How to Build a Recruiting Team

This is the second in a series of post about the Recruiters Edge.

You have hopes and dreams for your organizations future, but who has time to recruit the amount of staff it’s going to take to fill the open roles, let alone the openings that are hard to see coming.

You cannot do this alone you must have a team. In the church these will probably be volunteers with a mix of staff.

This sounds weird, but just remember, at all levels of church sizes we execute things with volunteer teams that eventually become “jobs” if the church grows. Some of these things are production ministry (audio, video, lighting), finance, human resources, operations of all kinds, growth ministry like small groups/mens/womens, and the list goes on and on.

All of these eventual staff part-time or full-time roles were once led by a volunteer team of individuals.

The same can be true of recruiting. How to do this:

1. Get the right list of people to ask. Don’t worry about the team being small if you can only think of 3 or 4. A team of 10 would be GREAT, but perhaps you can’t find that many. The right people are connector types of people.

For example:

Newbies. Who is the family that moved to town and joined your church a year ago? Perhaps you are even tired of hearing about their previous church and how great it was.

Resourcers. Who is the person who knows a guy every time a problem comes up. Need a plumber? Need a pastor? They know a guy.

Detailer. Who is great at just mining details? Spreadsheets and repetitive tasks are in their wheelhouse.

Pioneers. These are people who want to do something different, new, and figure out the problems.

Networker. Perhaps you know someone who seems to know people in and out of your tribe/denomination/ city.

You’ll never find all of these skills in one person but you may find them in a team.

So, sit still with a blank sheet of paper and think about your church of 100, 500 or 2,000…who comes to mind as you begin to think about this list. Think of other potentials (and please send them to us). You have the making of a team.

2. Ask them for an initial three-hour training and then one hour per week of volunteering. You will need to train them on how to think like a recruiter and then you need them to give you an hour of focused work weekly. If you get 10 people doing this you in essence have a pretty serious recruiting effort to go along with those social media and job boards you are posting your roles to.

Recruiting is hard. Don’t think about that. Just answer this question: can you get the right ten people to give you three hours for training and then one hour per week for a year? That’s it. That’s all you have to do until it’s time to actually teach them how to think like a recruiter (the next post). Is it that easy? Of course it is NOT this easy, but nothing is, right? Just focus on this first step.

FOR MORE: Lp is offering a two-hour training on The Recruiter’s Edge over the summer