Navid Ladha on Why Low Pay Is a Leadership Problem, Finding Hidden Remote Roles, and the Future of Social Impact
In Brief: Navid Ladha (linkedin.com/in/navidladha/, onpurposecareers.org), founder of OnPurpose Careers, joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com) to challenge the notion that purpose-driven work has to come with lower pay. Navid and Dan discuss why underpaying social impact staff creates wealth inequity that disconnects organizations from the communities they serve (02:53) and walk through what job seekers, board members, and executive leaders can each do to shift this (04:10). Navid shares his take on what AI-driven workforce changes may mean for the social sector (08:44) and the policy levers that could bring more people into this work (12:09). Navid and Dan talk about the growing demand for strategic fundraisers and the case for nonprofits to define an "end game" rather than operate in perpetuity (24:32). Navid identifies the highest-paying, most active subsectors right now (27:38) and Dan describes what he calls the "new social sector" (33:58). Both push back on greenwashing and performative social impact branding (37:09). On remote work, Navid shares findings from running the OnPurpose Careers job board (46:00). He also walks through how he sources hidden roles through his network and how jobseekers can train their LinkedIn algorithm to surface real opportunities (48:59).
Recommended Reading: "Sparked" by Jonathan Fields, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens" by Ina Garten, and "This Is Marketing" by Seth Godin. Show notes at forwardlookingleadership.com.
Transcript
Dan Freehling (00:05): Hey everyone, Dan here. Welcome to another episode of Forward-Looking Leadership. Today I'm honored to be joined by Navid Ladha. Navid is the founder of OnPurpose Careers. He runs one of the best social impact remote role job boards out there, and we share a common obsession with helping people find work that puts good into the world and pays them well in the process. Navid, thanks so much for joining me on Forward-Looking Leadership.
Navid Ladha (00:29): Yeah, Dan, thank you so much for having me.
Dan (00:31): I'm really looking forward to this and I think you're one of the leading voices in this space of good work, getting paid well, and particularly with the remote opportunities as well. So something that I'm really excited to get into with you.
Navid (00:42): Oh, I appreciate that. Likewise. I've been following you also and just love all the work that you do, and it's been great getting to know you through this process also.
Dan (00:50): Likewise, likewise. So what is it that makes this work really important to you? I share a lot of these same ideas, but what is it that really makes this kind of work important to you?
Navid (01:03): Yeah, I think it all started with the idea, or I guess more of a fact, that a lot of purpose-driven professionals tend to minimize themselves when it comes to pay. There's this unspoken idea that in order for me to do work that's quote unquote good, or if I want to make an impact, if I'm going to be in this profession or this industry, I don't need to get paid well. And that's a concession I'm willing to make. I want to challenge that. That's kind of where it starts from, to say actually there are lots of opportunities out there that allow you to do good work, make an impact, and still get paid well. That's the driving notion behind a lot of the work that I do: to say, I want you to find good work and I want you to feel like you're having a big impact in the world without having to minimize yourself or without having to sacrifice pay.
Dan (01:52): From our mutual perspectives, working with so many different clients, it's just seeing that this kind of thing is possible and wanting it for so many more people is really where I'm coming from on it too. This is not some sort of a crazy idea that can't happen. We see it with people all the time, and it's just so much better of a way to live and spend your working career.
Navid (02:12): Exactly. And we'll get into this in a bit, but there are all these aspects that make the nonprofit work even more equitable, or it furthers the mission when job seekers advocate for better pay, when we ask for more compensation. There are all these connected pieces. It's not just the individual professional themselves, but this whole idea of what happens because of the fact that you asked for a well-compensated career in the sector.
Dan (02:39): I love this. Looking forward to getting into it in much further detail. So first, what is it that you see as causing it when social impact work is underpaid? What are all these factors that you see going into it?
Navid (02:53): Yeah. Part of the problem is when organizations underpay, or don't pay enough to meet the market demand or the market levels of what professionals expect, you're creating kind of a wealth inequity within your organization. What that means is you're probably bringing in people who have the means to live already well and they're willing to accept this lower pay to enter the social impact world and do good work. Those are the folks that stick around and get promoted. And so leadership eventually ends up being not the people that you're trying to serve in the community. There's a disconnect between the professionals who are in this sector and the communities we're trying to serve. If we're trying to reflect that more, I think actually it starts with pay. If you can as an organization increase the pay levels, if you can increase the compensation levels, that will drastically influence your future leadership, your current makeup of your staff, diversity, equity, inclusion, all the work that we talk about all the time in this sector. So that's the first disconnect that I see.
Dan (03:55): What do you see us collectively being able to do about this? Job seekers, leaders of organizations, board members, voters, policymakers. You take this in any way you want, but what do you see being something that can change this?
Navid (04:10): Yeah. Let's start with the job seeker. Every application you submit is kind of like a vote. I want job seekers to take ownership of that and to say, if I'm voting with my application, if I'm supporting something, how can I stop doing that? How do I stop applying for roles that are actually not paying market value? How do I apply for roles that are paying well? It starts there. If the market is starting to demand that from our employers, then employers will have to respond. That's already starting to happen a little bit. So that's one for job seekers, voting with your application.
With board members, with leaders, if you are part of an organization and you're seeing the operations, the processes, the numbers, apply a lens of equity to that, to say, how much are we paying someone as a professional in this sector in this role and where that work is actually being done? Is that a livable wage? Is that even at the same level? How can we make sure that our staff is being taken care of so that they can continue to take care of others in this mission, take care of the communities that we're trying to serve? That's the part that I see happening.
The third area is when it comes to executive leadership, folks who are now steering the boat, looking at the operations themselves closely. You probably want your staff to stay with you for a while and you want them to be doing good work. Again, you want to reflect the communities that you serve. How are you going to do that? That starts with pay. That's kind of what I'm saying. Tell me about your perspective on this, Dan.
Dan (05:53): Yeah, I really like all of this and I'm very interested in getting into the voters, policymakers, funders, more systemic level stuff too with this. But I love the tie-in you make to having people who are not traditionally well off, let's say, getting into this. I think a lot about the well-known problems in the US at least with congressional staffers and interns, and they're all getting paid 30-something thousand dollars a year for jobs that are pretty high level, and it's I think free for the interns. I'm not sure what the latest is on that, but it has this selection bias of you can only do this if you're already well to do, and what is that doing for who this brings in and who this attracts and who this promotes and all of that. So I very much agree with that.
There's also this traditional view of social impact work being less than, being not as good as private sector work, being not as value-add as private sector work, being kind of like a distraction from profit making and value creation and all of this kind of stuff. I'm seeing a future where that is less and less the case, where it's much more clear on what the value of this work is and being able to do that in a way that actually provides value, reflects value, and shows that. So that's something I'm personally really excited about too: how do we shape the perception of this work away from it being kind of like a side peripheral charity thing or something that you do after you've already made all of your money and now you're kind of giving back your time or something in that realm, and into what I see currently in part, which is people who could be doing anything, people who could be working in any space, and they're choosing to work in something that's socially impactful and they're bringing the same level of rigor and heart and skillset and competence and all of this to it too. So that's one addition I would add to it from my end.
Navid (07:55): Yeah. That actually kind of makes me think of two different things. One is corporate social responsibility and why it exists. This idea of when a corporation invests a lot of resources in community impact and they have teams and they give out all this funding, part of the reason they're doing that work is because in turn it helps them gain market value. It helps them reach an audience and increase brand awareness. It's not just because they want to feel good about themselves. Maybe that's part of it, but part of it is also they're increasing their brand awareness in a market in a specific area. That's why that exists. Good work complements that. If they need it, that's why it exists. The funding is available. Those resources exist.
The second aspect of this is, it's not just generational. I think I'm a millennial, and a lot of my fellow millennials and Gen Zers are actually very much into social impact and doing good work and having a positive impact in the world. I don't think that will necessarily go away, that motivation, that incentive is still there. But then there's this third thing that's kind of emerging, and I'm not sure how you feel about this, but if we think of AI and the workforce transformation it's having, and how some of the technical aspects of our jobs, the technical workforce, perhaps that might get replaced or it might get reduced, I don't want to predict anything there. But what I will say is if that does end up happening, and that seems to be the trajectory we're on, I think there will be more opportunity for us to then solve more of our complex problems that we have. The burden shifts back to the nonprofit, the social impact sector. What are we going to do about this now? What are the problems at hand and how are we going to solve them? What do you think about that?
Dan (09:47): You hit on this. These are the more challenging and complex problems. These are things that are not easy to solve or resolve, education and healthcare and climate and human rights, stuff that's so challenging and tricky and hard and takes generations of work to solve oftentimes and is not as easy as some traditional businesses. What can we be doing to still work toward those while making progress in the short term as well on things? I think that's right. If there's a future where, let's say the positive case future of AI ends up being that we have excess productivity that gets applied to everything and then there's freed-up, whatever this looks like in terms of societal returns for it, and that gets brought back to people who are professionals and workers, and they get to then spend their time working on interesting challenges. I think that's a wonderful future. I'm not sure if that's going to be the case with it.
Navid (10:55): Yeah. In the utopian fantasy of how AI takes over the menial tasks of our work and then we're all kind of in this reckoning of what will we do with our time, how do I give back, what is the meaning of my purpose and my impact. In that fantasy and that world, perhaps there will be more of an emphasis in our sector. There are some people that are actually talking about this in conference spaces or having a dialogue about what this might mean for the future. And of course, they're also trying to solve that problem by creating more companies. It kind of traces back to capitalism, but at the same time, I guess I still appreciate the topic of it. I still appreciate that people are thinking about, hey, maybe there will be a time or a space where now people will want to invest more time.
Dan (11:45): Yeah, I love that. Do you see in terms of policy changes or legislation, anything like that that you would want to see for either current or for this AI future, that involves social impact work and all of this? Anything that you see on that end of systemic changes that you see needing to be made or that you would support being made?
Navid (12:09): I think one of the things that unfortunately is not available anymore is the student loan payback, the student loan forgiveness for public sector work or nonprofit work or education work. I'm not actually exactly sure what the status is of the people who are involved. I would love to hear from your perspective on this too. Either way, I think a lot about how can we incentivize more folks to go into this sector. Are there more opportunities for loan forgiveness or tuition forgiveness, or whatever that program might look like, maybe more scholarships available for this sector. Policymakers sometimes, perhaps they're not sure or perhaps they forget, but there is a very dotted line from public sector to government work to nonprofit sector and social impact. That's actually a lot of the similar people or similar values. How can we incentivize this entire population to actually say, we actually want to be more civic-minded. That might mean working for the government, working for the state, working for my county, or working for my local community in a different way, but those partnerships are all intertwined. That would be amazing to see. I'm curious, what about you? What are you thinking about that?
Dan (13:19): Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. I know it's really confusing for people now to pursue that loan forgiveness. I don't know what the latest status is either of it, but I've heard some people getting it, some people being tripped up by little technicalities here and there that make the whole thing kind of not work for them. I think that would make a ton of sense.
I'm starting to think too on what does purpose-driven business have to do with this, and what is that side of this. I just know so many people, I mean, I think both of our businesses are for-profit entities. We're not running a 501 nonprofit to do career coaching and this kind of thing for people in social impact. There's a mix of benefits to this, of having some government to scale, some civic organizations to do what they do best, some nonprofits to do what they do best, and some purpose-driven people doing for-profit work. It all merges and mixes together in a way that can really create something better than some of its parts, or better than just a government-scoped program that gets really rolled up and advanced in a big way.
We saw some of the dangers of that with, let's say, USAID, for example. We saw some of the dangers of this "we know best and we know what the program should be and we're going to scope it out, and then people will bid on it, and the companies that will bid on it will all be kind of pre-approved, pre-vetted companies that we've chosen to bid on it." And then you see the work kind of get more distant from people, get away from people and not be something that everyone everywhere can see themselves being a part of.
With the millennial and Gen Z generational shifts, I kind of see this return in some ways too to our grandparents' generation. Civic-mindedness was a much bigger part of it. They were much more connected to community. They were much more involved in these different organizations and different causes and all this kind of stuff that kind of went away, and I think is starting to cycle back now hopefully for people.
Navid (15:28): That's so interesting. I especially love the conversation around generations there. What did folks care about previously? What are the topics that we're caring about today and how will that shift and change? Perhaps if there was more study and research into what are the emerging topics and what do people care about now. Obviously climate, environment, that comes up often for conversations I'm having with job seekers. I see a lot of that. I see a lot of AI and ethics as a conversation piece itself. But yeah, I'd be curious about what else is emerging that perhaps we're not even thinking about yet. It could be so interesting.
One note related to the policy and government conversation we were having, I think one thing that has been helpful, I don't know how I would frame this, but as you know, there's a lack of federal funding available for a lot of nonprofit organizations now. A lot of that social impact work is no longer funded, but then a lot of private funding has stepped up where that was no longer available. What that has helped with for social impact organizations anyway is to get unrestricted funding. Perhaps that's a better way. I'm not sure. I would probably want someone else's perspective who's actually at the leadership level of an organization that's now getting private funding versus federal funding and what that looks like for them. But from what I hear from my conversations so far, in some ways that private funding has been better. I'm curious, what are you seeing?
Dan (16:56): I've seen the same thing with some of this MacKenzie Scott kind of funding, that type. I worked with clients before who were big into that trust-based philanthropy movement as well, which I think is largely on point of, we're not going to monitor and evaluate this to death, even though that's sometimes important and that's sometimes a part of what needs to be done, but so much time and effort can be spent tracking everything and ensuring compliance on every little thing, that you forget that you want to make bets on leaders and teams who are proven and are doing big things, or have the potential even if they're not proven yet, and make smaller bets on them and see what can come about from that. So I really like that way of thinking with it.
I'm doing a lot of work now with, again, Claudio Tanca, who's fantastic. He's very into this idea of a resilient portfolio, of having multiple different funding streams for an organization, and that making it so that you're not beholden to anyone. You're not beholden to that one, whatever it is, billionaire donor, and you have to do their bidding in your work because that's one small part of your stream and you can tell them to go take a hike if you want and you can keep doing the work that you're doing.
You have some government funding, you have some foundation funding, you have some individual giving funding, you have some earned revenue, whatever this looks like for that particular organization. But it's this idea of the resilience of it being a virtue, because it lets you do the kind of work that you want to be doing and that you know how to do. And it lets the organizations that are not doing that not get artificially propped up by their relationship with the government or their relationship with one particular funder or whatever that looks like for them.
Navid (18:54): I guess that kind of brings us to what's happening, or what are the emerging trends in jobs, particularly for development and fundraising. A lot of organizations are catching on. They're thinking of diversifying their portfolio, diversifying who they ask and how they ask and when. I'm curious if you're seeing this too, but I'm seeing so many fundraising and development jobs, more so than I've ever seen. I'm sure partially because a lot of organizations are thinking, we need to expand, we need our resources, we don't have funding available that used to be available previously. Because of that, these jobs are in demand, and they're changing. The scope has changed a bit. There tends to be more, lots of various constituencies that you're seeking partnerships with for raising funds, for development. But there's also this aspect of, you do fundraising, but then you're also going to be doing strategy and operations, and you're also going to be doing communications and marketing. Having all these various skill sets for this one particular role, I think that's interesting how that's evolving because of all the things that we just talked about.
Dan (20:01): I think you're spot on here. The strategic fundraiser is really in demand, and it goes beyond the person who just, whatever it is, submits proposals for things or responds to RFPs. That can be a part of the strategy, but it's a much deeper skillset than that. I found that working with those people is actually really fun too, because they seem to be some of the smartest people in this space. There's the regular everyday fundraiser person, but then there's this really strategic person who can, they have human-to-human skills, they have analytical skills, they really care about this space. They're able to understand positioning and how to position the organization to go after certain types of funding or certain revenue streams, and that kind of a thing, and they're super in demand, obviously. If you've proven that you can do that and you can do that going forward and you can make that case, you're golden in the job market, but that's few and far between with people.
Navid (21:04): Yeah, it's such an in-demand job. Oftentimes, I forget where I read this, but there was something about how to think about the fundraising job, the development job, in a different way. Oftentimes I talk to people and they're like, oh, I just see so many fundraising jobs, I see so many development jobs, and that's just not for me. I'm not a salesperson. I don't see myself in that role, but I could do partnerships, I could do strategy, I could do program. One of the things that I call back, and I'll have to look up where I read this, but thinking of fundraising as a way to invite someone on your mission instead of asking them for resources. When you flip that perspective of, oh, I'm not asking for resources, I'm not going around begging for money, that's not my job, my job is to say, hey, Dan, this is the work that I do. I'm so motivated and excited about this mission. Aren't you excited about this mission? Aren't you excited about where AI is going with the workforce and education, how that's evolving? You want to join us on this mission. You want to work together on this. Then that changes the whole perspective and narrative. It makes fundraising and development more, I don't want to say fun, but perhaps more fun, less salesy, less the fear that people have about this particular job.
Dan (22:18): Yeah, I think that's so right. One thing I see with people too is this idea that partnerships is easy, this idea that, oh, I can do partnerships, no problem. Real partnerships is exactly what you said. It's that inviting people to come along on your journey. I love that framing of it, and it's really hard though. That's not an easy thing that's like you can kind of phone in and it'll happen on its own kind of a thing. This is very serious work, and the way that organizations can move this forward, it's often an executive role too. A lot of CEOs basically have this as their mandate, or executive directors have this as their mandate of doing this kind of strategic partnerships, fundraising, all of this kind of stuff.
Navid (23:07): Yeah, that's spot on. More and more executive director, deputy director, all those roles, there is an aspect of fundraising involved.
Dan (23:16): I was recently talking with a really interesting guy named Scott Roy. He came from a corporate sales background, which I think is interesting, and he's pushing back on this idea that being salesy is a bad thing. You don't want to be salesy in the pejorative sense, but this idea that complex sales have a place in nonprofits. Understanding truly value-add, true partnership kind of sales over time rather than just this immediate asking people for money kind of a thing is actually valuable and noble. There's a lot to that, and it's a lot of, how do you, as a nonprofit or as an NGO, how do you not shy away from that? What do our communities actually want? What do our customers in the business sense, but probably communities, whatever we want to call it now in the nonprofit sense, what are their needs? What are their pain points? What are their opportunities? What do they think those are, and how do we work with them to craft solutions together to address these, and how do we bring our organization's resources to bear toward this? I think it's a lot to that.
Navid (24:32): Yeah, I love that idea. It kind of reminds me of, and again, I'm so bad at remembering wherever I read these things, but there's something about encouraging nonprofit organizations to also say, what is your end game? This idea that you don't have to continue on this mission forever, but you have a problem that you're going to solve, and in your words, this idea of strategic sales, let's get to that goal, let's raise the funds and the resources that we need, solve for the problem, and then move on to something else that we need to solve. Have an end date, have an end goal, an end game. This is what we're doing the work for and working toward, and this is when we hope to have this work done by. If more organizations did that, I feel like that would be better for our sector. It'd be better for our work, instead of this idea of, I'm just going to keep operating infinitely.
Dan (25:33): Yeah. It's the self-perpetuation of leadership in some of these places, where it's pretty clear that a lot of the leaders, to the point before of who rises up at a lot of places, these are people who have often made their career in maintaining the status quo and keeping everything going as normal, and it's not in their interest to actually end this because they have a sweet gig going. It's much more interesting of, what do we really care about with climate, let's say? If this is something that's big on somebody's mind coming into it, and then where can I bring my talent and skillsets, and who can I partner with, and who can I work with to bring about this change that I want to see? I think that's right on. It's less of this, have I maintained this organization for this organization's sake, and much more of, what is this for, and where can I best position my skills there?
There's this opportunity cost concept that I think about a lot, and it comes up with clients a lot too, of, there's so many different possibilities of what you could do, and it's really, what is it that you would most thrive doing, and where do you think that you're best spending your time and efforts? Merging those, I think, is really important.
Navid (26:53): Yeah, that's spot on. That's great.
Dan (26:55): So in terms of the best-paid roles, there are all these different subsectors within social impact, let's say. I talk a lot about this with people, of the subsector really matters and you can't really gloss that over. There's probably trends of location, there's trends of subsector on pay. Certain ones are known to pay better and worse than others. Certain ones are known to be better and worse kind of places to work. Have you noticed the same thing from your end? And if so, how would you advise people on which of these they should think about pursuing, which of these are ones that are notoriously not as well resourced, not as well paid for people?
Navid (27:38): Yeah. Taking a step back, I see the jobs that are emerging right now, there's a bit of a trend and a pattern and a cycle to them. There's a bit of a season to it. At this moment in time, I see a lot of roles in education and workforce development. Part of that is, regardless of which administration is in power, economic mobility, education, and workforce are kind of always top of mind because our communities, our voters, our residents, our citizens care about that quite a bit. That's an interesting topic, and I feel like those tend to be pretty well-paid careers because they're already equity-minded, because they're already thinking about workforce development. If they're not paying their own staff well enough and there's not economic mobility built in, then there's a flag that goes off, or there's a light that goes off like, oh, this is not really connected to our mission, which is good. I'm glad to see that.
Right now I'm also seeing a lot of justice and democracy type of roles popping up, and those roles are actually quite well paid also. There's a lot of policy directors, lots of folks who are looking for organizers. That job, part of it is because that job is hard. It's really difficult, it's taxing, and because of that, they pay their professionals quite well also. That's an area to look at now, particularly if you're a job seeker.
When it comes to the type of roles, we talked about development, fundraising already, and I feel like that's evergreen and always in demand, and those roles tend to be well paid. I'm also seeing a lot of communications and marketing, and tied with fundraising, but tied also with partnerships and your constituents. A lot of nonprofits are getting more professionalized in how they communicate, not just with their funders and their donors, but also with their communities, also with their partners, perhaps how they communicate with their board members to say, what is the work that we're doing, and what is the impact that we're doing, and what are our needs from you specifically. That internal communications, external communications person who can tie in the two together, I think that's really fascinating and in demand.
The other type of role that I see right now that is well paid: strategy, operations. That role shows up as director of operations. It could show up as the chief of staff. It could show up as director of strategy. That role or that type of role is definitely emerging. It's in demand. I see it all the time, and it's paid quite well. There are roles that, I'm seeing 160 to 180 if not above 200K sometimes. Those roles exist. What are you seeing?
Dan (30:19): My overarching answer is typically the easiest roles to get are probably strategic fundraising and some sort of an operations role, like you said, that shoves a lot of different functions up underneath it. It's pretty obvious that this is either revenue generating or cost saving kind of roles. So those are the pretty obvious ones that I'm seeing right now, but I think you're right, there's ebbs and flows in the types of functional areas and the types of thematic areas of these roles. I am curious on pushing into these a bit. The workforce development ones, what kinds of places do you see with those? What do you think is kind of booming in that space?
Navid (31:07): Yeah, that's a good question. There's different ways to think about it. When I think of social impact, I also think of ed tech because it's innovative, but it is doing good. It is having an impact on the world. Ed tech obviously pushes that, workforce development, post-secondary education, post-secondary learning, K-12, this idea of how are we moving people through education, to and through, and then eventually into workforce and what that looks like. So that definitely exists.
I'm also seeing a lot of, think about universities that are serving post-traditional students. We think of WGU, we think of SNHU, Southern New Hampshire University, whatever you might call it. There are lots of colleges and universities or programs like that that are available now. There's also REACH University that's doing that apprenticeship program. There are all these departments within major institutions. They might not be a standalone organization, but they have a department that's focused on workforce development strategy for their students, for their learners, or for the future learners. So there's a lot of that available.
I actually have a background in workforce development. I worked for a nonprofit organization that served post-traditional students who were enrolling in college, but perhaps non-traditionally or later in life. Folks who might be working and going to college at the same time. Our organization was providing in-person coaching for folks who were enrolled in online nonprofit institutions. And then once they were done with that program, we were supporting them in how do they enter workforce, or if they were already employed, how do they then have economic mobility and get promoted. That type of organization, and that was a small organization in Austin, which has now expanded quite a bit, but those types of organizations exist all over the nation in various communities. That's kind of what I'm seeing still. What are you seeing?
Dan (32:56): No, that's really interesting. I'm really glad you made the ed tech tie-in too because that's obviously booming. This is a lot of what I was getting at too before with these spaces that don't traditionally think of themselves as social sector, but are very obviously social sector to me, and it sounds like to you. I have a friend who owns a bunch of mental health companies, like employee assistance program kind of mental health companies. You would think that that's obviously social impact, social sector, but people in these spaces don't think of it. My dad's in senior living. He runs a nonprofit retirement community, and it's like, social impact is this foreign word to him. He doesn't think of himself as a social impact professional. He thinks of himself as a nonprofit senior living professional. These kinds of spaces that are right next door to what we would traditionally think of as in social impact are really important because they just have so many more opportunities, so many more jobs and things in them.
A lot of these are booming right now, like ed tech, for example, but these other spaces as well. Mental health is booming, senior living is booming, all of these different subsectors, and healthcare for better or worse is also booming too. A lot of people are landing in hospitals and health systems and things. These are, again, places that people often think of themselves as medical professionals, or they think themselves as health systems professionals, but it's all social impact. It's all social sector in my mind, and it's kind of this expansion of it.
Navid (34:29): I so agree with that. I even think of, I think we talked about AI and ethics and tech ethics and tech policy and tech for good. All of that, I consider that social impact too. I also wonder if there's almost a, is there a movement to be more inclusive of the sector? Are we including more topics than previously people thought of this as social impact? Is that a generational thing also?
Dan (34:51): I'm trying to find the right word for it. I've been calling it the new social sector, and just trying to expand this out, because it's, working with clients one-on-one, there's a lot of linear thinking. There's a lot of this, I was in this very particular space, and not really understanding what's right next door to that space. I think it's also probably generational too with this idea of, I want to be doing good through my work, and that can take a lot of different forms, and it doesn't have to be social impact TM. This doesn't have to be whatever it is, a B Corp with the official B Corp kind of a thing. It can be a different kind of an organization that is also doing socially good work.
I honestly think that's the only way this moves forward and this broadens, is that, how many clients do you get who come to you who say, I want to work for the Gates Foundation? And it's like, okay, good, great, that's fine. You can work for them. They have a handful of jobs and they're sunsetting at some point soon, which is probably a good thing. And great, good luck, go for that. I want to work for the UN system. Okay, that's a tall order these days, and do you really want to do that? Are there better uses of your time and efforts than trying to fight other people to get into these spaces, and instead broadening this out?
I just think of the people I've worked with this past year, year and a half too, of the types of different spaces they've landed in: a local environmental nonprofit that's reasonably small and is doing a lot of great work on the ground, a director of community outreach for a cancer center, for a health system, biotech companies, places that are help someone out who's now bringing sleep apnea machines worldwide to people who need them. All of these different spaces that people don't think about, that can only come from having a more broad, more expansive view of this. It's something that I'm definitely the most excited about. It sounds like we do.
Navid (37:09): No, I love that. Related to that though, I do have a beef with organizations who push themselves as purpose-driven, mission-oriented, when actually what their work is doing is furthering the climate crisis. I also want to push organizations.
Dan (37:26): The greenwashing thing, right? Yeah.
Navid (37:28): Yeah.
Dan (37:30): Just for people, I think a lot of people listening will understand that, but what does that look like? What does that kind of fake social impact coding look like for places?
Navid (37:38): Oh my goodness. Okay, let's think of it this way. Let's talk about AI, since AI is so topical and people know about it. AI might say, we are enabling more people to have access to information and that makes us purpose-oriented, or mission-driven, or whatever you want to call it, whatever buzzword they want to fill in. But at the same time, AI is also unfortunately taking in a lot of fresh water from communities and it's furthering the climate crisis for some communities around the world. Can you call yourself purpose-driven? Can you call yourself mission-oriented as an organization when that's what you're doing? Another example that comes to my mind is when airlines say that they're mission-driven because they're connecting people around the world together. Sometimes I've seen an ad or something like that, and I'm just like, well, yeah, but what about the fuel that you're wasting? What about all the various things that go into your business? I don't know, I'm curious, what are your thoughts? Do you think about things that way?
Dan (38:43): Yeah, I think there's a realness to this that needs to be brought back in. It's everything in this space. There was this wave of performative social impact for so long that was, I want to get into social impact so that I can be better than you. I'm a better person than you because I'm in social impact and you're just a less-than person who's not in social impact. And then I think companies probably smartly but not properly picked up on this in terms of, okay, we have to shape what we do into being this worthwhile and good cause, even if it's not. And can cynically do that too.
I do lots of different work, but one of them is reviewing applications for a big fellowship program, and there'll be people who apply as the corporate social responsibility person for a data center, and it's like, I don't know, here it's calling itself corporate social responsibility. It's saying that it is this, but is this doing more harm than good? And it probably is. What does that look like across the board? I kind of like the real social impact people, no matter what they call themselves, more than the fake social impact people, when it's pretty clear that what they're doing is doing more harm than good.
Navid (40:13): Yeah. That's so interesting. I feel like that's a topic of its own.
Dan (40:19): From your background doing these corporate talent acquisition and these workforce development programs, what is it that you've learned from those places that still informs what you're doing today with OnPurpose Careers?
Navid (40:33): Yeah. I'm going to give you a little bit of a background first. My first job out of college was to work at a career center. I've been doing or been in this world for a while, 17, 18 years. Started as a career advising and then moved into the nonprofit sector, worked more on workforce development, thinking a lot about how economic mobility and how do people move around, and then did some workforce partnerships from the talent acquisition side of a corporate organization.
What I did is I connected those pieces together to say, okay, all these great organizations exist in this ecosystem in workforce development that are preparing folks for careers, and a lot of talent acquisition at the time, DEI was a hot topic. Unfortunately, it's no longer something that people want to talk about, but at the time that was front and forward, and that was like the main cause and that's like something that people were championing. What we were doing is to say, actually DEI can be informed by connecting to these great organizations.
We developed this, what do we call it? We called it a junior technology associate program, just for short. The idea was to say, there are all these technology associate programs that exist, and we're usually hiring like someone with a bachelor's of science in computer science. The truth is, the reality is that universities are actually producing less and less computer science graduates, and so there aren't enough folks who are interested in that as a career or as a subject for us to fill the roles and the positions we will have coming up. There are all these nonprofit organizations that have formed, like Merit America, Per Scholas, Generation. They have all these great technology programs to fill in this entry-level area, which can eventually then upskill further and move into more technology-related leadership roles. We developed a program, we thought about what the scope would be, and then because of my knowledge of this sector, I was able to connect this employer to these communities, and now that program still exists and it's ever growing, which is so great to see. That's one piece that I was able to do there.
Now how that informs my work today, I would say, having seen the recruiting world, having seen how these partnerships and these strategies come into play behind the scenes, one thing I've noticed is, if you can get the main team, the main person, the main department, say if it's technology or if it's marketing, whatever innovative thing you want to do with hiring, get them on board first. Recruiting, HR, talent acquisition definitely has a space there also at the table for that conversation. But you need to get the end goal, the end person excited. You need to get that department excited about, what is it going to do for them, for their department, for their team, for their future?
Same thing that I inform a lot of job seekers, is to say, apply through the means, apply through the process, go through the systems that are in place, HR, recruiters, whatever, all that. We love them. But how are you also directly connecting with the people that you're going to be working with in the future? Are you meeting them at conferences? Are you networking actively? How are you reaching out to them? What solutions are you coming up with for the problems that you see that they're having? If the only person you're connecting with is HR and recruiting, unfortunately that's not their problem. Their problem is hiring someone. That's one way that informs how I think about careers and how I talk to people.
Dan (43:59): It's so right. It's so right. Getting involved in these spaces, really understanding what the challenges are there and what the opportunities are there, and meeting people, and all of this is so critical. Spencer Campbell, who I do a lot of work with on different things, he talks about this as a sort of arrogance in some ways from people, that it can sound like it's not that, but it's really, I want to go into a new space and I want you to give me a job there, and I don't want to know anything about it. I just want to look it up online and I don't want to be involved in it and I don't want to give back to it at all and all of this kind of stuff. There's something to that of, there's a humility to networking in a positive-sum way that is, volunteer at a conference, serve on a board, volunteer for some sort of a project where you can show people what you can do. You can apply your skills to it, all of this kind of stuff. Just really get enmeshed in this new space that you're going after and start adding value right away, and don't wait for other people to give you that blessing of that job. It's amazing what that can do, even just to, most people, I think, get it through applying, but even just being able to speak that language a lot better, understanding the different organizations in that space, it all comes from exactly what you've described here.
One thing that I think you do exceptionally well among your many talents is uncovering remote work. I know that there's been this pendulum swing in a lot of ways after the pandemic away from global remote opportunities in the same way that they were available. I would be very interested if you can share with listeners what your current read is of the remote job marketplace for social impact work, and how to go about finding these kind of opportunities.
Navid (46:00): Yeah, absolutely. We run a job board at onpurposecareers.org, and that job board is probably our most popular service, or one of the things that we offer. The job board at any given time usually has like 130, 140, 150 jobs posted. One thing I'll mention is we look at a very specific slice of the market. I'm only looking at nonprofit social impact roles that are remote and that pay 80K and above. So nothing below that level, has to be remote, and falls into this sector.
I did some analysis of all the roles that I found just this past year. Just from Q1, January through March this year, I was able to find over a thousand jobs that I posted on the job board. If I was able to find that many jobs that are remote and social impact, paying that salary, that means that the sector is doing pretty good. There are lots of jobs out there. That's a narrative that I want to challenge for a lot of people. Yes, it's hard to be a job seeker, and that's a completely different conversation, but the market isn't doing as bad as we think it is. If you're out there searching and you're looking, you'll see that there are lots of roles. There are lots of jobs. Yes, they're closing faster than they used to, and again, that's a whole different conversation.
So the remote roles. Looking out at all that, I would just say there are more remote roles than I anticipated. There are more remote roles than I thought there would be when I set out doing this. A lot of them are actually in social impact, which is so interesting. There are a lot of nonprofit organizations that are thinking about this in a very innovative, forward-thinking way now, thanks to perhaps 2020 and COVID, but it has changed the way we operate, it has changed the way we think about work. Nonprofit social impact organizations and people tend to be more flexible-minded anyway for the individual. It's not this idea of, you must be in your seat nine to five and collaborate with everyone on site and on campus. It's more of a, we understand that your life, things happen and you might need to step away for a little bit or whatever, and flexibility is so important. I just think that social impact folks tend to be like-minded in that way, that we know and we want similar things for our staff and for ourselves. Because of that, there just tend to be more roles that are remote. Are you seeing the same thing? What are you seeing for remote roles?
Dan (48:26): I've definitely seen fewer than before, but a big reason that I wanted to talk to you was, I think you uniquely do a great job of surfacing these for people. It is heartening in a lot of ways to see that it's not as dire as people think of, there's no more remote roles. I am curious though, as much as you can bring us behind the curtain on OnPurpose, and I'd definitely encourage people to follow along with you and see these roles, but how do you go about finding these? Where do you look?
Navid (48:59): Yeah. A lot of them are actually shared in our networks. If you think about LinkedIn, just as an example, you probably log in and you can probably see all the people in your network that are sharing jobs that are like, we're hiring on our team, we're hiring on our team, which is so good to see. I also think that that's part of training your algorithm on LinkedIn to be able to see those things. A little bit of a side note, but sometimes when I work with job seekers, I encourage them to go and search for keywords that say hiring and perhaps nonprofit, or whatever your topic might be, and start engaging, because you're teaching LinkedIn to then show you more of those things instead of interacting with anything that you're feeling like LinkedIn is currently giving you now. If it's giving you a lot of doom and gloom and politics and layoff stories and how the world is coming to an end, stop interacting with that and start interacting with what you actually want to see more of.
I don't want to say ignore everything that's happening and just focus on the good, because that's also problematic. What I'm trying to say is, LinkedIn specifically as a network where you can find jobs and find people, perhaps it might be worth it to train your algorithm to find you more jobs. That's what I've done, and I feel like I'm able to surface a lot of things, and I have a broad network because of the work I've done. Whenever I see opportunities, I try to surface them on our job board to say, this was just highlighted. Our job board only highlights jobs for two weeks at a time. That's another thing, because the market is moving really fast. If you are finding a job, if you saw someone who posted something, you'll notice that four days later, if you saved it, it's gone, it's no longer active.
For our job seekers who are following us, we have like 50,000 people checking out our job board per month. There are a lot of people looking at these things, and I want to share jobs that are fresh and still hiring and posted recently, and again, following those three things that I mentioned: social impact, remote, and high paying. That's kind of the process there. And then look at other ways of searching for jobs too. LinkedIn is one. Indeed and Google search, there's just all these places where you can go and see what's being surfaced today. It's a combination of that, but I would say it's pretty heavily reliant on my network.
Dan (51:10): It's something I think about a lot with job seekers too, is when something is publicly available on one of the more obvious job boards, not necessarily yours or some of these more niche ones, but once something is publicly available, it's probably not the kind of job that's going to be particularly interesting or compelling. They're basically saying, we don't know who to get for this, or we don't really care who to get for this a lot of the time. If you can find it easily, or if you can even think of the organization off the top of your head, there's going to be a lot of people applying for and going after those. The individual connections who you have, who are part of your network, who are sharing these opportunities, I think are a really rich source of this. That's really interesting that this is often where you're finding it, is the people who are saying, my team is hiring for this, or my friends at whatever is hiring for a great list, do you know anyone who would do this? And bringing that up.
Navid (52:07): Yeah. I was just going to say another layer to that is, I focus on jobs that are at organizations that aren't as well known. Nothing like the Gates Foundation that we were just talking about. Everyone wants to apply for those jobs, but perhaps there are these hidden organizations in these other parts of the social impact sector that maybe a lot of people don't know about, but still pays really well, and the work is really exciting, and happens to be remote. Those are the types of jobs I get really excited to share and showcase on our job board.
Dan (52:35): Again, just a remarkable job with doing this. I would very much encourage people to follow along with this, and a really good point on training the algorithm. It's something that I don't think about often, honestly, of, what are you putting into this thing and what is this then spitting back out to you in terms of LinkedIn? It's huge, because there's so much garbage on LinkedIn and there's so much great stuff on LinkedIn, and it's this kind of the best and the worst of everything in the world is on this as a platform, and what are you kind of looking at with it?
Some of these specific subsectors, I think, are particularly interesting for people that I've been working with. We've gone over workforce. Democracy and justice you mentioned as well. Is that global? Is that US? Is that country-specific? What do you see that kind of looking like? I know some people have had a hard time with figuring out, if I don't come from an activist background, or I don't come from a political background, how can I get involved in democracy and justice kind of work?
Navid (53:40): Yeah, that's such a good question. Part of the reason we're seeing a lot more of the democracy and justice and organizing jobs right now is because we're in an election cycle year. That's why everything's popping up now as the summer is approaching, and then there will be a lot more messaging and organizing out there. For anyone who is interested in that type of work, part of it just connects to the topics that you've been working in, and how do you say, how can I bring this knowledge and this awareness of this community that I have to this part of this work?
Dan (54:14): So climate tech and all of this kind of stuff, any thoughts on what's trending right now in that, where there's more jobs, fewer jobs, that kind of a thing?
Navid (54:25): Yeah. I guess right now I'm seeing a lot of network activator jobs in climate and environment, which is good to see. Climate and environment had a bit of a pause probably most of last year, but then it started emerging more as a topic, and jobs that at least I was tracking January, February, March has been continuous and there have been more and more opportunities, which has been really good. Anyone who can be more strategic, be a connector, be that person who can manage this ecosystem of thought leaders, that job seems to be in demand right now. At least that's the topic that keeps coming up.
Dan (55:03): And AI and all of that kind of world, what do you see in terms of actual kinds of roles and organizations and things for that?
Navid (55:11): Yeah. Researchers, ethics, policy, people who can work with government representatives, whether it's federal or state. I feel like that's where it's going, at least now. At least that's what I'm seeing.
Dan (55:26): No, it's all really helpful. I know some people have a particular interest in these, and yeah, this is really useful for them. What books, it doesn't have to be books, but any resources of any kind do you find yourself using to stay up to date? Do you recommend to other people the most? What does that whole kind of thing look like?
Navid (55:44): Yeah, sure. When it comes to careers and values exploration, I definitely recommend people look up Jonathan Fields and Sparketype, and just this idea of your paid work is one part of your life, and there are all these other domains, and how do those things connect? That's more of the careers and values exploration kind of work that I do.
This is odd, but I actually really like to read books about marketing in general, and I feel like you can take some of those lessons and apply them to you as a job seeker. Right now I'm reading, it's called "This Is Marketing" by Seth Godin, and it's really helpful, because it's just this idea of, I think going back to the conversation we were having about, how do you help someone else? How are you going to solve someone else's problem instead of kind of like taking? So I think applying that lens of, okay, I'm actually marketing myself, not an organization or not a business, but then how am I applying the same principles to my job search or my network? I really like that kind of stuff.
I love reading actually memoirs of people who have weird careers or have taken different paths. I just finished reading Ina Garten's memoir, and I don't know if you know about her, but she was working as a nuclear policy analyst in DC before she became this beloved food celebrity and this person. I love that. I love reading about, what was the moment that they decided to switch to something completely different, and how did that go for them? What were all the failures and the things that happened before they made it big? I think giving people that sense of insight of, this happened for this famous person, they can probably happen to you in a very similar way. Maybe you might not be a famous foodie, but perhaps as you switch your career, you'll notice that maybe there's a bit of a setback, but there will be a forward trajectory again.
Dan (57:32): We're a big Ina Garten household, and it's a cool story. It's amazing. It goes along with a lot of what we've been talking about, and Seth Godin too, and everything. It's just, how do you think creatively, expansively, value-add, all of this kind of stuff, and then how does this fit with the life you want to live, and how do you bring all of this together? It's much easier said than done, but I think it's a better challenge than, how do I kind of beat out other people for the limited role at this one place that I've decided I need to work to do what I want to do. It's such a limited mindset, and there can be such a better, more expansive way. What you and I are each doing is not something that you can apply to do, right? There's nothing you can apply for that does that. I think that the space is going more and more in that way too, of these interesting portfolio careers, interesting entrepreneurial journeys, interesting roles that are kind of co-created and co-shaped and all of this kind of stuff, rather than this dog-eat-dog kind of competition for something where you're trying to get ahead of other people, force other people out.
Navid (58:50): I love that.
Dan (58:51): Navid, this has been such a great conversation. How can listeners learn more about you, about OnPurpose Careers, and follow along if they like?
Navid (59:00): Yeah, absolutely. You can follow along, I'm on LinkedIn, pretty active, Navid Ladha, find me there. You can follow our job board, it's at onpurposecareers.org/jobboard. We also have a coaching directory there if you are looking for more career coaching resources. All of that exists there, but you can definitely follow me on LinkedIn. I feel like LinkedIn is probably the best way to keep up with what's going on.
Dan (59:22): Okay, great. Well, thank you so much again for joining us. This has been a hugely valuable conversation for listeners, and it's leaving me excited about the future of this space and the future of this expanded space as well. So thank you so much.
