The Competency Trap That's Limiting Your Team

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the common hiring mistake of prioritizing current experience over future growth potential. He emphasizes the importance of hiring candidates who can adapt and grow with the evolving needs of the church rather than just those who meet current qualifications. Todd encourages hiring for learning ability and adaptability to ensure a healthy long-term fit within church staff. • Flawless resumes may not indicate future adaptability. • Churches often hire for immediate needs rather than future potential. • Current ministry contexts and technology evolve rapidly, requiring adaptable staff. • Growth potential should be prioritized over past experience in hiring. • Hire individuals who show a capacity and willingness to learn and adapt. • Assess job postings for balance between experience requirements and growth potential.

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Transcript

The Hiring Frustration

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You hired what you thought was perfect. Their resume was logged. They checked every single box on your job description. But six months later, they're drowning when the world starts to evolve a little bit or maybe even worse, they're fighting every single change because they say it's not what they signed up for. Meanwhile, the less qualified candidate that you passed on, you heard through the pipeline that this candidate that you passed on just got promoted into another church. Man, it's frustrating. We're gonna talk about it today. One of the one of the most one of the things that a lot of churches just get backwards when they're hiring. Hi, I'm glad you're joining us today here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, and I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistry staffing.com. And we are here every weekday, Monday through Friday for a brand new episode. If you're not a subscriber, go ahead and hit subscribe wherever you're listening today. I mentioned

Experience Does Not Equal Future Fit

SPEAKER_00 1:09

in my teaser that this is one of the things that I think a lot of churches just get backwards when they are hiring new staff. And here's the crux of it, okay? A lot of times what we do is we want to hire for pe what people can do today, not what they could do tomorrow. We want somebody who's already done the job somewhere else, someone who won't need training or development. And the thinking goes like this we're gonna hire experience, and by hiring for experience, we're gonna avoid risk. But here's the problem: uh you're not hiring for today's church, you're hiring for the future. And because the church you're staffing for doesn't exist yet, you have to look at what you're looking to hire more than just past experience. Your ministry context will change a lot faster than you think. Think of the last six months, a lot of things have changed culture-wise, church-wise, I'm sure that your job is different today than it was. Your ministry context changes and it changes faster than you think. And this new role that you just hired, or this new role that you're considering hiring, guess what? That role is going to evolve much quicker, quicker than what you expect it will, but it's also gonna evolve in some ways that maybe you can't even predict. Sometimes the technology shifts and that will shift your approach. Sometimes your congregation will grow and they just need different things. But your perfectly qualified hire could be stuck in their old playbook. I see this happen all the time. We want to hire somebody who has been there, done that, and they do it really well at this other church, and they've been doing it really well at this other church for the last five years. We're gonna hire them and have them do it here. And guess what? It doesn't work. Past experience is great, and it's definitely something you would look for in your hire, but it's not everything. Because perfectly qualified hires sometimes they get stuck, they get stuck in their old playbook and they resist adapting because honestly, they were hired to do what they already knew, not anything that they didn't. So listen, there's nothing wrong with wanting competent people, but competency without growth potential, that's a lid, that's a ceiling that a lot of churches don't consider when they're hiring a staff member. They're only considering this is what we have to offer today, this is the program today. They don't ever look at what is it going to be in six months or a year or two years or five years, and do we think this person can grow into where this position is heading?

Hire For Learning Ability

SPEAKER_00 3:51

So I think a lot of times when churches, and we encourage churches when they're working with us at chemistry staffing, we encourage them not to just look for experience. Experience is, man, that's important. I'm not, don't hear me say that experience is not important. But we do try and get them to recenter a little bit. And we tell them to start hiring for learning ability, not just current ability. Let me rephrase that because it might sound a little subtle, but it's really important. We encourage our churches when they come to us and say, hey, we need a new youth pastor, for example. We encourage them to hire for learning ability, not just current ability. Look for people who get energized by new challenges. Here's a question you can ask. Tell me about a time when you had to figure something out that you'd never done before. And then watch how they respond to scenarios outside their experience. Hire the person who says, I I don't know. To answer your question. I don't know, but I'd figure it out. Hire that person over somebody that says, that's not how we did it at all at my last church. Growth potential beats current competency every time. Let me repeat that. It's really important. Growth potential when you're hiring a new candidate, growth potential beats current competency every time. Think about it. Think about your best staff member right now. Your best staff members. I bet they're the ones who have grown somehow beyond their original job description. They're doing things today that they didn't dream of and you didn't dream that they'd be doing when you hired them. They're the ones who adapt when ministry gets messy. And they didn't just bring skills, they brought capacity to develop new ones. And that's not an accident, that's who they are.

Rewrite Job Posts For Growth

SPEAKER_00 5:40

So here's the bottom line for today. Stop hiring for people for who people are today, and start hiring for who they could be tomorrow. This week I'd love for you to take a look at your current job postings if you're have job openings at your church. Count how many requirements focus on past experience, and then do that on one s on the left side of the page, and then on the draw a line right down the middle, and then on the right side, how many of your requirements focus on future growth potential? And then just try and rewrite one section to focus on learning ability instead of prior competency. Ask yourself, am I hiring somebody to fill this role as it is currently, or am I hiring someone who can grow grow into the future with this role? Of course, there's gotta be a baseline competency, but there also has to be just that that that desire, that that drive, that push to be able to figure things out. Because your future depends on people that can not only do the job that's on their plate today, but people that can adapt and grow. And you need to hire accordingly.

How Chemistry Staffing Helps

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Well, I hope this has been helpful, maybe a little challenging to you, especially if you're in the middle of a job search or you're getting ready to hire somebody, then reach out to me. I would love to tell you a little bit about how chemistry staffing helps churches, comes alongside and partners with churches to help you find great hires. And this is one of the filters that we put on candidates, and one of the filters that we're gonna ask you if you were to work with us, just as one of the smart things to do. Don't just hire somebody that can do the job today, but hire somebody that's going to be able to adapt and grow into the role that it's gonna be at your church tomorrow. This is what we've given our lives and our ministries to, uh, and we think that we're pretty good at it. Actually, we're pretty humble about it. But we've worked with a lot of churches all across the country, all different types of positions, all sizes, all denominations. And we know the right questions to ask your church as you look for a new hire. We also know the right questions as we interview candidates for your church to ask them to help find what we call a healthy long-term fit. We're talking five years or more. So if there's maybe a question you've got, or maybe you're like Todd, we've got we've got a new hire that we're looking at and wondered how you could help us, reach out to me. I'd love to have a conversation with you. We can grab some coffee on a Zoom call. That'd be great. You can reach out to me, podcast chemistry staffing. Uh podcast at chemistry staffing.com.

Subscribe And Reach Out

SPEAKER_00 8:20

All right, that's it for today. I hope you'll join me right here again tomorrow. Again, if you haven't subscribed, wherever you're listening right now, hit that little subscribe button, and that way you won't ever miss a brand new episode of the helping church.