Recruitment Advice

Recruiting for the not-for-profit sector and value-led organisations, like that of any sector, requires a thorough understanding of the hiring company's requirements and values. At Charity People, we understand that it's important to place the right people in the right job in order to make a positive impact on your organisation and help the successful candidate to develop a meaningful career.

Below gives you a quick overview of things to consider when looking recruiting for the not-for-profit sector:

Recruiting outside the industry

A lot of organisations make the mistake of only assuming that people with a third sector background will be the only suitable candidates for them. There are many transferable skills from the commercial sector that could be useful.

Think about what specific skills you need, e.g. communication, adept at using databases, financial accounting, branding, etc; and the types of roles people would have had to get those skills, e.g. PR, Admin, Finance, Marketing, etc. A lot of the principles and responsibilities for those roles would be similar regardless of industry and a commercial approach may also benefit your organisation, bringing you a fresh perspective.

One concern about recruiting outside the industry is that the candidate may just be using the job as a stop gap before finding another job back within the commercial sector. Understanding the candidate’s values and motivations are central to grasping whether they have a real passion for the sector as opposed to just needing a salary.

Knowing what you’re looking for

Having a clear picture of what the role entails and what kind of person would best fit the role will make recruiting a more efficient and effective process. Taking a bit of extra time to create a comprehensive job description and person specification will crystallize what is core to the role. Things to consider are:

• Tasks and responsibilities – What are the day-to-day functions of the role and the areas that the person will take ownership of?
• Key competencies – What are the attributes and behaviours required to do the role well, e.g. initiative, leadership, problem-solving, etc?
• Personality and attitudes – How they will fit into the culture of your department and the wider organisation? What kind of personality would best interact with your colleagues and be easy to manage?
• Values and motivations – What is important to the candidate and how does that relate to the role and the organisation?

Selecting the right candidates

With your job description and person specification prepared you can use these to whittle down the list of applications. One way to do this is to assign a rating to each skill, experience and competency required and then score each application against this.

Ideally, more than one person should take part in selecting candidates to ensure that personal bias doesn’t hinder the process. There may be some applications that fall on the borderline score for selection which you may want to include in the interview stage as this may reveal them to be much more capable than on paper.

Interviewing

Once you’ve got your short-list of candidates, you can progress to the interview stage. If you still have a sizeable list at this stage telephone interviews are a good pre-selection tool allowing you to get a feel for the candidate and whether you should invite them for a face-to-face interview.

When interviewing candidates it is useful to have a list of structured questions that cover the job role, competencies and attitudes. This way you can compare like for like. You should also ask some open-ended hypothetical questions that will give you an insight into how the candidate thinks on their feet, how they would deal with real work situations and gives an insight into their attitude and personality. You may also want to include some unstructured questions, taking the lead from interesting points in the candidate’s application, this can be useful for understanding their values and other areas previously missed.

It is now fairly standard procedure to have more than one round of interviews, especially for more senior positions. Once you’ve selected those candidates that passed the first round of interviews, you may want them to meet other people within your organisation. This could take the form of a panel interview where are group of people, all with a different interest in the role (job knowledge, company fit, etc), interview the candidate. You may also want to ask the candidate to do a short presentation, giving them a job related question to answer prior to the interview. This can enable you to ascertain the candidate’s strategic, problem solving and communication skills.

One major concern when interviewing is to beware of your own personal like’s and dislikes clouding your experience of the interview, e.g. if you feel a personal connection to the person you may end up recruiting someone not up to the job or another example is if you’re not keen on the candidate, asking more difficult questions to prove to yourself that they are not suitable.

Other considerations

There are a number of things that you may need to consider when recruiting. One is that it can be time consuming, especially if you’re undertaking a large recruitment drive, just answering enquiries alone can mean hours spent on the phone or emailing prospective candidates. You also need to ensure that your recruitment advertising attracts the right people and is placed in the right places.

Depending on your organisation you may also need to check successful candidates against the criminal record bureau database.

Another consideration is that you may just need a temporary, flexible solution at short notice without spending the time going through the entire recruitment process.

Not-for-profit recruitment with Charity People

With over 20 years of experience in recruitment, Charity People is dedicated to helping not-for-profit and value-led organisations find highly motivated and well-qualified candidates to fulfil their staffing requirements. We have an extensive database of over 30,000 active jobseekers and we are well connected to the main recruitment channels, enabling you to reach out to the most desirable applicants.

We've provided recruitment services for a variety of organisations, ranging from small projects to some of the most well-known organisations in charities, social enterprises and community projects.

Email us or call us on 020 7939 7439 to find out more about our comprehensive range of recruitment services and learn how Charity People can help with your recruitment needs.