The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Red Flags You’re Ignoring in Your Staff Search
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Some warning signs are obvious, others are subtle and it's easy to dismiss when you're excited about a candidate, when you're hiring for your church staff. But hiring mistakes are almost always precedented by ignoring some flags that you saw, and today we're going to break down some of the most common candidate yellow and red flags that churches overlook and how to catch them before it's too late, before you make a hiring decision that you wish you wouldn't have made. Hi there, my name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom, and I'm your host right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Have you ever hired somebody and thought, wow, I should have seen that coming. Yeah, you probably could have.
Speaker 1:Today we're talking about red flags yellow flags according to how you describe them in your church's hiring process, those little clues that something isn't quite right. It's the things you notice but you don't stop long enough to name, and today we're going to talk about that and we're going to fix it. Okay, let me briefly describe how I would define a red flag or a yellow flag, okay, a red flag. In our work at Chemistry, if there's a red flag, even one red flag, we will not move a candidate onto a church. A red flag is a stop sign. It's a do not pass, go, do not collect $200, do not hire this candidate because it is not going to work. Okay, that's how I would describe a red flag.
Speaker 1:A yellow flag is something that you need to have a conversation about, something that you identify. Maybe it's a secondary or tertiary theological issue, maybe it's some kind of a personality thing, maybe it's an experience expectation or a role clarification question that you have that you're not quite in agreement on. And a yellow flag. You can hire a yellow flag candidate all day long, but you need to know what those yellow flags are and you need to have had the conversation with them about that to determine whether that yellow flag you can either turn that yellow flag red, which again red flag do not continue. You can turn it green, which, if you have the conversation on a yellow flag and you turn it green and you're in agreement, awesome. Sometimes they're just yellow and my guess is that you, if you're watching or listening to this, you may have been at your church 10 years. You probably still have some yellow flag issues at your church, but you're able to work there very well and do great ministry. So that's how I describe yellow flags, red flags, but let's take a look at some of these flags that you should at least have a conversation about and if they're red, then slam on the brakes. Buddy, don't hire that person because you know that it's not going to work.
Speaker 1:Okay so, red flags you should see, that you normally see but you don't call out sometimes. Okay, here are some examples. Maybe they give you a vague answer about why they left their last church. Dig in, ask that question, get the answer that you need to hear. Don't settle for the vague answers, because the devil lives in those vague details. Okay, so, maybe they don't give you, maybe they give you vague answers. Maybe they don't ask many questions about your church or the role. They're just not very inquisitive. That could be a yellow flag. Maybe they blame others in every tough story that they tell. That's a flag. You need to dive in and have that conversation.
Speaker 1:Maybe you feel a little more confused after the interview than you did going into the interview, more confused after the interview than you did going into the interview. It's just a check in your spirit. It's a flag. Those are some things that maybe, but you just don't even think to call out. These are flags that we rationalize away. They were just nervous, or maybe it was a toxic church. They'll probably warm up, but those flags are there. They are there. They're waving for a reason and you need to see the flag and notice it and decide what to do with it. Okay, those are some that you might miss.
Speaker 1:Here are some flags, particularly red flags, that you might miss entirely. These just aren't flags. They're threads that often run deep, things like maybe their theology doesn't fully align, but they say they're fine with your statement of faith. Right, they say, yeah, I can work under that. But you really talk to them and they're not on the same page theologically but you overlook it. Okay, that's a flag. Maybe their temperament just rubs your team the wrong way. They've come in for a site visit, maybe it's even on a Zoom interview, and you get off of it and you just say, yeah, it just didn't feel like somebody that we would want on our team. You need to mind that flag.
Speaker 1:Maybe their resume is stacked with short stints or fuzzy job descriptions. Those are questions that you need to ask. Those are flags that you need to rectify, that you need to talk through and determine. There could be a great reason for short stints. There could be a great reason for why their job descriptions don't have a lot of detail to them, but you need to ask those questions.
Speaker 1:Maybe they overplay their past wins and avoid specifics. Right, they're like they're the best thing since sliced bread, but you can't really tell that they've ever made a sandwich. That makes no sense whatsoever. I just made that up on the fly, if you could tell. But candidates sometimes overplay their wins. They make their wins seem really big, but when you press them on them and ask them and dig in a little bit, they avoid any specifics because they're probably inflating it a little bit. Okay, so churches often skip calling references early or they don't push for honest feedback. But if you don't spot these things now, you're going to live with them later and you're going to wish that you would have asked all the questions beforehand. Todd, how in the world do I catch the red flags before it's too late?
Speaker 1:I like to say one of my big things is I like to use behavioral interview questions. These start off with tell me about a time when you did this, get curious, be curious about any kind of inconsistencies in their story, anything that they say that you're just like I'm not sure about that that doesn't pass the sniff test. Be curious about any of those inconsistencies that you have and ask a lot of questions. That's what the job interview is for. Maybe you bring in a neutral party to debrief the interview with you. That's one of the benefits of using a firm like Chemistry Staffing is that we have a neutral party that's doing.
Speaker 1:We do up to three interviews before we take candidates to a church, but we have a number of different people that I won't say they don't have a dog in your fight, because they do. They very much want to find somebody that's going to work really well for your church, but they all bring different sets of experience and expertise and ministry perspective into those interviews so that they can really ask some of these and be inquisitive, ask some of these really tough questions and identify these flags so that you can have the conversation. And then you're going to want to talk to multiple references and ask those references, open-ended questions as well, and then finally just trust your gut. But you need to verify with data and with questions and with answers and with feedback. The goal isn't to find the perfect person, because you're not going to find the perfect person. The goal is to find a clear picture of who you're really hiring before they come on your team. All right, so here's the bottom line for today Red flags, yellow flags.
Speaker 1:Red flags always do mean no, but yellow flags don't always mean no. They might just mean slow down, they might just mean you got to get curious, you got to ask more questions, you got to dig deeper. You need to ask the awkward questions. That's what the yellow flags are. And again, my, what my expertise in in talking with so many hundreds of candidates and hundreds of church, probably thousands of candidates, hundreds of churches over the years, probably even thousands of churches. I guess I've been doing this for 30 years. My goodness, one of the big things that is a problem is you just don't ask enough questions and you're afraid to really dig in.
Speaker 1:I'd love to be able to help you if you're in the middle of a really difficult hire. You just need somebody to talk to Say Todd, I just want to make sure we get this right. Love to have a conversation with you. Reach out to me anytime. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. All right, that's it for this week. If you're listening on Friday, I hope you have a great weekend. We'll be right back here again on Monday and I hope you'll join us. Join me right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Have a great weekend, you.
