While every staff member may be trained to use your system, a small business or nonprofit needs someone who is also adept at reporting, importing, managing integrations, and training new staff. That person might already be on staff.

If not, some CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot and Quickbase have certification coursework and exams so you can ask potential employees if they have those certifications. But what if you have a small budget and cannot afford a certified user?

Following are some tips of what to look for in resumes and questions to can ask interviewees.

Resume:

• Look to see if your database is mentioned or if the person has database management experience.
• Look for roles that mention reporting on and analyzing operations, or measuring results against benchmarks. Focus on operations roles, not marketing roles because they have different skill-sets.
• Look for any mention of advanced Excel knowledge.

Interview:

• If the person has used your database, ask them what their role was. Did they input data or did they configure the database, create reports, or manage integrations? This will help you to better understand their depth of knowledge.
• If the person has not used your database, ask if they managed any other databases and how they did that (similar to the question above).
• To gauge the person’s Excel knowledge, ask them if they’ve downloaded and manipulated data from a system and how they would summarize and compare that data. What you want to know is if they seem excited about using Excel. People with a database mindset have used Excel extensively. Seriously, they know every Excel function. And you want to know that they’ve used and are comfortable with pivot tables and vertical look-ups at a minimum.

Depending on the size of your small business or nonprofit, this can be a part-time job for someone with a database mindset. Any questions? Reach out.