Is your church struggling to find the right balance between internal and external staff hires? On this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we uncover the compelling case for hiring within your congregation, exploring benefits like cultural fit, loyalty, and cost savings. Yet, we also confront the challenges head-on—bias, limited candidate pools, and a lack of fresh perspectives. We introduce the final fit assessment, a tool designed to help you objectively evaluate internal candidates and make an informed decision tailored to your church’s unique needs.
In the next segment, we delve into the critical final stages of hiring, especially for student pastors. Discover how Chemistry Staffing can provide a detailed, long-term fit analysis to ensure you’re making the right hire. This service offers invaluable insights and support, adding an extra layer of assurance to your decision-making process. Tune in to gain essential tips and strategies for building a healthy, dynamic church staff that aligns perfectly with your mission and values.
Is your church struggling to find the right balance between internal and external staff hires? On this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, we uncover the compelling case for hiring within your congregation, exploring benefits like cultural fit, loyalty, and cost savings. Yet, we also confront the challenges head-on—bias, limited candidate pools, and a lack of fresh perspectives. We introduce the final fit assessment, a tool designed to help you objectively evaluate internal candidates and make an informed decision tailored to your church’s unique needs.
In the next segment, we delve into the critical final stages of hiring, especially for student pastors. Discover how Chemistry Staffing can provide a detailed, long-term fit analysis to ensure you’re making the right hire. This service offers invaluable insights and support, adding an extra layer of assurance to your decision-making process. Tune in to gain essential tips and strategies for building a healthy, dynamic church staff that aligns perfectly with your mission and values.
Okay, should you hire staff from within your congregation or should you always look outside, or should you always hire inside? We're going to talk about that today. Homegrown heroes for hiring headaches are going to get the inside scoop on internal church hiring and staffing. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders of OverChemistryStaffingcom, and I am your host here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Okay, today we're going to talk about this tempting proposition. You already know the person. They're familiar with your church culture. They're passionate about your mission. It seems like a win-win, but is it always the best move if you have somebody internally to hire for a position? Like most things in ministry, I can't always say yes, absolutely or no. Never do that.
Speaker 1:
Hiring internally can be an absolutely fantastic strategy. In fact, it's a strategy that we tell churches all the time that you really should look into before you even open up a search to an outside candidate. But hiring internally is not without its potential pitfalls, and we're going to dive into some of those, some of the pros and the cons of tapping into hiring internally or hiring inside your church, all right. So first of all, let's talk about some of the advantages. First of all we've already mentioned it, it's cultural Internal candidates those candidates that are maybe volunteering right now, hitting it absolutely out of the park. They're great. They already understand your church's values, your traditions and your quirks. Heck, they've decided out of all the churches in your town that they want to come to your church. So they're bought in and they're less likely to experience any kind of culture shock or need extensive onboarding like an outside candidate would. So cultural fit absolutely candidate. Would so cultural fit absolutely Internal candidates probably already love you and are a pretty good fit culturally.
Speaker 1:
Secondly, let's look at buy-in. Internal candidates are already invested. We just mentioned this. They're invested in your church's mission and vision and one of the ways they're invested is because they're already a part. They've likely been serving as volunteers, like I said, probably hitting it out of the park. That's why you're even thinking about them for this new role. So they do have a vested interest in seeing the church succeed. They've got buy-in.
Speaker 1:
Finally, a couple other things loyalty and commitment. Internal hires often demonstrate a higher level of loyalty and commitment to the church and that's going to hopefully lead to longer tenure and less turnover and a lot of times they can be cost-effective. Internal fire hires require less training. They may be willing to accept lower salaries initially because they're just entering into the ministry world from whatever work they're doing now and they're already a part of your community. So there's no relocation costs, right.
Speaker 1:
But before you start promoting every volunteer with a pulse, let's consider some potential drawbacks. Okay and we hear this all the time when we talk to churches, when we talk about internal candidates. First of all, there may be a limited pool of candidates. You might not have someone. Your congregation, your church might not have the right person with the right skill set for the position that you want to hire. So that makes it easy. If there's not a volunteer, that's hitting it out of the park. If there's not anybody in your congregation that you think, from an internal standpoint, could step into the role that you're looking to hire, from an internal standpoint, could step into the role that you're looking to hire, then it's time to look outside.
Speaker 1:
Another thing is bias and favoritism. It can be challenging to evaluate internal candidates objectively. There's a risk of favoring maybe some friends or outlooking potential issues due to familiarity, because this person one of the things that we offer at chemistry just a side note here, I'll throw this in we offer a final fit assessment. That's what we call it. A final fit assessment that is really good for internal candidates If you need somebody because you know this person, but you want somebody that doesn't have a dog in the fight, somebody with a fresh set of eyes and ears, somebody that isn't biased in any way, to have kind of a fresh look at this internal candidate and say, hey, this person would be a really good candidate. Or here are some really deep questions you need to ask this person before offering them a paid position on your staff. So if you find that you need some input on an internal, potential internal hire, a final fit assessment could be a good thing for you and your church. I give you some information on that here. Toward the end and we're talking about drawbacks here Okay, so an internal candidate could lack a first perspective, so internal hires may be less likely to bring new ideas or challenge the status quo.
Speaker 1:
Matter of fact, I was just talking to a church the other day that said man, we've got a candidate that we think an internal candidate that we think would be really good for this role, that we think an internal candidate that we think would be really good for this role. But our main hesitancy is that they would just continue what they're already volunteering in. An internal candidate might have a little less new, fresh perspective. Relational dynamics hiring a friend or a fellow church member can complicate relationships and that can be awkward. Or a fellow church member can complicate relationships and that can be awkward. And it can be awkward relationally. But it can also make some awkward power dynamics with volunteers and yesterday you were a volunteer, now you're my supervisor those kind of things can be really awkward at times. Okay, and then skill gaps Internal candidates may lack formal education or experience needed for the role.
Speaker 1:
So a lot of times we'll tell candidate churches hey, if you want to hire an internal candidate, they might be absolutely awesome and stellar. They're probably going to need a little bit more onboarding, a little bit more mentoring, maybe even a little bit more handholding to begin with. How do you decide? Those are some pros, those are some cons. How do you decide whether to hire internally or externally? Here are a few questions to consider. First of all, look at the specific skills and experience required for the role and then ask yourself do we have any qualified candidates, anybody that is volunteering right now, involved in that ministry, that we think could do it if we offered them the support and the opportunity. Are you prepared to address those potential biases and relational challenges? Are you willing to invest in training and development for an internal hire? And then just do a pro and con? What are the potential long-term benefits and risks for each option, whether hiring internally for this role or externally? So here's the bottom line. Hiring internally absolutely can be a great way to tap into your church's existing talent and passion. It can be a great way to do that, but it's not always the right fit for every situation. So you have to weigh these pros and cons and prayerfully consider the specific needs of what you're looking for and then make the best decision based on the role and your church and your ministry.
Speaker 1:
Now I mentioned earlier in the podcast today that we at Chemistry do what we call a final fit assessment, and this can be done either for internal candidates or for outside candidates. When you have somebody in your scope and you're like I would like some confirmation, I'd like to do some additional due diligence on this candidate. What we will do is, with our final fit assessment, we will have three people on our team. Talk to your final candidate. We'll get to know your church a little bit, we'll know what questions to ask and we will come back and give you a report on what our assessment is. Just being people that are impartial and people that do interviews and do staffing full-time, we will offer you our expertise and our expert opinion on.
Speaker 1:
Okay, here are some pitfalls I can't think of the word I'm trying to use. Here are some things you need to be aware of. Here are some questions you need to ask here, trying to use. Here are some things you need to be aware of. Here are some questions you need to ask. Here are some advantages. Here are some disadvantages.
Speaker 1:
So if and we can do that for internal candidates or if you're just doing a search for a student pastor and you get down to one or two candidates and you want some outside help deciphering is this the right person for a healthy, long-term fit for our church? We can help you with this healthy, with this final fit analysis, so you can reach out to me. I would love to talk to you about that and let you know how we can come alongside you with that. Churches that we do quite a few of these, or churches that we do these with, find that they're extremely helpful as an added step to their hiring process. Just reach out to me Podcast at Chemistry Staffing Podcast at Chemistry as an added step to their hiring process. Just reach out to me podcast at chemistrystaffing podcast at chemistrystaffing. I'm here to help you, however I can, and I hope I can help you again right here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hope you'll listen in tomorrow.
