Hiring the best job candidates is the underlying motivation of every recruitment effort. This is especially tough to do in non-profit organizations that may pay much less than their for-profit counterparts. Present hiring processes will influence future leadership development in the organi-zation. Hiring the best candidates is essential and this article presents four questions that need to be asked and answered before bringing on any potential candidates to an organization.

We only hire the best! The mantra of human re source recruiting departments worldwide. No one wants to hire the worst candidate, so who wouldn't want to hire the best? But do we? How do we do it? And most importantly, how does our hiring process fit into our overall leadership development in our organizations? This article seeks to address these topics in the next few pages, but specifically in an area where it can be hard to hire the best: the non-profit world.

In a 2008 study on non-profit leaders called, "Ready to Lead?", researchers found that 1 in 3 non-profit executives are fired or forced out of their positions for underperformance or disagreements with their boards. 75% of executives plan to leave their posts in the next five years creating a leadership vacuum in many non-profits. To fill this vacuum, leadership development needs to occur and that starts at the bottom with a strategy to hire and develop those inevitably needed future leaders. Who we hire will affect the advent of leaders down the road. While it may be possible to buy talent from other companies when needed, the costs of doing so are much higher than the costs of developing leaders internally; and this all starts with hiring the best. It is so easy to be wowed by a person's skills and background and forget that the person we hire today should be the leader of tomorrow.

HRM Review Magazine, Emotional Intelligence, EI, Interpersonal Skills, Organizational Plans, Leadership Development, Non-profit Organization, Human Resources, Hazard Organization, Strategic Planning, Organizational Policies, Succession Planning.