120 – 10 Volunteer Interview Questions for a Perfect Match

July 25, 2024

Episode #120: 10 Volunteer Interview Questions for a Perfect Match

In this episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast, Tobi Johnson shares 10 volunteer interview questions for a perfect match to ensure a good fit between the volunteers and the organization’s roles, tasks, and mission.  

She emphasizes the significance of understanding volunteers’ motivations, skills, and values to enhance retention and create an enjoyable volunteering experience. Tobi also highlights the benefits of conducting tours, making interviews conversational, and how you can involve volunteers in the process!  

Volunteer Interview Questions – Episode Highlights

• [00:31] – Understanding Volunteer Matching 
• [03:06] – Guidelines for Effective Volunteer Interviews 
• [07:12] – Top Volunteer Interview Questions 
• [27:22] – Concluding Thoughts and Future Episodes 

Helpful Links

• VolunteerPro Membership Community 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #102: 3 Keys to an Irresistible Volunteer Offer 
• Volunteer Nation Episode #118: 8 Ways to Make Volunteering Experiences Much Easier  
• [Free Resource] Volunteer Interview Questions Cheat Sheet  

Contact Us

Have questions or suggestions for the show? Email us at wecare@volpro.net.

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Episode #120 Transcript: 10 Volunteer Interview Questions for a Perfect Match 

Tobi: Welcome everybody to another episode of the volunteer nation podcast. 

I’m your host, Tobi Johnson. And I want to talk about volunteer matching today, specifically, what specific volunteer interview questions should you be asking to make sure that you are able to match prospective volunteers with roles and schedules and activities, and especially your cause, making sure they’re a good fit for your cause, so that they have the most exceptional experience ever. 

I mean, think about it. Have you ever had an experience where you’re in flow, just completely absorbed with something? That it’s so interesting to you, that it, there’s so little friction, or maybe you want to learn a little bit, so you’re still in flow as you learn. It’s not too hard for you. It’s not too easy for you. 

Okay. Okay. You’re just enjoying your work. You might be in flow because you’re working with people you love to work with, people who you enjoy, people who you feel like you have synergy with. This is what we’re trying to do when we’re working with volunteers. We’re trying to get them to a state of flow. 

So that they have the most exceptional experience ever. And it all starts, of course, with understanding the roles that your organization needs, and the skill sets and sort of prerequisites that might be required to make that a successful role and, and to explain it to volunteers and so that they can choose what might work best for them. 

But it’s also about understanding your volunteers well. And there are some types of questions you can ask, you know, volunteer interview questions. You might call these discovery calls, you might call these welcome calls, there’s, or meetings. So, they don’t necessarily, you don’t necessarily have to call these interviews, but if you do call them interviews, and most people do, I want to give you volunteer interview questions to ask during these moments. 

Types of meetings. So, whatever you decide to call them. These are the volunteer interview questions you might consider asking. And I’m also going to talk about why we might want to ask some of these questions. So, you know, before we get started jumping into the questions, and I’ve got about 10 for you today, as well as a freebie download so you can get our cheat sheet on interview questions. 

I’ll talk about that in a minute. Well, I’ll talk about that at the end. A couple of guidelines when you’re thinking about setting up volunteer interviews and what volunteer interview questions you’re going to ask. First, if it is at all possible, if you’re doing interviews in person, give your volunteers a quick tour of your space, if it’s possible. 

This cements the commitment of volunteers to your organization and gives them information so that they can start to imagine themselves in your space. It is worthwhile. Now, you might want to do this with small groups. You may not have the capacity or time, but what if you had a volunteer doing tours? So, think about, I remember when I was working at a nonprofit serving homeless youth in San Francisco. 

And we would often have our executive director drop by and she would be giving donors tours of our facilities and she’d just drop in and pop her head in and introduce the person that she was touring around. They might be potential board members, but there was a lot of touring going on. 

Almost every week we had people walking through. all and we had multiple facilities. And so, this was a really good way to really show our organization in action. And it obviously paid off because we kept doing it right. Tours aren’t just for donors. Maybe they will help your volunteers. better connect with you and understand your mission as it looks and as it is in action. 

So, combine, if you can combine an interview with a tour of your building, maybe you have a volunteer lead that tour, either one on one or in small groups, do it. Another guideline is to make sure you keep this interview a two-way conversation. And probe for interesting tidbits about that volunteer. So, ask, you know, tell me more about that. 

Use questions to open the conversation. By the same token, refrain from asking too many yeses, no questions. Like, a question like, can you commit to five hours a week, yes, or no? You’re not going to learn a lot from that. So, if your questions are yes, no questions, see if you can adjust them to be more in depth. 

And again, I’m going to give you 10 great questions to ask in a minute. Take notes from these interviews because those notes, some of the questions you’re going to ask, are going to give you clues. They will give you clues as to what are the primary motivations of your volunteers. And those you can use when you appreciate and acknowledge their work. 

So, you’re getting intel on how to best support that volunteer when they begin volunteering. Also, get engaged, and to help you take good notes and get good information, get, um, ask volunteer interview questions that help people tell stories. So, you can say things like, tell me about a time when, you know, or ask scenario-based questions to predict future behavior. 

So, if there’s something that volunteers often struggle with, you can give them a scenario and say, what would you do in this, in this, scenario? And you get a, you get a better understanding of how they’ll react in real life. And then sometimes you might need to meet again if you have doubts or concerns, but you want to verify them. 

So, for example, if a volunteer shows up 30 minutes late to your interview, I will probably set another after that preliminary interview, I’d set another shorter interview just to see if they show up on time or if they missed the interview. If you’re, you’re really testing behavior. And if that person is a no show or shows up late again, then that gives you information and you can decide whether that’s a behavior that you want to support or that you, that you can support, right? 

So, some of those things, it’s okay to meet again if you have doubts about being a volunteer. So those are just some guidelines for your volunteer interviews that I wanted to leave with a little bit. But let’s jump into these questions. The first set of questions is about person, org, or person task fit. So does the task fit the person’s preferences, skill set, et cetera? 

And does your mission match what they’re interested in? So, these questions are really about that. So, questions serve different purposes, and these are good about checking person org or person task fit. So, the first one, in my set of volunteer interview questions is what are the causes that that potential volunteer feels passionately about? 

What do they value? What do they feel passionate about? What, what do they get angry about? What do they get excited about? And what your, you know, how does volunteering fit in their life? What meaning does volunteering have for them? You want to understand this, in this line of questioning it is about understanding whether you’re the right fit for them. 

Now, for people who are out searching and doing their due diligence around the volunteer roles they’re looking for and the types of organizations they want to serve, this is not a big issue. However, when you’re coming across volunteers who are trying to check the box on a requirement, for example, to get, some volunteer experience before they, submit some college applications or people are doing employee, volunteering and they just want to check that box. 

These are the kinds of folks that if they’re not a good mission match with you, they’re probably not going to be very committed. Now, I’m not going to say everybody is not going to become committed because we can all fall in love with the nonprofits we’re working with volunteers. Certainly, almost every organization I’ve worked with, if the mission is awesome, like working with homeless youth and helping them leave the streets into jobs, hey, I fell in love with that work because, you know what, we were doing amazing things. 

So, it’s possible for that to happen, but you then you want to probe a little bit more if there’s not good mission match, and maybe especially if there’s not a values match, if you’re an advocacy organization and you’re advocating for something that’s controversial that other people don’t believe in, then that’s going to be a problem sooner or later that conflict will rear its ugly head. 

So, make sure you ask that first question about what causes do they feel passionately about. What are their values, or you know, asking what their value is a difficult question. I would ask, you know What do you feel passionately about? What are you a champion of? What are you not a fan of those kinds of things to get to that value question? 

The second in my list of volunteer interview questions is what skills do they have and want to share? And often people will be very humble about what skills they have. So, you’ve got to probe a little bit around this area. What do they enjoy doing? That’s like, what do you enjoy doing most, right? What do you think your, your, is your special sauce or your super skill? 

Now, you can talk to, you can ask questions and have conversations about people’s professions, their education, training they’ve received, their hobbies, all those are going to give you clues about their special skills. What’s your superpower? I like to ask that question. What’s your superpower? Everybody has a superpower and they’ll be able to share that. 

What do they do well? What do they want to learn more about doing? Maybe there’s something that they want to stretch skills and knowledge around. That’s okay too. I also ask sometimes; how would others describe you and your superpower? If they don’t want to brag, if you can sort of ask a sideways question about what would other people say is your superpower? 

That’s a way for people who are super humble to answer the question without feeling like they’re bragging. So, we want to figure out what their skills are, but we also want to figure out what they want to share because not everybody wants to share some of the things they do, for example, in their very stressful job, 40, 50, 60 hour a week job. 

They may not want to share that skill when they’re on their weekends doing volunteering. So, we also want to know what, what are your glad gifts? What do you want to share? Third question is what would make their volunteering experience the most meaningful for them? So, what would make it worth their while? 

So you’re trying to understand what their primary motivation is and whether or not you can fulfill it because sometimes you can’t. It’s not something. Um, that you can, now, now, some examples around this are being appreciated, building specific skills, getting work or school references, as I talked about before, completing a requirement that someone else has assigned them, sometimes that’s the primary motivation, fixing something that’s broken, like in a community, in a society, in a system, sometimes that’s what’s really driving people, they feel, you know, this needs a change, we need change in this area, helping others that are similar to themselves, so, you know, I, you know, they may have overcome a disease or a challenge in their life and they want to help somebody else heal as well. They want to pay it forward. Or maybe they want to make a real impact. Or maybe it’s because their family has a legacy of volunteering. 

Lots of reasons. So, what would make it most meaningful? You got to understand what, what the volunteer, how they are making meaning with their volunteering. Everyone has a story that they tell themselves about their volunteer work. You want to uncover what that is because that’s going to help you not only understand their level of commitment, because if they can’t speak to that at all, then you got to wonder about commitment, but also it helps you in the future when you want to acknowledge their work. 

If you’re wondering about motivations, go ahead and check out Volunteer Nation episode 102. 3. keys to an irresistible volunteer offer. I talk about what drives motivation and what drives volunteers to come to your door in the first place. So, check that out. I think that would be a super, super helpful episode for you to check out. 

All right, let’s look at question, volunteer interview question number four. How do they imagine volunteering with your org will look like? So, what do you think it’ll be like when you’re here volunteering? There are several different things you might want them to suss out. One might be, are they going to be working in line or online or in person with a team or alone? 

But leading others or following, working client facing or behind the scenes, doing something easy or challenging. These are things we’re trying to see if they have a good picture. We’re not asking them which role you want here, check this on the application. That’s not what we’re asking. You know, what would make you feel most comfortable? 

And you can give them these prompts, you know, would you like to work online, and you’d like to work in person, right? Do you want to work with a team, or would you rather work by yourself? So, you can start to better match people with experiences that meet what their preferences are. The fifth in our list of volunteer interview questions is what are their must haves and non-negotiables? 

And what support would they welcome? So, are there specific schedules they’re looking for? Is there technology that they’re comfortable with or technology that they don’t want to use? Are there specific things they don’t want to do? Are there things they want to learn? You know, I’ll give you an example. When I joined a specific board for an organization I used to be on the board of, I told them straight out when they recruited me, I said, look, if you’re looking for people to do cold calling and dialing for dollars, that’s not really me. 

I don’t believe in that as an efficacious Fundraising strategy, and I’m not interested in interrupting people when they’re having dinner, and they said, no worries, we’re not going to ask you to do that. I said, great, I’ll sit down with major donors, I’ll go to their homes, I’ll take them on tours. If the, you know, if we’ve identified high potential donors. 

People, I’m happy to do that, but I don’t want to dial for dollars. Well, at some point during my volunteering as a board member, I was asked to dial for dollars just along with everybody else for an annual campaign. And, of course, I did it because I was asked to do it, but at the end of my term, I rolled off immediately because it was like, look, I already told you guys I didn’t want to do this, so I’m not going to re up my, my tenure as a board member here. 

People may, even if you’re breaking a non-negotiable for them, they may volunteer for you until the end of their commitment, but they’re not going to come back and do more. Or they may simply leave. So you’ve got to know these things up front, and you’ve got to make sure you’re managing expectations as well with volunteers, because if one of their non negotiables is an absolute bottom line requirement for you, then you know what, it’s not a good match, and we need to help them find another organization. 

All right, let’s take a quick pause for my list of volunteer interview questions that will help you make a better match and boost retention. All of these, you know, recruitment and retention are so intricately related, you know, they’re both sides of the same coin and you can set yourself up for better retention. 

Through better matching, and the longer volunteers stay around and are happy, the more they share through word of mouth, so your recruitment gets easier. So, it’s mutually beneficial, but you know, a lot of it starts with this matching process and making sure that we can match somebody in a role that they can experience flow with. 

So, let’s take a quick break and we will be right back, and I’ll share five more cool questions to ask volunteers. 

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Okay, we’re back with my list of volunteer interview questions that will help you make a better match and thus retain volunteers, reduce turnover, and reduce your recruitment load as well. So, let’s talk about volunteer interview question number six, which is what is their pet peeve when it comes to past volunteer experiences? 

Often, we ask, do you have Past volunteer experiences? Well, that’s fine and good. You know, that may or may not make someone qualified. What I want to know is what bothers them? Where have they had a bad experience? What would they have put up with? Now, we don’t want people to gossip too much. On the other hand, if people do gossip a lot about the organization and speak and trash another nonprofit, then that tells you something about the person they are. 

The way that people answer this question tells you a lot about who they are. You know, for someone who’s not a gossip, they’re going to say, well, you know, I had, I’m not going to name the organization, but I had a bad experience, and this is what happened. If it sounds reasonable, sometimes if they’re angry about something that’s unreasonable, that gives you information. 

It’s a really loaded question that I think can give you a lot of information. It also lets you know if there’s something that’s their pet peeve, absolutely, but it’s something they would have to put up with, quote unquote, at your organization, then you know it’s not a good match. Pay attention when you ask this question. 

Have you volunteered before? What’s been your pet peeve about volunteering? What, what did you dislike about volunteering and what did you like about volunteering? You can combine those questions as well. For more on how to help volunteers navigate your system, oh, and not create these pet peeves and opportunities for pet peeves, check out Volunteer Nation episode 118, Eight Ways to Make Volunteering Experiences Much Easier. 

That was just a few weeks ago. And I talk about how to create a more frictionless volunteer experience and thus we’re not, we’re not creating opportunities for pet peeves to crop up or thrive. All right, let’s talk about commitment, how we’re assessing commitment in our volunteers. So, volunteer interview question number seven, a good question to ask about to see, check for commitment and follow through and accountability. 

You can ask people how they will incorporate volunteering into their current schedule and when would be the best time to get started. This you’re trying to assess, you know, what is the frequency and length of commitment the volunteer wants to make. Are they going to be interested in an event? or project based volunteering or ongoing opportunities? 

What are the estimated hours per week or month? Do they have plans for how they’re going to get to the volunteer site if they’re working online or if they have the requisite technology at home? Do they have bandwidth, for example? Do they have private space? Those kinds of things. So, it’s either a transportation plan for in person volunteering or a technology setup for remote volunteering. 

This question, you’re asking people to think ahead and start to plan. So how, how would you integrate this into your life? You know, when would you see volunteering happening? Do you see any issues with transportation? How would you come and go from the site? Those kinds of things. Are you going to have a private space if you’re going to volunteer online? 

All those questions should just be asked, to see if people have thought it through. This starts to get at assessing that level of commitment. Another question you might want to ask is what might get in the way of following through on their volunteer commitment? What would they do if they had to miss a volunteer shift? 

This is my eighth question. My eighth in the list of volunteer interview questions. It’s a sort of a scenario-based question, so what if they have a plan? And if they, well, I just, you know, I just wouldn’t be able to come in. You’re almost solidifying a commitment, you’re making a commitment to one another when you ask this question, because they say, well, I’d call and well, how much time in advance would you let us know, you know, these kinds of things, and then you can educate people about your policies at this point around people fulfilling their commitment to their shifts. 

What might get in their way, you know, you want to explore this as well with them to make sure that they’re double checking that they’re going to be able to follow through. Yep. So, this again is good for, you know, questions around commitment. Question number nine of our list of volunteer interview questions is, can they give you an example of a time when they volunteered or helped someone different than themselves? 

What did they learn from the experience? Now, it doesn’t mean that we’re, you know, we’re looking for bias specifically in our volunteers or specific biases. It’s not that we’re trying to assess a specific level of cultural competency. What this question, this series of questions says is, is someone willing to grow and learn? 

By being around people who are different from them. If they’re not willing to grow and learn and be self-reflective, then they’re probably not going to last very long if your organization works with a diverse group of folks. And so, they’re not going to be able to get over their discomfort or live with the discomfort of being around people they may not completely understand. 

You know, that brings up anxiety in everyone. When we’re around people we don’t understand. Yet, I will say yet. We haven’t taken the time to understand or haven’t had the opportunity to understand or we have specific set Ideas about people who are different than us and we’re not willing to have those ideas challenged It may make it hard for us to stick around and so we need people with this level I don’t I don’t think it’s necessarily grit per se Because I’m not sure it’s something we have to bear. 

I think it could be very joyful, in fact, to get to know people who are very different from us, who, if we’re curious people, if we’re just naturally curious people, we want to understand people who are different. So, you’re trying to get at that. You know, it’s not, again, it’s not about identifying specific biases and it’s not about assessing to a certain level of cultural competency. 

What it is though, is seeing if people are willing to learn and be open and curious about others and be self-reflective about their own thoughts and feelings. Asking people, have you volunteered or helped someone different than you? And, you know, what did you learn? It’s a great question. 

Great conversation. You will learn a ton from that, that question in that conversation. Last question, number 10 of our list of volunteer interview questions is what questions do they have for you about the organization or the volunteer opportunities available? What are they curious about? So, if folks don’t have any questions at all, that would give me pause because This conversation is a two-way conversation. 

It’s not a training session. A volunteer interview is not an orientation training session. And if you’re treating it at the, as the same thing, you’re not doing either complete justice. So, a volunteer interview is really about a two-way conversation about getting to know somebody on a deeper level. 

It’s not about imparting all of the information about your organization. So, at this point, unless they’ve attended your volunteer orientation training, and even then, you can’t cover it all, people should have some questions, right? You may wonder if they’re really interested and really committed if they don’t have any questions at all. 

You might want to probe a little ask, are you curious about how we train our new volunteers? What questions do you have about that? So if people are, are more introverted or are not used to like younger people who are not used to sitting through an interview process, maybe they haven’t done that much, even in the workplace, they’re new to the workplace, then, then maybe they don’t have the, the questions at the top of their mind. 

But, um, you can probe a little bit and say, do you have any questions about, um, what questions do you have about our training? What questions do you have about some of our other volunteers? Or what questions do you have about the work? So, you can kind of give them a little bit of prompt so they, and then see if they come up with any questions. 

Remember, we’re not asking yes, no questions. We’re not asking, do you have any questions about our training? Then, you know, it’s a yes, no, and most people are going to say no. So, you want to see if they’re thinking about considering and imagining the experience that they’re about to commit to. So, I hope that that’s been helpful today. 

I really think we need to do a better job. I hear a lot of folks, Wayne. Or are just challenged by, volunteers who ghost them, volunteers who are revolved, you know, you’re experiencing a revolving door, volunteers, volunteers who go through all the process, finish the training and then never sign up for a shift. 

If you’re experiencing any of that, look at your interview process and your matching process. Are you able to identify those key drivers that would help? You place a volunteer in a place where they might be able to find some flow. If you can, they’re going to be more likely to stick. And, again, make sure you take lots of notes, because you can use this information when you’re writing thank you notes, when you’re making comments to people, when you’re choosing ways to reward people. 

There’s lots of information. It also helps volunteers feel seen and heard. And you may think, wow, this is a lot of work and yeah, it is, but if people commit years and years of their life to your organization, what’s an hour conversation worth? And you can certainly delegate this task to a team of a welcome team of volunteers who do your interviews for you. 

We’ve done that. I’ve been in volunteer teams where we do the interviewing ourselves. You just need to train them on these questions and make sure they understand why they’re asking them and how to probe for more information. So, if you have a volunteer welcome team who’s doing interviews, have them listen to this podcast episode and it will give them a little bit of extra oomph, an extra understanding of how to do this well and for those of you who are volunteers who are doing interviewing, thank you so much. I think you’re doing a great job.  

All right, everybody. That’s what I got for this week. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the volunteer nation. I hope it has given you new ways to think about matching and ensuring better retention rates If you liked it again share it with anybody in your organization who’s going to be interviewing volunteers You Or if you’re deciding to change your model of interviewing or application process, this would be a great thing to consider. 

And we will be having a ton of new interviews with some interesting folks coming up. So, make sure you check in with us. I’m going to be here and in the coming weeks and months I’m going to have more and more guests on the show. We’re back to having guests. I’ve recovered from our flood at our house. 

I’m able to book guests again and really bring you just the most interesting people, that I think you will value, get lots of value from. So, keep tuning in. We will see you next time, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Thanks everybody.