Hiring
Whether large or small, each election office is an organization that must function well year-round to meet the myriad responsibilities of administering elections. The necessary abilities include building a positive culture, navigating resource needs and effective staffing through hiring, training and management. Together, these operational competencies allow election offices to carry out their regular duties and foster a resilient organization capable of adapting to changing technologies, laws and voter needs. This is one of five standards that define excellence in election office operations. This draft standard will be updated based on feedback from the election community.
Standard
Your election office recruits and hires qualified candidates with the potential, temperament, and skills to successfully carry out their responsibilities. To achieve this standard:
- Your job descriptions reflect your office’s core values, clearly define required versus preferred qualifications and set appropriate expectations for roles.
- You build a candidate pool that represents your community and considers both internal and external candidates.
- You proactively communicate with candidates on the hiring timeline, updates, and compensation throughout the process.
- You have standardized processes to fairly evaluate candidates on their skills and values alignment for roles.
- You ensure staff involved in hiring receive training on how to fairly evaluate candidates.
- You consult resources for support and continuous improvement of your hiring processes.
Why this standard matters
It is important that we are explicit about the underlying why for each standard. While not attached to measurements, the intended impact of an election department achieving this standard is that:
- Election departments have sufficient and capable staff whose skills and experiences support the delivery of excellent elections.
- Election departments recruit and hire competent staff with the experiences that help them serve their voters.
- Election departments will fill roles with candidates who have high potential for success in the field of election administration.