Top 8 Creative Recruitment Adverts

 By Hayley Robinson, Manager at TPP Not for Profit

Finding the right person for your organisation is essential, but it can be difficult to find those candidates that tick all the boxes on your job description and person specification. It can pay to sometimes try more creative ways of finding those candidates, especially passive candidates who are not actively looking for a new role.

This month we look at 8 types of creative recruitment adverts, using examples from the web that caught our eye (although not always for the right reasons!)









1.    Before even applying these organisations tested their skills.

2.    These certainly weren’t proof read!

3.    These are enough to make you feel claustrophobic

4.    Being honest about pay and responsibilities

5.    Adverts for the end of the day or week

6.    We have no clue, any guesses?

7.    A little scary

8.    Finally ones to make you laugh

 


 

  

Creating a talent pipeline for your organisation

By Kate Maunder, TPP Consultant

TPP have just produced an infographic on employment in the voluntary sector (click here to see the full infographic). One of the most interesting areas we looked at was at skills shortages in the third sector, particularly in fundraising, marketing and communications, IT, finance and HR.

Charityworks, the UK’s non-profit graduate programme, has also recently released research showing a concerning lack of talent development within the sector. While one in three of the charity leaders surveyed thought talent was the most important ingredient for success, over 80% said their organisation didn’t prioritise it highly enough. Two thirds expected their recruitment budgets to remain static or decrease in 2014.

As we’ve mentioned before, these talent shortages are likely to get worse in the future as competition for the best employees increases. So how can not for profit organisations ensure that new blood is coming in to the sector and ensure there are clear career paths for existing employees to stop people moving out of the sector? Below are some ideas to consider for your organisation.


Employ young people

The budget squeeze of recent years has made non-profits reluctant to hire for entry-level roles, which could potentially be done by volunteers. In fact, only 51% of voluntary sector employers recruited a young person aged under 25 in 2012, compared to 65% of private sector employers. However, this has helped contribute to the talent shortage as it decreases the pool of people to promote and means new blood is not coming in to the sector.

As well as helping create a pool of future charity leaders, there are other key benefits to employing young people. They can bring enthusiasm to an organisation and contribute new and fresh ideas. Entry level employees can also be more easily moulded into the ideas and working practices of their employer, making them valuable advocates and potential future leaders.

To find out more about bringing new people into your organisation, visit Charityworks or Apprenticeships.org.uk.


Identify potential leaders

Promoting from within your organisation is one of the best sources of new managers, as it gives you a new employee already familiar with your working practices and committed to your cause, with a proven track record, but also keeps your best employees interested and motivate with the potential for promotion.

However, creating career paths for employees is not something the third sector does particularly well, and recent cuts in spending on training and development has only made this worse. Four out of five charity Chief Executives come from the private or public sector, showing an obvious lack of leadership potential from within non-profits.

To increase the potential for career advancement for your employees is a three-step process. You need to identify those people within your organisation who have the potential to become future leaders, look at the potential career paths for those individuals and then give them the opportunity to develop the skills required for leadership. Typical leadership capabilities include agility, judgement, cognitive diversity, anticipation and courage.


Embrace flexible working

More than two-thirds (68%) of the voluntary sector workforce are women but there are fewer women in senior management and there is still a substantial gender pay gap. It’s very important that charities do their best to stop these valuable and experienced employees leaving the sector, eg post maternity leave, and help them achieve the work-life balance they require.

One of the most attractive retention incentives to all employees is the ability to work flexibly, and this just becomes more attractive but also harder to achieve higher up the career ladder. 40% of charity employees already work part-time, and the third sector does already offer excellent flexible working opportunities compared to private sector, but there is always room for improvement – our 2012 flexible working survey found 15% of organisations still don’t offer any flexible working options at all.


Look outside the sector

The biggest skill shortages in not for profits occur in those roles, such as fundraising, that do not have a direct equivalent outside the sector. However open they are to commercial candidates, charities are still reluctant to invest in employees who do not have a proven track record, which really narrows the pool of potential new staff in this area.

However, it is easy to concentrate too much on hard skills and experience, that can be learned on the job, at the expense of softer skills and personality traits, that are much harder to acquire. For example, Fundraisers do not necessarily have to have direct experience in fundraising, grant writing, etc, if they are skilled in relationship building, identifying prospects, producing collateral, giving presentations, or "making an ask”.

Commitment to the third sector and the organisation’s particular cause is also something that commercial candidates may find harder to demonstrate. Volunteer or trustee experience, or even a strong network of contacts in the sector, can be used as concrete evidence of commitment. Candidates from outside the sector also often bring in new skills and ideas and increase the diversity of your workforce. However, there are still challenges to overcome when attracting commercial candidates, eg around salaries.

Find out more about what tempts employees to transfer to the third sector.


Work more closely with your recruiter

Recent research has shown that jobseekers believe recruitment companies are the most effective way of finding out about job opportunities, so it’s important to work closely with your recruiter to make sure you don’t miss out on the perfect candidate.

Reputable recruitment consultants like TPP will be able to give you advice on benchmarking salaries and packages, identifying future talent and creating career paths, as well as supplying you with high quality staff to bring in the new skills you require. We work in long-term partnership with our clients and we like to make sure we have a thorough understanding of their working culture and practices. This helps us find candidates who will be able to grow and contribute to the organisation both immediately and in the long term.

As the demand for the best candidates continues to increase, they have more opportunity to pick and choose and longwinded or complicated recruitment processes can really put them off an organisation. At TPP we try to visit all of our clients so that we can assess their working environment in person and really get a feel for the organisation’s culture – this allows us to make really good matches that work on more levels than just the job description or person specification. We also like to keep in regular contact with our clients, so that we can offer candidates feedback on CVs or interviews and ensure they have a positive impression of your organisation.

The perils of purple squirrels

On average, employers take 5 weeks and 6 days to recruit a new employee, and even longer for senior or specialist roles.  This is nearly twice as long as the average time taken to recruit in 2008.

High unemployment has led to a candidate-heavy job market.  With so many jobseekers out there eager for work, why are organisations taking such a long time to fill their vacancies?  

Even seeing lots of excellent candidates doesn't help employers to make a decision, as it encourages them to believe there’s someone even better out there.

So why are there delays?

Recruiting can be an expensive business, and the costs of hiring the wrong person are extremely high.  Although the economy appears to be picking up, not for profit organisations still fear that there may be further turmoil ahead and remain cautious about hiring.

With the glut of candidates to choose from, employers feel they can wait to find their perfect candidate; one who has all of the ‘desired’ points on the job description, as well as those ‘required’.  Even interviewing lots of excellent candidates can encourage employers to wait, as they believe there must be someone even better out there.

Red tape and overly complicated processes can also delay an organisation’s hiring process and the saving on overheads made by not recruiting can feel like an incentive to keep a vacancy unfilled.

But keeping a job open for months on end or spending extra effort recruiting doesn't actually address the core reasons why it is so hard to find the perfect candidate.  One of those reasons is that perfect candidates are too rare to bank on – they are ‘purple squirrels’.

What is a purple squirrel?

A purple squirrel is a term recruiters and hiring managers use to define an ultra-rare candidate who is perfect for the role, down to the last detail.  A purple squirrel will have all the skills and experience required, fit perfectly into your organisation’s culture, live in the right area and, crucially, will work for the salary offered.

These candidates do come along occasionally, but too rarely to build a recruitment strategy on.  Purple squirrels are not a product of successful recruiting, but more often simply due to luck.

The impact of delays on recruitment

Maintaining the momentum of your recruitment process is important to keep candidates motivated about the role, and delaying could be a crucial factor if they are deciding between two jobs.  Even though the market is candidate-heavy, the best candidates are still in high demand, and they won’t hang around while you wait to see if someone even better turns up.  They will go to more decisive organisations, and their negative recruitment experience could reflect badly on your employer brand.

A recruitment campaign only lasts so long.  If your possible candidates have found jobs elsewhere, you may have to start the process again from scratch - using up your valuable time and wasting money.  As the economy starts to recover and hiring increases, the demand for good candidates is just going to increase even more.

Positions left unfilled for a long time also become less attractive to potential candidates, like houses that remain unsold – everyone thinks there must be something wrong with the role.  In fact, Britons believe that job vacancies that remain unfilled for more than 72 days are roles that nobody wants.  This means that the longer you wait, the less likely you are to find a really good employee to fill the role.

And the impact on your organisation

Obviously, organisations cannot function without employees.  Unless you reorganise to absorb duties elsewhere, you are eventually going to have to fill a vacancy.  While a job is not being done, productivity in that department drops, and the longer you leave it, the harder it is to build up momentum again.

Taking a long time to recruit also puts unfair amounts of pressure on your other employees, who will have to cover the essential duties of that role.  This may affect productivity and ultimately retention, as overworked and disgruntled employees are less likely to remain loyal and motivated.

Remember the perfect candidate may not be the best one

In the long term, it is more important to find a candidate who fits the culture of your organisation.  When recruiting, you should prioritise ‘hard to learn’ requirements like people skills over specific skills that can be learnt on the job.  Employees who are trained up to do a role have more incentive to succeed and tend to stay longer in a role.  Rather than waiting to find the perfect candidate, why not invest that time in training up a good one to become perfect in the role.

Another area to consider is the opportunities for flexible working.  Again, this can lead to a more loyal and motivated employee.  Being flexible in one area may also mean that you can negotiate with the salary offered.

The ‘perfect’ candidate that an organisation is looking for can often be one that is exactly like the hiring manager or the departed employee.  While they may be able to pick up the ropes quickly, a candidate like this will not bring in new ideas or fresh viewpoints to your organisation.  It is generally accepted that a more diverse workforce is a more effective and resilient workforce.

The view from TPP

At TPP, we’ve represented our share of purple squirrel candidates, and we know how very rare and in demand these employees are.  When we work with you to fill a vacancy, we use a combination of job advertising, social media, our own database of contacts and search and selection to find both active and passive candidates we might be suitable.  We then interview them, face-to-face wherever possible, before sending over their details, to go through their CV and to check how well their personality will mesh with your organisation’s culture.  We will only put a candidate forward for a role if we are confident that they can develop into your perfect employee.

If you're not sure...

If you are undecided about whether to hire a candidate you've interviewed right now, or to wait and see if there is a better candidate out there, why not consider offering the position as a temporary or contract assignment?  This allows you to save on overheads, gives you some coverage for the role until you hire permanently, and lets you try out candidates in a real working environment.  Based on their performance, you can then offer them the role on a permanent basis, or keep recruiting.  But bear in mind that your temporary employee may also continue to look elsewhere!

Ultimately, if you are adamant you need a candidate that fulfils every requirement, you are going to have to wait for them to appear and it is highly likely that you will have to increase your offered salary to secure them.  We believe that it is more cost-effective to concentrate on the best person you find for the job, rather than the best person out there.

How to recruit staff outside of London

London has the highest density of charities in the UK and other not for profit organisations, and the headquarters for most national and international organisations are based there.  However, according to the UK Voluntary Sector Workforce Almanac, 81% of third sector employees live outside of the capital, with the highest rates of growth in employment in the North East, South West and Yorkshire & Humberside.

In recent years there has been a growing trend within the third sector towards the decentralisation of charity operations.  It makes sense to situate fundraising, communications and administration in the same location as service delivery, encouraging local people to support their own communities.

This has created a huge demand for skilled charity staff outside of London, which has prompted TPP to open a second office in the North of England. If you’re a charity based outside of the capital, or one with regional branches, how can you find local staff of the calibre you need?

The benefits of recruiting locally

Probably the main reason charities choose to recruit locally is to ensure that their employees come from the same background as their beneficiaries and can relate to them and the challenges they face.  Providing employment in the local area is also very important to regionally-based not for profits, and often helps support their charitable objectives.

Additional benefits include possible savings in travel or relocation expenses, overheads and even wages.  Plus, employees who live where they work can be more loyal, reducing your turnover and boosting productivity.

And the downside…

Obviously, the main downside to recruiting locally is that there is usually a much smaller pool of qualified candidates to choose from, making it a struggle not to settle for a less than ideal employee.  Some candidates may also actually prefer to work in London, and will treat your role as a stopgap until they can make the move.

Recruiting regionally, especially if you need to recruit for multiple locations, is also much more time consuming that recruiting in London, as the smaller pool of candidates mean you need to devote more resources towards finding them.  It can also work out more expensive, as you may need to advertise on both local job boards, as well as specialist sector boards.

So what methods can you use to find the candidates you need, while avoiding those who are not really committed to working locally?

Use local job boards / papers

Although it might be considered passé by some, local media is still the first point of call for the majority of the UK population when job hunting; according to the Newspaper Society, 72% of people would search using their local newspaper or website.  With over 1,100 local newspapers in the UK, this can be a great way to target jobseekers specifically looking for local jobs, and cut down on irrelevant applications.  Most print ads will also be run on the local newspaper’s website, so you won’t miss out on online jobseekers.

However, before you start running a classified ad campaign, make sure you check out the readership figures and application ratios for your local publications, as some publications are much more popular than others and represent better value for money.  If you are searching for candidates with a very specific skill set, local media may not be the right solution and a sector-specific national job board may work better.

Find local communities

Charity staff in regional areas often form groups to share ideas and information and to network with peers based in the same location.  Tapping into these networks can give you opportunities to advertise jobs and hunt for potential candidates.

Many third sector associations have special interest groups for regional charity staff, such as the Institute of Fundraising, Small Charities Coalition and CharityComms.  There are also membership groups specifically for charities based in a certain region, like Involve Yorkshire & Humber or the South East Charity Forum.

You can also search for regional groups of charity specialists on LinkedIn – these usually allow job advertising – or for online forums, such as those at Fundraising.co.uk.  Spend some time using a search engine to find organisations and forums in your target area.

Ask for referrals

When asked how they had found their current job by the Newspaper Society, the most common method was word of mouth.  Referrals have definite advantages as a method of recruitment, as existing employees are likely to know people in similar roles and locations to them and jobseekers are likely to place more value on a role recommended to them personally.

The easiest way of generating referrals is simply to keep your staff informed of any upcoming job vacancies, and ask them to distribute via word of mouth, email and social networks.  Offering a referral fee will help incentivise your employees.

Sell the benefits

When advertising a role in a regional area, make sure you emphasise the benefits of working in that particular location, especially if you are likely to be competing with jobs based in London.

One of the aspects of working that people in the UK dislike most is commuting, and just over a quarter (26%) would most like to work somewhere closer to where they live.  Capitalise on this by stressing the benefits of a significantly shorter (and cheaper) commute in your job description.  Working in regional areas can also give employees a more pleasant working environment and the benefits of living in a less urban environment.  Offering the possibility of a better work-life balance can be an extremely attractive draw, particularly for candidates with families.

Jobseekers often worry that taking a job outside of London will give them fewer opportunities for career progression, but this is a concern that can often be tackled in the job description.  Working in a smaller office can give them opportunities to take on more responsibility at an earlier stage, and having fewer processes and stakeholders involved in decisions means they can make an impact more quickly.  A smaller structure means that employees usually work more closely with senior management, and this can give them a better insight into the organisation’s processes which can stand them in good stead later on in their career.

Finally, if you are still having difficulties finding the perfect candidate, offering flexible working opportunities can make your role more competitive with those based in the capital.  The results of TPP’s Flexible Working Survey shows that flexible working options are highly valued by employees, but there is a real gap in what they want and what most third sector employers offer.  Capitalise on this by offering part time work, home working or flexible hours and your vacancy will be much more attractive.

Screen candidates thoroughly

Once your job advertisement has generated a suitable pool of applicants, you’ll need to screen them carefully, to make sure they are going to be committed employees.  The scarcity of job opportunities in the current economic climate means that some jobseekers will apply for regionally-based roles, even if they really want to work in London.  These employees are likely to be less loyal and leave as soon as a vacancy comes up in their preferred location.

Obviously, check where your potential employee currently lives and what their commute will be like.  Discuss any concerns with them at the first interview stage, to make sure they have a realistic idea of how long their journey will take.  As in any job interview, check that the candidate has good reasons for wanting to work in your organisation, and find out their plans for their future career.  Probe their reasons for leaving their previous employers, particularly if they show evidence of ‘job-hopping’.  Evidence of volunteering in the local community could be a good indication that the candidate is rooted in that region and likely to be committed to helping the local population.

If you find a particular candidate who seems ideal for the role, but you are in doubt about their commitment, consider offering the role to them on a temporary or contract basis.  This will give both of you time to assess how things work out.

Use a specialist

However many of these suggestions you follow, recruiting is always going to be harder outside the capital, and if your organisation has multiple locations with a regular turnover of staff it can be extremely difficult to build a pipeline of potential candidates for all of these areas.

Using a specialist recruiter can save you a great deal of time and hassle, and can ultimately save you money as advertising costs are included in the fee, which is only payable when a candidate is successfully placed.  TPP use a variety of methods to advertise our roles, including our own website and social media, specialist and national job boards, plus local advertising when required.  We also interview candidates prior to shortlisting, so you’ll only see CVs for people who can do the role.  All this is included in our fee.

Established in 1996, TPP Not for Profit has a wealth of experience in recruiting specialist charity employees.  Our second office has now made it easier for us to meet and interview both clients (to establish their requirements and assess their organisation’s culture and work environment) and candidates (all TPP candidates are interviewed in depth by us prior to shortlisting).  We already have a network of candidates actively looking for locally-based jobs, and can make the recruitment process much faster and smoother for you.

We cover all types of charity jobs, from fundraisers, social workers, healthcare professionals to communications and admin staff, in all locations across the UK.  We recruit on a permanent, contract or temporary basis for roles at all levels from Assistant to Director.

You can find out more about our regional recruitment services or our office locations on our website.  If you have a regional role coming up, please contact Ellen Drummond, our Regional Recruitment Manager on 0191 406 7121 or ellen.drummond@tpp.co.uk.

Recruiting for hard-to-fill roles

At TPP Not for Profit, we recognise that some roles within the not for profit sector are notoriously hard to fill. These traditionally include charity fundraising or marketing and communications vacancies , as well as roles for qualified healthcare professionals such as specialist nurses. Particularly for smaller organisations, filling these roles with the right calibre of candidate can be extremely difficult. Obviously using a recruitment consultancy with specialist experience of recruiting these candidates will help, but here are some further tips on ways to fill your difficult vacancies.

Why are some roles hard to fill?

There are several reasons why your organisation might be finding it difficult to recruit a suitable new employee.

• The most common reason is that the job requires skills which are in short supply, such as major donor fundraising 
• Your organisation is in a location where there is a shortage of labour and attracting employees to the area is difficult
• The salary you are able to offer is below market average and you are unable to compete with other organisations
• The benefits package offered is not as attractive as those offered by others
• The organisation has recently gone through a well-publicized restructuring or series of layoffs, or received negative publicity, which can put potential candidates off

Define your search criteria

If you are struggling to find candidates that exactly match your person specification, one of the most obvious places to start is by revisiting the qualifications required. Many skills gaps reported by not for profit organisations are related to job specific and technical skills, rather than soft skills such as team working. When it comes to recruiting the perfect new employee, TPP believes that cultural fit is at least as important as qualifications. Hard skills can be taught, but soft skills are generally much harder to learn.

Go through all of the skills and competencies mentioned in your person specification and decide which are easy to find, hard to find, easy to learn and hard to learn. Classifying the qualifications of a role in this way allows you to rank them in order of importance, and judge candidates accordingly. For example, if a candidate lacks skills that are hard to find but easy to learn, you may wish to rank them higher than a candidate who has those skills but lacks other, harder to learn characteristics.

Working with a recruitment partner, such as TPP Not for Profit, will give you an impartial point of view on whether your candidate expectations are realistic.

Widen your pool of candidates

Now you have considered which qualifications are essential, and which you might compromise on, you can look at bringing in different kinds of candidates in different ways.

One of the most obvious ways to give yourself a broader pool of candidates to choose from is to consider employing someone from outside the not for profit sector. As long as the candidate is still passionate about your organisation’s cause and has transferrable skills, a lack of sector experience may not necessarily be a stumbling block. In fact, having fresh blood with no preconceptions may provide your organisation with a valuable new point of view and ensure you have a diverse workforce.  Considering candidates from different industry backgrounds can really open up your options.

If the skills required for the role are relatively easy to learn, you could also consider taking on a less experienced employee at a lower pay rate and training them up on the job. This is a cost effective way of filling your role and although it will take at least a few months for your new employee to get up to speed, you should end up with a highly qualified and motivated member of staff.

Use Interim staff

If you simply haven’t got the time to train up a new member of staff, or you don’t have other employees with those competencies to do the training, consider hiring an interim or contract employee. There are three main ways to use interim staff to recruit for hard to fill roles:

• Use the contract period as an extended job interview, to give you a low-risk way of testing how effective a new employee is in the role
• Use an interim employee to give you breathing space to find your ideal permanent member of staff. This will take the pressure off and make you less likely to have to settle for a less than ideal candidate
• Hire a highly skilled interim with the specific remit of training up new or existing members of staff so that they can take over the role in the future

Change the role

If you are still struggling to find candidates, especially if they are not in a traditionally hard-to-find niche, this may be a clear signal that the role needs to be redesigned.

Often job descriptions are based on the responsibilities undertaken by a previous incumbent, but it may well be that the role evolved over time to suit that particular individual and finding a straight replacement is making your candidate search harder than necessary.

Take apart the job description and consider each set of responsibilities individually. Could certain duties be undertaken by other existing members of staff, leaving the remaining responsibilities as part of a more consistent role? Or should you actually be recruiting for two members of staff instead of one (usually a senior and a junior employee)?


Review your offering

If you are struggling with other organisations for candidates, remember that competing isn’t necessarily about offering more money. You could offer better benefits, work-life balance or simply have a cause that resonates more strongly with the candidate.

Flexible working is one of the prime attractions for candidates working in the not for profit sector, and increasing the opportunities for this will almost always help to attract more or higher quality candidates. Consider whether the position could be suitable for a part-time employee or job share. Ensuring opportunities for working from home are advertised in the job description will also help widen your pool of candidates, particularly for organisations in less central locations.

TPP Not for Profit have great deal of knowledge on salary and benefits benchmarks within your sector, and will be able to advise you on putting together a realistic package that will ensure you get the calibre of candidates you require.

Finally, a word of warning…

When interviewing candidates for hard-to-fill roles, be particularly careful to leave them with a positive view of your organisation, whatever the outcome of the interview. Employees in these niche communities are often closely networked and a negative interview experience could damage your employer brand image.


TPP Not for Profit are experts in the recruitment to the not for profit sector, and are often asked to help fill difficult vacancies. We can manage your interview process to ensure all candidates take away a positive image of your brand.