How to recruit amazing charity employees

How to Recruit Amazing
Charity Employees
Rob Hayter, Director, TPP Not for Profit
www.tpp.co.uk

We will look at:
• How can you make your role appeal to the best candidates?
Is it all about salary?
• Putting together job descriptions and person specifications
• How to ‘sell’ your organisation to candidates at interview
• What are the best questions to ask when interviewing and what
questions can you legally ask?
• How can you ensure that new hires will work well with your existing
team?

How to Recruit Amazing Charity Employees

Mistakes:
• Not asking the right interview questions
• Not recruiting for a cultural fit
• Relying solely on interview
• Not checking references
• Automatically rejecting candidates


Mistakes:
• Copying and pasting
• Missing the opportunity to sell your organisation
• The Purple Squirrel
• Asking ‘illegal’ interview questions
• Mis-handling applications


How can you make your role appeal:
• Is it all about salary?
• Career development
• Values & culture
• Flexible working & Pension


How can you make your role appeal:
• Flexible working highly desirable – 15% of orgs still offer nothing
• Find solutions to problems
o Low salary?
o Remote location?
o Less ‘sexy’ cause?
o Smaller organisation?

Offer excellent benefits / job stability
Offer homeworking, flexible hours
Shout about impact
Taking on more responsibility


Job description & person specification:
• Forces you to think about skills and experience and type of person
required for role
• May want to change role/shift team responsibilities
• Allows recruiter to work more effectively and quickly
• Manage candidate expectations

• Use as checklist for shortlisting and interviews
• Use to assess performance after hire



• Be as specific as possible (responsibilities, deadlines, KPIs)
• Leave room for development & growth
• Be careful with your wording, e.g. is a qualification required or
would someone who is qualified by experience (QBE) be suitable?

• Do not discriminate on gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality or health
• Ask employees and beneficiaries their opinion


• Job title, position in the company, line manager and reports
• Location
• Summary of the general nature, main purpose and objectives
• Main duties or tasks

• Skills/qualifications showing essential and desirable
• Specialist requirements, e.g. “knowledge of Raiser’s Edge”
• Salary and benefits
• Examples of typical projects to illustrate the requirements


• Technical, organisational and creative skills and abilities
• Specific qualifications or education required for the role
• Level of experience needed in either similar organisations or
equivalent roles
• The type of personality that would fit in with your team, and with
your organisation’s ethos
• Character traits that are likely to help them to do the job effectively
• Any preferred criteria, e.g. volunteering, causal knowledge


• Hands on Mangler
• Good language skulls
• Excellent communication skills written and herbal
• Highly motivated team layer

• Working crossly with customers
• Excellency attention to detail
• Provided justification to additional stuffing requirements


Selling your organisation:
• PREPARE!
• Find out what each candidate wants
• Know your organisation / benchmark
• Sell the mission

• Talk about the future
• Employer brand and office culture
• Don’t duck issues


The art of conducting an interview:
• PREPARE! (again)
• Listen and allow the candidate talk
• Be positive
• Share some information

• Use panel interviews or a neutral third party
• Consider personality tests
• Ask candidate to visit onsite
• Consider a trial work period
• Pre-employment socialising

The art of conducting an interview:
• Behavioural questioning:
o Candidates give examples of specific past situations and how
they behaved
o Past performance predicts future behaviour
o Judging competency, rather than interviewing skill
o Follow up examples to get more detail
o Difficult to exaggerate or ‘fudge’ answers


Interview questions:
• Tell me about yourself; why have you applied for this role?
• What do you know about our company?
• Why do you want to work for us and why should we hire you?
• What kind of environment do you like working in?

• Where do you see yourself being in 3-5 years from now?
• How would you friends and colleagues describe you?
• Why do you want to leave your current job?
• If you were offered this role, when could you start?


• Give an example of an occasion when you used logic to solve a
problem.

• Give an example of a goal you reached and tell me how you
achieved it.
• Describe a decision you made that was unpopular and how you
handled implementing it.
• Have you gone above and beyond the call of duty? If so, how?


• What do you do when your schedule is interrupted? Give an
example of how you handle it.

• Have you had to convince a team to work on a project they weren't
thrilled about? How did you do it?
• Have you handled a difficult situation with a co-worker? How?

• Tell me about how you worked effectively under pressure.


Assessing interviews:
• Rate each answer with a scoring scale
o 4 or 5 = good or excellent demonstration of competency
o 2 or 3 = below average or adequate
o 0 or 1 = didn’t answer, or poor

• Scoring helps to avoid bias and manage panels
• Make detailed notes and keep them!


Place of Birth, Ethnicity or Religion
• Don’t ask: What country are you from? Where were you born?
• Do ask: Are you eligible to work in the UK?

• Don’t ask: What is your native language?
• Do ask: This job requires someone who speaks more than one language.
What languages are you fluent in?
• Don’t ask: What religion do you practice? Which religious holidays do you
observe?
• Do ask: Can you work in the days/schedule required for this role?


Marital Status, Children or Sexual Preference
• Don’t ask: Do you have or plan to have children?
• Do ask: Are you available to work overtime on occasion? Can you travel?
• Don’t ask: How many children do you have? Do you have childcare
arrangements in place if we need you to work out of hours?
• Do ask: This job may require some overtime work on short notice. Is this a
problem for you? What days/hours are you available to work?
• Don’t ask: Is this your maiden name?

• Do ask: Are any of your references or qualifications under another name?
• Don’t ask: If you went on maternity leave, would you come back to work
afterwards?

• Do ask: What are your long term career goals?

Gender or Age
• Don’t ask: We’ve always had a woman/man in this role. How do you think
you will handle it?

• Do ask: What can you bring to this role?
• Don’t ask: How do you feel about managing men/women?
• Do ask: Tell me about your previous experience of managing staff.
• Don’t ask: How old are you? Just don’t!

• Don’t ask: When did you graduate?
• Do ask: Do you have a degree or other qualification related to this role?


Questions to avoid
Location
• Don’t ask: How far would your commute be?
• Do ask: Are you able to start work at 9am?

Lifestyle Choices
• Don’t ask: Do you belong to any clubs or organisations?
• Do ask: Are you a member of any professional group that’s relevant to this
role?
• Don’t ask: Are you a member of the Territorial Army/Special
Constabulary/Other Volunteer Force?

• Do ask: Do you have any commitments that would require extensive time
away from work?


Questions to avoid
Disability or Illness
• Don’t ask: How many sick days did you take last year?
• Do ask: How many unscheduled days of work did you miss last year?

Height or weight
• Don’t ask: How tall are you?
• Do ask: Are you able to reach items on a shelf that’s five feet tall?
• Don’t ask: How much do you weigh?
• Do ask: Are you able to lift boxes weighing up to 50 pounds?


Ensuring new hires work:
• Onboarding


Onboarding:
• Ensure stakeholders are clear on:
o Management style
o Knowledge
o Relationships
o Values


Onboarding:
• Make sure they have a workstation, email, telecoms, network
drives etc set up.
• Order business cards
• Make sure key events and meetings are in their diary
• Update your org chart, telephone directories, staff list, seating plans
• Make sure the new employee knows when and where to report and
who to ask for at reception


Onboarding:
• Book time for induction
• Written plan of their objectives and responsibilities
• Make sure it is clear what is needed to pass probation.
• Have all paperwork ready to be completed

• Introductions
• Assign a mentor or buddy at the same level
• Take them out to lunch with a group of colleagues
• Run through your organisation’s formal policies, as well as informal
conventions like dress code, sickness procedure etc


Onboarding:
• Set regular (weekly if possible) meetings
• Arrange a formal progress meeting (often a probation review) after
three months.
• In the unfortunate situation where things are not working out, act
promptly.


Thank you for listening

For more information, contact us at:
020 7198 6060
Rob.hayter@tpp.co.uk

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www.tpp.co.uk

2 Old College Court, 29 Priory Street, Ware, Hertfordshire, SG12 0DE

How to recruit amazing charity employees

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