The above comic almost made me spit my coffee all over my mac as I read it over.
Hilarious and very true. This was a typical thought going through my mind as I hired people in previous jobs in the marketplace. Questions like:
- Why in the world were you laid off if your resume looks so darn awesome?
- “Financial” trouble or “employee” trouble? … Really?
- What’s the real story here?
The thing is that it was pretty cut and dry. In ministry, though, it’s a tad bit different (or it appears to be).
I don’t get the hiring process in ministry and that’s probably because it’s more mystery than anything to me. Sure there’s the resumes, the interviews, the “process” but it seems that God really has a dramatic impact on who gets “in” and who doesn’t.
That fascinates me. Hiring the right people is equal (or less) about you and the ministry’s preconceived needs and much more God and His desire for fulfilling His work through your ministry.
Or, maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know.
And hiring the right technical (web) staff, online campus-related staff… whoa!
How are you hiring the right people? Thoughts particular to web-related positions welcome!
Graham Brenna says
First off… awesome comic. Love me some Dilbert.
Second… I think that when hiring anyone for a ministry position, the first criteria should be that they have a deep desire to know and love God and a desire to share him with others. If not… the rest of their qualifications don't matter. So assuming the prior is true; when related to the web side of things. They should have some sort of portfolio of their work. You can't hire the pastor's nephew just because he's the pastor's nephew. He's got to know a thing or two about computers.
Take my IT director position for example. The title of IT director was added to to my job description as Tech director simply because I had built a couple of PC computers and so therefore "knew computers". While I am probably the most qualified person on our staff to be handling our network needs… I know nothing about networks. Attaching a processor and ram to a motherboard doesn't translate to IP addresses and DHCP protocol. So am I wrong for the IT director position at my church? YES. But do they really have another option at this point? NO.
Obviously it all comes down to money. There was not enough money to hire me full-time and have a separate person handle IT. So they merged the two positions. If they didn't hire me full-time, I would have had to leave and find work elsewhere. This would have left a huge hole that would have been hard to fill on the Tech director side. That's not tooting my own horn… it's just the facts.
Thankfully I'm aware that I'm not good at the IT side of my job and have been able to surround myself with advisers on the subject that are much smarter than I. We're in a never-ending process to move the load off of our small servers and have it hosted off-site. Moving to ACS Technologies for our database has helped tremendously as well as getting the staff hooked up with the free version of Google Apps. (which really just means that I've made them all create a Gmail address and we're linking their POP3 domain emails to that inbox.) So we were able to rid ourselves of Outlook.
So okay… don't hire people that won't move the position forward. But sometimes compromises have to be made.
wvpv says
Regardless of skills listed on the resume, nothing beats the a willing & humble spirit and ability to pick up and learn something new.
I've seen it played out time after time in the IT department where I work. There have been lots of people that are smart, have all the training and experience, but don't have the desire/commitment/capability to grow.
They don't seem to last long.
I think basic personality type plays is a big factor in tech jobs. Maybe i'm wrong.
Graham Brenna says
No they wouldn't last long in an IT department if they weren't able to learn and grow. But those same people that are lacking the desire/commitment/capability to grow seem to flourish in other areas of ministry. I'm talking about the person who's been doing their job for 30+ years that is hesitant to jump on board with a new idea or a different way of doing things.
I understand being hesitant to change for the sake of change. But what about changing the way we do things because it will be better?! When they don't get on board with the rest of the staff… it hurts the staff.
human3rror says
agreed!
samantha says
LMAO