Jack—or others who have run open board rounds recently—can you say more concretely what your advertisement and selection process was? In HLI, we’re thinking about doing an open board round soon, but I’m not sure exactly how we’d do it.
For reference, for selection for staff, we standardly do an initial application, two interviews and two test tasks (1 about 2 hours, 1 about 5 hours). This doesn’t seem like obviously the right process for board members: I’m hesitant to ask board members to do (long) test tasks, as they would be volunteers, plus I’m not sure what they would even be. But I’m also wary of spending lots of staff time on interviews and, similarly, don’t have a very clear idea of what criteria I’m selecting against. So, any recommendations you have would be great!
We did an initial screen on the application form, then 3 people reviewed the remaining candidates in more depth to form a longlist, and now 10 people are having three 30-min ‘informal chats’ with me and two Board members. Finally, our recommendations will go to the whole Board. In each round, we had three opinions and the other two were Board members.
Grayden and the EA Good Governance Project will advise you to keep the ED out of the process, as they answer to the Board, but I found this was impractical as I have so much more time I can dedicate to moving the process on as part of my job.
If you’d like details on questions asked etc., let me know
Jack—or others who have run open board rounds recently—can you say more concretely what your advertisement and selection process was? In HLI, we’re thinking about doing an open board round soon, but I’m not sure exactly how we’d do it.
For reference, for selection for staff, we standardly do an initial application, two interviews and two test tasks (1 about 2 hours, 1 about 5 hours). This doesn’t seem like obviously the right process for board members: I’m hesitant to ask board members to do (long) test tasks, as they would be volunteers, plus I’m not sure what they would even be. But I’m also wary of spending lots of staff time on interviews and, similarly, don’t have a very clear idea of what criteria I’m selecting against. So, any recommendations you have would be great!
I think the application process is spelt out in the application pack, which is still live here: https://1fortheworld.org/jobs-at-oftw
We did an initial screen on the application form, then 3 people reviewed the remaining candidates in more depth to form a longlist, and now 10 people are having three 30-min ‘informal chats’ with me and two Board members. Finally, our recommendations will go to the whole Board. In each round, we had three opinions and the other two were Board members.
Grayden and the EA Good Governance Project will advise you to keep the ED out of the process, as they answer to the Board, but I found this was impractical as I have so much more time I can dedicate to moving the process on as part of my job.
If you’d like details on questions asked etc., let me know