Thank you for your interest in joining our Grantbook team! We are excited to see whether we can find a mutual fit for your talents and our organization. As two of our core values are empathy and candor, this article aims to bring transparency to Grantbook’s recruiting process so you can know what to expect.
At any time of the process if you decide that Grantbook is not a good fit for you and you want to withdraw your candidacy, that’s okay! We recognize that hiring/finding a job is a two-way street. Please just let us know if this is your decision. Because we aim to always learn from our experience, we may reach out to you one last time to provide some feedback on our recruiting experience.
Hiring Process Overview
Our recruiting process enlists the participation of several of the team members that you’ll potentially be working with. This helps you get a sense of your team members, but it also means that the scheduling of interviews through the recruiting process may take longer than you may be expecting. We thank you in advance for your patience.
Submitting Your Application
We have an application intake process that starts when you fill in the online form linked from our website or job posting. We don’t use automated resume screening tools - a real human reviews each submission. We really value thoughtful responses to the questions on the form and providing a tailored cover letter in addition to your resume.
Grantbook staff thrive here when we have high-level of self-awareness, empathy for others, and ability to communicate both our own thinking and someone else’s viewpoint. Providing examples of your past experiences demonstrating these skills and how you can see yourself thriving in our organization, are great items to share in your cover letter. This generates a great first impression by demonstrating that you have done some investigation into the type of work that Grantbook does and how we work.
After submitting your application form, you should receive a confirmation email within a few minutes that we received your application. If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to hiring@grantbook.org.
Phone Screening Interview
You should hear back within 2 weeks of submitting your application whether we will be moving forward with your application. If we are moving forward, we will contact you by email to schedule a 15-30 min phone interview.
During this interview we are looking for:
- Confirmation of interest in the role
- Clarification on how your past experiences align with the job posting of responsibilities
- How well you communicate
- Enthusiasm for working at Grantbook
Within a week after the phone screening interview, you should be informed whether you’ll proceed to the first team interview that will be scheduled within the next 2-3 weeks.
First Team Interview
In this interview, you will typically meet with the hiring lead as well as one person from the team with a similar role we are hiring. This interview is typically held remotely via Zoom.
During this conversation, some other things we would be looking to explore are:
- How your experience aligns with Grantbook’s work
- How you like to approach your work
- Grantbook’s working culture and what excites you about the opportunity at Grantbook
- Clarifying your experience with or exposure to technology and Philanthropy
We’ll also tell you more about the type of work you will likely do. We invite you to ask more detailed questions about the type of responsibilities and activities you will engage in as a Grantbook team member, as well as questions about our Grantbook culture.
We do try to schedule a set of interviews to take place within a span of a few weeks. The interviewers then make the decisions for who we want to invite for the second team interview, and inform everyone accordingly whether you are proceeding or not.
Practical Exercise
In advance of the second team interview, we may provide you with a brief practical exercise that is related to the activities you would perform in the role. The objective is to complete the exercise in time for the second team interview. You are welcome to ask questions about the context and approach for the exercise after reviewing the outline.
Some of the things we would discuss during the second interview related to this exercise are:
- How you decided to approach the exercise
- What outcomes you achieved in the exercise
- Things that you learned
- Ideas that sparked for you that you’re interested to explore
Second Team Interview
The second team interview is also with a group of 2 or 3 Grantbook staff. We try to include some different team members in this conversation so that you have the opportunity to meet more of us.
During this interview, the conversation typically covers the following:
- Your debrief from completing the practical exercise
- Your interest in Grantbook’s current opportunities
- The alignment between your working style and Grantbook’s culture
- Sharing examples of how your career can grow at Grantbook
- Grantbook’s compensation model
We try to schedule this round of interviews to all take place within a span of 2-3 weeks. After this round of interviews with candidates, the Grantbook team members participating as interviewers will decide together on the final hiring choice. We will notify you after final decisions are made.
Reference Calls
As a last step before confirming the decision, we will ask you for a short list of contacts of people you’ve worked with in the past. We will make reference calls to round out our knowledge of your talents and areas for growth.
It is helpful to give a heads up to your reference contacts so they can expect a call from us.
Hiring
If you’ve made it to this stage, congratulations! There will also be some final activities to draft the employment letter and other administrative items, and to set a start date. Then we’ll move onto our Grantbook onboarding process, and welcome you to the team!
