Recruitment Q and A's

This section answers some of the most common recruitment questions

What are the key trends in third sector recruitment, and what are the implications for the salaries we need to offer new recruits?
Much depends on the role for which you are recuiting. Good fundraisers are always in demand and salaries are rising particularly fast in some specialisms, such an major donor fundraising.

At the top end, we are seeing a widening differential between chief executive salaries and the sector average, particularly for CEOs with a proven recond is charity 'turnarounds' and in making a success of public service delivery. acevo's 2007 Salary Survey indicated that the median salary for their CEO members in the largest charities broke the £100k mark. Also, the number of their members earning less than £50k dropped from 53% in 2006 to just 35% in 2007.

Salary can be affected by turnover, number of employees, location and even the activitiy of the charity. You therefore need to consider your salary level accordingly. Increasingly I have seen the salaries of the newly recruited senior fundraiser in an organisation to be higher than the salary level of their SMT colleauges - market forces are certainly at play here. Good fundraisers are highly sort after and the salaries advertised certainly reflect that.

This year there are already indications that the credit crunch is beginning to have an impact. Candidates are less willing to gamble on a potentially risky move and those who are home owners are increasinly reluctant to relocate.

The best recruitment strategy is, of course, to avoid the need to recruit by retaining and developing good people. We always encourage organisations to benchmark and adjust salaries for those in post, instead of waiting until someone leaves, and this can do much to boost retention.


When appointing a new Director, how do we assess which skills and experience are essential and which are merely desirable?
Your 'Job Description' and Person Specification should flow naturally out of your organisational and departmental strategies from which the core purpose and desired outcomes of each role should be evident.

If you feel that there are some question marks over your strategic direction, we would strongly encourage you to resolve these first, possibly with outside assistance, before you proceed with a permanent appointment. We sometimes provide a combination of an interim manager and consultancy support to assist with this process. Above all, I encourage clients to see a vacancy not as a problem to be fixed but as an opportunity to be exploited; a chance to think afresh about the skill set you need and to make a new start.

Middle management roles often need a more specific set of functional skills than those at more senior level. For instance, someone who has already had success in writing trust applications is likely to perform well as a trust fundraiser in your organisation, but, at more senior levels, a different and more transferrable set of competencies often apply. These include strategic insight, highly developed communications skills, team leadership and, above all, the ability to define, articulate and sell a vision.

These competencies can be acquired in a wide range of environments, including public and private sector roles, so set the parameters wide and do all you can to generate a wide range of applicants. The successful candidate really doesn't need, as some Job Descriptions might put it 'three years' senior level experience in the fundraising functions of disability charities in Macclesfield' to be able to perform well.


Where should I advertise my vacancy?
Society Guardian and Third Sector magazine have traditionally led the third sector recruitment market, supplemented by specialist media such as Professional Fundraising and Charity Finance.

It is also worth putting your ad online with these publications (Third Sector’s Jobs pages now serve the NCVO and the Institute of Fundraising’s membership too). CharityJOB has been the leading website in the UK for charity jobs for a number of years (www.charityjob.co.uk). UKFundraising is another helpful website (www.fundraising.co.uk).

There are many other websites, but don’t use too many, and be aware of charges. I also do advise that you create a hurdle for people who apply online so you do not get inundated with CVs from people completely unsuitable for the role, who just hit the send button, submitting their CV to virtually any vacancy.


How can I get the best response from online ads?
When advertising on-line the layout of the advert is different to the printed publication, so do not just have your printed ad replicated, as it might not read correctly (eg. captions written, but the photo not included).

Check how the site engineers its searches, will ‘fundraiser’ and ‘fundraising’ read the same way? If not, should you try and include both in the text?

Some sites put a post higher up the search list by the number of times the searched for word appears in the text, ie: the more times ‘fundraiser’ is written, the higher up the list it will come, or they may do it in terms of density, so if the word appears 5 times in a 50 word text, it will be higher up the list than if it appears 5 times in a 100 word text.

When the advert goes live on line, search for it yourself, by charity name, geographical location, key word etc. Is it appearing as you expected? Does it look right? If not, contact the site and arrange for appropriate changes to be made.

Finally some websites have a teaser introductory line on the listings which the visitor must click if they are interested. Don’t just make that line the first line of the advert as it may not be strong enough, or even make sense. Purposefully write it for the number of words they allocate, so it tells the visitor enough to make them want to click further.


How can we maximise the appeal of our post to potential applicants without paying an excessive salary?
The salary you offer does need to be competitive, but there is a lot you can do to 'add value' to the package.

For instance, in our sector there is particularly high demand for flexible working arrangements, whether from potential candidates wishing to work from home, to undertake other paid or voluntary roles (often as a trustee of other charities) or to meet childcare responsibilities - and charities which offer this are at an increasing advantage.

Your location may be a drawback to some applicants, but it could be a decisive factor in favour of others. We recently recruited a Director of Income Generation for a hospice in Devon and made a particular virtue of its beautiful location and the rel oca tion package.

Finally, convey success. We all want a challenge, but in this increasingly difficult economic environment, no-one wants to gamble their livelihood and reputation on a risky venture - so it's vital that they can see the organisation succeeding and possibly opportiunities to network and build a national profile through their work with you.


How many people should I have on an interview panel?
In my opinion, the maximum number is 5 and the optimum number is 3 but it can depend on the make-up and structure of your organisation.

There are ways of ensuring involvement of some people, without them needing to be on the interview panel.

For example, have the candidates meet the Senior Management team for a short session, rather than having the whole of your SMT on the panel. Schedule a session with the team that will report to the post or invite that team to just attend the presentation section of the interview.

Ensure that the representatives of these supplementary meetings are able to feed their comments into the panel before the panel make their decision.


How can I make the interview process as effective as possible in assessing how a candidate will perform in post?
Interviews can be notoriously inaccurate predictors of how applicants will perform in the post. The fact that so many interviewers form a judgement in the first few seconds implies that subliminal factors like the candidate's appearance, speech and whether he or she is 'one of us' can far outweigh an objective appraisal of their strengths and weaknesses.

There is much you can do to increase the objectivity of the interview process. Have a common set of questions, related to the job characteristics, mark applicants and take notes. The best indicator of future perfomance is past performance, so I'm a great believer in 'behavioural event' interviewing. This involves asking the candidate to cite examples of how they have met a particular challenge, such as leading organisational change, in the past and then testing their responses in some detail to form a judgement about how they operate. It is also important to test CV claims. What role did the applicant actually play in 'doubling statutory income' or whatever,and what was the contribution of others?

These techniques can increase the accuracy of the interview process but interviews should ideally be supplemented by some form of exercise, perhaps undertaken with the team which the post holder is to manage, a formal presentation to a wider group of staff and stakeholders and, where possible, psychometric tests. As my colleague, Tony Baxter, a specialist in this field, argues in his article (above), such tests can both provide invaluable insights into how an applicant will perform and can also highlight areas which can be further probed at interview.


How can I best guard against claims from unsuccessful candidates of unfair process or discrimination?
The number of candidates who will formally question their rejection is relatively small, but it is important that all candidates leave with a positive impression of your fairness and professionalism as an organisation. Furthermore, removing bias and ensuring consistency of approach will help ensure you recruit the very best candidate from the available field.

Let's start with the Job Description and Person Specification. Review these to ensure that they don't imply any restrictions or preconceptions on the age, sexuality, cultural background or disability status of your ideal applicant. You can convey the values which inspire your organisation, but can't require applicants are followers of a particular religion exc e pt in certain and restricted circumstances.

It also helps to balance your interview panel, for instance in gender and ethnicity. Prepare and agree in advance a common set of questions which relate to the skills and experience required in the role. Ask interviewers to mark candidates against these, and take notes, which can be retained in case your process is challenged. This also helps guard against a panel's propensity to recuit one of the final candidates to be interviewed, of whom they have freshest recollections.

Finally, be prepared to give honest and full feedback to unsuccessful candidates. They will respect your candour and integrity.


Why is the average time in post so short, and how can we ensure our new appointee remains and develops with the organisation?
The average time in post, particularly in fundraising, is indeed short. In some cases a less than ideal appointment may be to blame, perhaps coupled with inadequate management support and unrealistic expectations. A good fundraiser, for instance, will bring in several times his or her salary in donated income, but this doesn't happen overnight. A fundraiser also needs a good product to sell: a credible organisational strategy and specific projects which donors can be persuaded to support.

The way to keep people is to provide appropriate development and support, hope of progression internally and a proper management and appraisal system which can detect any problems early and help implement solutions. Also, ensure you do regularly benchmark your salaries - the acevo survey is a useful tool for this. If you benchmark only when someone leaves, and then increase the salary at that point, you may well have kept the previous post holder if you had paid them the revised salary in the first place.