteer or church member
• Have them walk around and evaluate your physical spaces and suggest ways to improve the environments
• Place them in the role of a greeter during one of your ministry times
• Have them act as a consultant and get them to evaluate an area of your ministry that they would have responsibility over if they were hired
• If appropriate, take them along on a pastoral care visitation
• Get them to set up and run a basic presentation on a computer and projector
• Have them prepare a short presentation on a ministry plan that they’ll deliver to your interview team
• Etc. Look at the job description and see what you can actually get them doing prior to being hired.

 

7. Interview #2 – Second panel

It’s time to ask some questions that really dig into the specifics of the position they’re applying for. We want to know how they would respond in situations that they’re likely to face in this role and get a glimpse into their decision-making processes.  The main tactics for this include:

Role-based exercises review.  Based on their performance in the previous step, we ask relevant questions that help clarify any questions we had.  We may also ask them to give a presentation during this interview which they prepared for in the previous step.

Scenario-based questions.  We’ll concoct a few ministry scenarios that they could encounter in this role and gauge how they would respond.  Coming up with these scenarios is easy as we often just draw on real situations that we’ve dealt with in previous years.

Review Leading From Your Strengths assessment.  This is where we’ll address any questions or flags that came out of their previous survey results.

The team we use for this interview is different than the first. While the core 3 interviewers will stay the same, we’ll invite a new batch of people to observe, record notes, and score the applicants on their answers.  Again, this is to guard against biases, such as the Halo Effect, that can creep in and derail your process.

 

8. Interview #3 – Peer interviews

Applicants will be contacted and invited back for this final round of interviews.  These interviews are not done with a panel or team at all and are primarily for the candidate’s benefit.  Instead, we provide applicants with 20-30 min to sit down with and interview their potential peers. 

Our staff isn’t large, so it’s usually pretty clear who they need to sit down with.  In larger settings, you’d want to pre-select a couple people that would do really well with representing your team. The primary purpose is for the applicant to learn about the culture of the workplace from a different source.  They will want to ask about what it’s really like to work at our church, the leadership style of their supervisor, the general working atmosphere in the office, etc.

Secondarily, the staff members get a chance to meet their potential new co-worker and can ask a couple of questions of the applicant as well.  Make sure you train staff in advance of what they can and cannot ask legally, in this case.

One caveat is that this works really well when you have a healthy team and a culture that you want to maintain.  If you do not have a healthy team, a peer interview may just scare away your best prospects.

 

9. Meet the Team

Ok, to be fair, we haven’t always included this step.  By this point in the process, it’s easy to feel like you already know enough and don’t want to add another unnecessary event to the calendar.

The reason this step can be valuable, though, is that this is the only point in the game where we get to see the applicant in a more relaxed social environment.  Can they engage in small talk? Can they mingle? While these may not seem like essential ministry skills, they go a long way towards that person feeling relatable and accessible to the average person in the church.

If they’re married, this is also when we get to interact with their spouse and get a sense of how they’re feeling about this new possibility.

When we don’t include this step, it is because the applicant is internal or very familiar to us already.  We’ve worked with them before, we’ve already met their family and spouse, and there is ample evidence that chemistry with the team won’t be an issue.  Even then, I think we should push harder to include this every time simply as a way to make the onboarding and orientation process smoother for everyone.

We would only be looking at one applicant by this point, so we’re not hosting multiple social engagements here. If we don’t know who the frontrunner is by now, we need a better process.

 

10. Final reference call

 If they preferred that we didn’t contact their current employer in the initial reference checking stage, we would make sure to do it now.

 

11. Criminal Background check and Child Abuse Registry check

While they got a chance to declare any past allegations and criminal record issues earlier in the process, this is where we do our due diligence and get all the proper paperwork in order.  Even though the applicant is very far along in the process, finding something here that they didn’t previously disclose to us would be a deal-breaker.

 

12. Offer and Onboard

If everyone is feeling good after a final review of the whole process with our search team, the individual will be offered the job.  While the entire team is praying and discerning this decision, it is the direct supervisor as well as the Lead Pastor who make the final call.  Both of those parties need to be confident about moving forward.  Once all the paperwork is signed and a start date is determined, all that’s left is to have a great orientation and development plan in place for when they start.

 

We made it to the end of our church hiring process! This is such a great place to be.  With no dedicated HR department, a hiring season is always a large additional amount of work for everyone involved and it’s nice to be able to breathe a little easier again.  Take time to celebrate!

I hope this post has been helpful to you and given you a proper look at what at least one version of a church hiring process can look like.  This is the post I would’ve been looking for a few years ago, so if you know of someone in a ministry or organization who’s anticipating a hiring season, be a friend and forward this on to them!

Be sure to download the summary of this process below, which you can edit and customize to fit your setting.

Got a question or a suggestion for how we could improve?  Leave a comment!  I’d love to learn from you!

-Dan