Recruiting Strategy
Changing your strategy when hiring for nonprofit organisations
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
While there’s a lot of competition for talent the nonprofit sector faces a greater struggle. With limited resources and irregular patterns of hiring, the usual rules of recruiting don’t always apply in the charity sector. While recruiting requires creativity, you’ll need to ramp up your imagination skills to make the most of what you have to hand. Transparency and cost-effectiveness are of the utmost importance when recruiting in the charity sector, so it’s essential to get things right.
By planning out your tools, requirements, budget and strategy, you take a lot of the difficulty out of recruiting for the nonprofit sector
The charity sector offers a big appeal to young professionals and graduates, so there is a pool of interested candidates to draw from. Determining a strategy and budget is the best way to get the most out of what resources you have to hand. Reducing cost and time to hire are always significant, but for a charitable organisation it’s essential. By planning out your tools, requirements, budget and strategy, you take a lot of the difficulty out of recruiting for the nonprofit sector.
A good way of sourcing candidates is taking advantage of those working in the sector. References are always extremely beneficial to the recruiting process, but in the case of recruiting for charitable organisations you have got the benefit of recruiting people with experience and passion necessary. Supporters of an organisation are also likely to have the passion to do the job at hand.
Social recruiting is also an extremely cost-effective means of sourcing, with a very wide reach. It also offers the opportunity to build up your brand and your talent pool. The often ad-hoc or as needed nature of recruiting within the charity sector, is well matched with social recruiting. It offers ease of organisation and sharing, should any opportunities at your organisation arise. ATS and other recruiting software solutions are extremely useful tools to the recruiter in the charity sector. They cover all bases from sourcing to recruiting, with data to back everything up. HireHive offers a 50% discount to organisations with charity status on all pricing plans, making the process of recruiting even more cost effective. The organisational benefits of using recruiting software are many fold and could make the task of recruiting that bit more straight-forward.
People are likely to move around within the industry, should the right role come up so consistently making new connections will help significantly
Building up a network of industry connections or a talent pool takes the pressure off when you suddenly need to hire. If you have upcoming posts or temporary contracts throughout the year, by getting the job of sourcing out of the way early, you’re doing yourself a big favour. People are likely to move around within the industry, should the right role come up so consistently making new connections will help significantly. There’s a greater level of competition faced within the not for profit industry, so constantly working on this is well worth the effort.
Taking the time to plan with your colleagues to put together a list of requirements and candidate must-haves will help you to create a profile of your ideal candidate. In a charity you’re likely to need a candidate who’s multiskilled and would be capable of taking on a vast variety of tasks. Just because there is increased competition, does not mean that you need to compromise on what you require.
Recruiting for charities has the same demands as recruiting for a typical corporate role, it just needs a little adapting. Where for-profit organisations have room for error and the capital to back that, there’s a little more pressure on charities. The key is to know what you need and to keep up with industry professionals to make sure you’re never at a loss to find top talent. Whether hiring full-time staff or volunteers, you need to make sure you’re not compromising and using recruiting tools that are available.
“HireHive makes the team a lot more productive. We’d be lost without it. Team Leaders can do it all themselves if needed or jump in at the right time and know exactly where everything is and what’s happening.”
Hilary Dempsey Head of HR at Life Credit union
