Having the right people in your teams is not just about having the necessary skills, expertise, and capacity to succeed; it’s essential for achieving your charity’s goals, purpose, and ambitions. Although the cost of utilising recruitment agencies might cause some initial hesitation, the benefits far outweigh the investment. By partnering with a recruitment agency, you are investing in the future of your organisation, ensuring you have the best talent to make a real difference.
Recognising these benefits will enable you to make a well-informed choice that positively impacts your charity over time. Matt Till, Associate Director – Recruitment, shares the advantages of partnering with a recruitment agency:
Role Framing
Going to market with a new role? Or perhaps it’s been several years since you last recruited the role. Either way, it’s essential that you position the role appropriately, competitively and accessibly to attract the best candidates.
Partnering with a recruitment agency allows access to unparalleled market insights and understanding, enabling you to receive accurate and up-to-date information to ensure the role has the highest chance of success. This includes details on salary benchmarking, similar role profiles, and candidate expectations and motivations, all of which are crucial for framing the position correctly.
In addition, recruitment agencies have experience and exposure to attracting a wide range of candidates to positions and are able assist in ensuring the role, and job description are inclusive and accessible.
Candidate Scarcity and Expanding Networks
One of the most common reasons charities use recruitment agencies is to support positions that face market scarcity, such as those requiring specific skill sets, specialist expertise, or candidates in particular locations. Recruitment agencies dedicate the time and resources needed to attract, engage, and secure candidate interest. When advertising directly, a lack of applications and interest can leave charities without valuable insights. Partnering with a recruitment agency facilitates a dialogue with the candidate pool, providing feedback and information directly from the talent you need. This insight allows for small tweaks and changes to the role, enhancing candidate attraction.
In addition to addressing candidate scarcity, recruitment agencies offer access to wider networks, ensuring your position reaches the right people. Whether you need to engage candidates with similar thematic or professional experience or target specific geographical areas, recruitment agencies can support you in reaching difficult-to-access networks. Through their extensive networks, databases, LinkedIn connections, and dedicated Recruitment Advertisement support, recruitment agencies present a true reflection of the best talent in the market for your position.
Candidate Saturation
Contrary to what you might expect, recruitment agencies offer excellent value to charities with positions that receive a high number of applications. Reviewing applications can be incredibly time-consuming and with the ever-increasing hybrid working patterns charities have moved to, we are seeing increased application numbers to sometimes over 300 applications for positions.
Recruitment agencies offer the ad-hoc capacity needed to capture and review increased application numbers and shortlist this down to the top 5, 10 or 15 candidates for review.
Alternative services such as a Longlisting Service, can also offer this administrative support for a reduced cost to the full recruitment service.
Employer Brand and Candidate Experience
An employer’s brand carries significant weight and value, especially in the charity sector. It’s essential to respect and utilize this to its potential. Some charities have prominent household names, whilst others might need some additional support to really capture the imagination and hearts of candidates in the market.
Recruitment consultants take time to thoroughly brief candidates on the organisations mission, values, and culture. While candidates actively looking for positions might see a job advert, those who aren’t actively job seeking might require extra engagement and influence to consider applying.
A recent report cited that 52% of candidates have waited three months or longer to receive a response from a job application. This lack of timely communication is not conducive to engaging candidates. That is why we prioritize candidate engagement, keeping them well-informed throughout the process. Candidate experience is vital for engagement; an unpleasant experience within a recruitment process might deter candidates from applying for a position with an organisation in the future.
Screening and Knowledge
Meeting and interviewing candidates can take up a tremendous amount of time, but it’s essential to meet and explore the candidacy of your future colleague. No one likes surprises, and meeting candidates that are not quite right, or worse, not engaged with the organisation or role can leave the panel feeling frustrated.
Utilising recruitment agencies ensures that you are being presented with candidates who have been spoken to and their experience vetted. It also allows the recruiter to collect key information from the candidate to ensure there are no surprises at the end of the process.
Salary expectations, notice period, hybrid working preferences, reasonable adjustments. These are all things that consultants can explore with candidates before they are presented for review.
Designing Effective and Streamlined Processes
Ensuring the recruitment process remains focused and on track can be challenging. Effective planning at the initial stages helps streamline the process and increases the likelihood of a successful appointment.
Recruitment agencies have the experience and knowledge to help charities design and deliver recruitment processes that provide the employer with the confidence to make the right appointment.
From designing the application process, to interview tasks and presentations. We understand what will be effective and appropriate to request from candidates throughout the process.
The more senior the position, the more stages required. Each can include different stakeholders with different nuances and focuses. Successfully delivering this process reflects positively on your organisation.
Negotiations
You’ve finally made an offer for the position! The final stage of the process can be delicate and tense, sometimes leading to a breakdown in the appointment.
Having a third party involved in this process can create an open and transparent dialogue between the employer and potential employee. For more senior positions, candidates might feel comfortable handling negotiations themselves. However, having a consultant provide reassurance and guidance throughout the process can ensure a successful outcome for everyone.
If you want to learn more about the advantages of using a recruitment agency or take the next step to connect talented people with your purpose, get in contact with us today.
