I first connected with a recruiter and had a very positive experience.
Unfortunately, the CEO, as many people have noted, is wildly disrespectful and unprofessional. I met with her first on video, and then completed a short typing test, excel test, and writing sample, all of which I cleared very easily. I was then flown out to spend a day in the office alongside her. Below is a short summary of some of what I observed and experienced.
I arrived at the HistoryMakers offices at the agreed upon time, as requested. I was greeted by two staff members and asked to wait on a couch outside of the CEOs office until she arrived later that morning.
When she finally arrived she was visibly upset and frustrated and explained that she had found several mistakes from her team's work that morning. She complained specifically about one employee's performance and that she was unimpressed by him and his credentials. She asked if I would like to stay in the office with her when she addressed his performance and I declined as I did not believe this was appropriate, professional or respectful to a staff member. When I later returned after the conversation was done, she spoke loudly about his performance again and said she did not see a path forward for him.
Throughout the day, the staff was extremely quiet and avoided eye contact around the office. Several times, staff cautiously knocked on her office door while I was inside the office with her to ask her a number of questions or remind her of an upcoming calendar item. More than once, when the staff member would leave, she would mock them with an impression or face.
Half way through the day, while eating her lunch the CEO asked the staff to join a zoom call to address other mistakes that had been made. With the exception of one person, the team did not respond or engage as she criticized the work product and called their performance unacceptable. The issue appeared to be rooted in an inconsistency across data entry, and the team resolved to have the only team member with the editing privileges re-enter the information twice. When the team member explained this would be double work, the CEO stated that yes, the team member should do double work since the issue remained unresolved after She had spent the majority of the call asking the same question repeatedly. After the call, I asked her how much time she spends addressing issues like this. She replied that it is a regular occurrence. She noted that she does not know many of the mistakes being made by certain staff members because no one is checking his work.
The CEO stated multiple times that she is not good at / does not enjoy managing people and would not be training anyone. When I asked how staff members are onboarded to be positioned for success in their roles, she said it is the responsibility of any new person to simply read existing manuals. She stated she manages the team by having them submit individual to-do lists every day and reviewing them. She said that she has no "stars" on her team and described them as unmotivated. Individually, the team members I interacted with shared their work with pride and enthusiasm, although were evasive in describing their experience in the workplace. When I later asked her what constituted a "star" on her team, she answered that it is someone who never said no to her.
During my interactions with her, the CEO repeated several of the same questions over and over throughout the day, often with incredulous or leading framing or in ways that were blatantly dismissive, patronizing, and condescending about my experience and abilities. These questions included:
"So you have never run an organization before, right?"
"Can you do work outside of development?" "Are you actually able to do work outside of development?" "Why aren't you staying in development?"
"What did you actually do in that job?"
"How do I know you aren't going to come to me and tell me you don't know how to do something because you haven't done it before?"
During our time together, she also stated that it would be impossible for me to pursue my doctorate degree while in the role and did not understand why I wanted one. I explained that I was committed to continuous learning and only a very small percentage of my demographic earn doctorate degrees in this country. She then asked why a doctorate would make sense for me and stated that sometimes people do not know what degrees are best for them and explained she is trying to convince her niece to pursue a law degree as her father convinced her to do. She brought up the same concern about my interest in returning to school again at the end of the day. This time I responded that I had always had to work multiple jobs while in school or manage outside priorities such as caregiving and had never had the luxury of only one thing and was used to balancing my priorities. She was dissatisfied with this answer and said she would put a pin in that response to revisit yet again.
At the end of the day, she asked me about my concerns. When I shared them, namely that I was uncertain that I fit the profile she was looking for based on her line of questioning throughout the day, she was defensive and she responded with several comments including:
"Not everyone can do the things that they think they can do."
I thanked her for her time and left the office promptly at 4pm.
Overall, the experience was highly demoralizing and felt intended to dissuade me from pursuing a role further.
Still, she offered me the role. She continued to berate my experience - saying there was nothing about my background that made her believe I could do the role. The comment was especially puzzling after multiple conversations, (including the all day in-person site visit), several assessments (writing, excel, typing) and receiving an offer of employment from the organization. If you do not believe someone is capable of leading after these steps, reevaluate the hiring process and your talent strategy, and simply do not offer a position to them. There is no need to denigrate a professional's experience or qualifications at any point in the hiring process for any position, at any level. It was also particularly astounding given the reason that she is hiring for the role, which is because she is the one actually having a great deal of difficulty running the organization, She openly shared that she does not know the spend rate of the organization, is 11 months behind on grant reporting to major funders, and does not know the mistakes being made by her team because she is uninterested and incapacble of providing appropriate oversight.
The experience is particularly concerning as it is the image and reputation of the organization, staff, donors, and all of the individuals represented in the archives who ultimately suffer the consequences.
To reiterate, I was excited about the role and deeply respect the organization's mission. As a leader and professional, I have standards for appropriate workplace behavior. There are so many talented, passionate nonprofit professionals - including myself and the current staff - who want to do great work and advance this mission. They are deserving of an organization and leadership that will treat them with the dignity and respect to carry it forward.
The role is now reposted again as the VP of Operations. No worthy professional is going to withstand her disrespect and abuse.
