Recruitment trends in the public and charity sectors – follow-up from June event
On Thursday June 22nd June 2017, Jobsgopublic hosted the fourth in a series of breakfast events in partnership with the In-house Recruitment Network.
The aim of these events is to bring together a diverse range of HR and recruitment specialists from the public sector and provide a space to dissect the key topics, successes and also the challenges faced in their work.
Our latest event was based around the latest recruitment trends in the public and charity sector. The event was a huge success with 4 key speakers sharing their top trends and two lively round table discussions.
Our speakers have kindly summarised what they think are the top recruitment trend of 2017 to share with you.
Caroline Nugent – Director of HR & OD at OneSource | PPMA President
“2017 has been a turbulent year so far, with developments in recruitment continuing at a very fast pace.
The candidate driven market is making it harder than ever to attract and reach quality candidates in our sector. At OneSource, we are using Social Media to help build our employer brand and reach out to a new stream of candidates.
The importance of a strong employer brand is continuing to feature highly. I would encourage organisations to use your employees as advocates and to really think about what your offer is, it’s not always about the money – what else can you offer candidates and how does this make you stand out?
I am excited about the number of opportunities in our changing world. I believe the apprentice levy will help bring in new talent and having a strong employer brand will go a long way in attracting fresh candidates to your organisation.”
Vicky Murphy – Talent Acquisition Partner | Cancer Research UK
“Salary – Charities want to hire the best possible candidates but cannot complete with tech, finance and pharma companies on salary. A way around this is to sell the employer brand, culture, learning opportunities and work life balance that working for a charity can provide.
Philanthropy – It’s a growing area in the UK market and there is a shortage of experienced major donors, which means that the same people are constantly being approached about roles. A potential solution that CRUK have been exploring is looking outside of the traditional fundraising market and considering candidates from different sectors with transferable skills (e.g. sales)
Attraction – CRUK have been moving away from traditional job boards and are now focusing more on social media advertising. We rely heavily on LinkedIn for direct approaching and creating talent pools. We’ve also run Facebook campaigns for our Retail and Cancer Awareness Nurse roles, which successfully drove much more traffic to our jobs page. We are also investing more in Programmatic Advertising to target passive candidates.”
Carl Duplessis – Deputy Director of HR | London North West Healthcare Trust
“Whilst there are many recruitment trends from video interviews, improved systems, use of social media etc. For me the trend that will provided the biggest benefit to the public and charity sector is the growth in organisations building a strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Until recently the standard approach to selling the sector and job opportunities has been selling what the organisation does “work with an organisation that changes lives”. This only gives one reason to join an organisation and limits the size of candidate pool. By building a full EVP highlighting the full scope of what is available and what it is like to work in an organisation as well as what it does opens up interest from a much wider pool of talent.
I have always been amazed by what the public and charity sectors have to offer by way of professional development, size and scale of projects, innovation, breadth of roles, work life balance to say just a few. Unfortunately, this is only known by people inside the sector, a good EVP helps market the message and if used consistently through all marketing channels, adverts, social media (both corporate and employee profiles) it builds engagement with larger talent pools both inside and outside the sector, ultimately improving numbers and quality of candidates.
As more organisations start using full EVP messaging to sell themselves and the opportunities they have it will also start to change the perception of the sector that it is not just about working for an organisation that changes lives but also changes its employee’s lives and can give just as many opportunities as the private sector.”
Nichola Newbery – Head of Client Partnerships | Jobsgopublic
“Having worked in public sector and charity recruitment for the best part of two decades, Jobsgopublic are somewhat unique to provide insight into the current trends.
For us, this breaks down into seven key areas – these include the rise of social recruiting, harnessing the power of your EVP (employer value proposition) and using big data to give you the advantage over your competitors.
Whilst all seven might not apply to every employer, we have found that all can relate or utilise at least one to boost and enhance their ability to attract the best talent. We have found this to be especially poignant in an extremely competitive job market – where candidates hold the power and have more choice than ever before.”
We want to send a huge thank you to all our speakers and everyone who attended on the day. Stay tuned for our next breakfast event – set to take place in October.
