Fundraising Direct Adopts 'No Interview' Model, Reducing Time-to-Hire to 2 Days
Fundraising Direct Adopts 'No Interview' Model, Reducing Time-to-Hire to 2 Days
Background
Telephone fundraising provider, Fundraising Direct, delivers fundraising solutions to Canada’s leading not-for profit organizations and charities. Each year, Fundraising Direct hires and trains new employees for its results-based telephone fundraising campaigns designed to maximize fundraising pledges, build supporter loyalty, and support their clients’ missions. The team runs hundreds of fundraisers campaigns annually and hires 150 to 200 people a year to support them.
Challenge:
Two weeks of manual screening per hire
With a diverse pool of applicants (including many young university students), the performance levels of new hires varied greatly, even with extensive training. Fundraising Direct had data on the key metrics of campaign success and knew which employees performed well and why. However, they had no way of applying these metrics to hiring.
The old hiring process was manual, based on interviews, and captured only one of the seven core skills required for success. For each hire, the whole process would take two weeks.
Solution:
AI assessing soft skills at scale
HiringBranch analyzed the metrics and designed a custom assessment for Fundraising Direct that captured all seven core skills. The skills included strong conversational fluency, the ability to establish rapport with the client, as well as the ability to follow instructions.
During an initial proof-of-concept period, HiringBranch gave the speaking test to 200 new hires within their first day or two of joining. The 200 test results were then correlated with the new employees cumulative pledge scores, and then ranked among four performance tiers (from top-tier performers to low-tier performers).
Benchmarking:
Accurately selecting the top fundraisers
The correlation results found that all the top-tier employees had significantly higher final scores than the lower-tiered employees (p < 0.01 ). The best indicators for top-tier employees were the scores on conversational fluency and establishing rapport with a client. The HiringBranch assessment was clearly able to select the top-tier candidates who raised the highest cumulative pledges, and who possessed the top soft skills needed for fundraising success.
With this proof in hand, Fundraising Direct was now ready to pass every candidate through HiringBranch’s soft skills assessment and send offers to anyone who passed. Today Fundraising Direct has a very different hiring process that happens fast in just three steps:
- Candidates apply and receive a link to the HiringBranch assessment
- Candidates who scores above the desired threshold go straight to training
- Candidates are evaluated according to fit and trainable candidates are identified alongside the skills to coach them on
10%
99%
Results:
Better hires, more sales, less interviews
Fundraising Direct has significantly reduced their time to hire since using HiringBranch, moving from a two week process to one that takes them just two days! Sarah Wise, the Operations Manager, explains that the dramatic time savings stem from shedding manual screening and interviewing. She says:
“The first thing that we were able to do was just stop screening by telephone. We actually are able now to just eradicate interviews altogether. We do not have to see them, just get them straight into training. (...) It has given me the gift of time. My team is able to spend more time with the fundraisers, coaching them, mentoring them."
Not only did the custom assessment save time, it also led to increased revenue. Fundraisers who were hired with the HiringBranch assessment sell 10% more than those formerly hired through traditional means. With candidates who took the HiringBranch assessment performing exceptionally well, and nearly all interviews being eliminated, Fundraising Direct was able to reduce hiring costs by 1.5 FTEs.
Hire the best, every time.
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.avif)
.avif){kind=avatar}
.webp)
