Fundraising Direct Adopts 'No Interview' Model, Reducing Time-to-Hire to 2 Days

Summary

Learn how Fundraising Direct reduced their time-to-hire down to just two days and stopped interviewing by switching to a HiringBranch soft skills assessment.

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:

1. Candidates apply and receive a link to the HiringBranch assessment
2. Candidates who scores above the desired threshold go straight to training
3. Candidates are evaluated according to fit and trainable candidates are identified alongside the skills to coach them on

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:

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.