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What Nonprofit HR Wants

Meg's latest column is #13 in our Career Corner series.


By Flickr user Daquella manera As I mentioned yesterday, this Thursday we’re hosting our second webinar for career service professionals around helping students connect to nonprofit careers. This one will be chock-full of specific information to make the job search more effective and efficient.

One of my favorite tidbits of information is with regard to what nonprofits look for in candidates.

A few years ago, Idealist surveyed nonprofit professionals who are responsible for their organization’s human resources (recruitment, retention, salary, benefits, etc.). We asked them what life experiences they value most in a candidate. Of the nine choices, “volunteer work with your organization” was far and away the most valued life experience. Second and third place? “Internship in a relevant field” and “Volunteer work with another organization in a relevant field.”

The top three most valued experiences all speak to the need for nonprofit candidates to know the sector, the issue area, and (ideally) the organization. For the breakdown of results from this survey (and other suggestions for how to strengthen your nonprofit resume), see Chapter Five of The Idealist Guides.

We didn’t ask for reasons why people ranked particular life experiences more highly than others, but if you’ve ever worked for or with a nonprofit, I’m sure you can come up with a number of reasons. If you’ve not found a way to connect with a nonprofit yet as a volunteer, intern, board or staff member, now is a great time to look into ways to volunteer or intern to get an up close look at why organizations value nonprofit experience in job candidates.

And whether you’ve spent time with nonprofit organizations or are thinking about how you can get involved, the organization search on Idealist is a great way to begin researching the next nonprofit you’ll connect with.