How we hired the Applied way (without paying for it)

'The way that you're hiring is for bigger organisations, we're too small to hire like that'...

I hear this a lot from smaller non-profit organisations that recruit anywhere from 1 to 3 people a year when exploring our tech at Applied.

Alongside the work that I'm doing at Applied , I've also been volunteering with my close friend Moses Seitler 's organisation Screen Share UK , which supports, informs, and advocates for digital inclusion for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, primarily by refurbishing used laptops and distributing them across the country.

When it was time to grow the team, I knew that we had to do more than your bog-standard CV review, followed by a 'tell me about yourself' chat for 30 minutes over zoom. Screen Share UK and all of the brilliant candidates that applied deserved far better.

We knew that if we got hiring wrong it would be painful and costly.

Whilst Screen Share doesn't have the budget to invest in Applied 's technology, there were a few fundamentals that we were able to implement to ensure that candidates were assessed fairly and that we hired the right person.

?? Social Media & Attraction - leveraging our personal networks, our team of over 30 volunteers posted the Digital Access Programme Coordinator role that we were hiring for on social media platforms: Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The exec team were great at making personalised videos like this to engage candidates. We also posted to Charity Job's job board to drive attraction, and used the free trial of Applied's Job Description Tool before going live to ensure the Job Description we posted was easy to read, focused on skillset, and was broadly inclusive.

?? Work-sample Assessments - candidates answered 3 questions focussed entirely on what the role consists of, rather than what they've done.

We focussed on scoping these out based on the main skills and aptitudes that we outlined in the Job Description and then mapping these onto the tasks that the Digital Access Programme Coordinator would be doing on a day to day basis.

?For example:

It's been a busy week and it's now late on Friday. You have five things you've yet to get to this week.

1. One of our runners has had to cancel last minute, and they were meant to deliver one laptop to a refugee. You’ve been asked by the runner to take their place and do this.

2. You’ve been invited to a last minute call with a corporate donor who you’ve been chasing for the last month and who want to discuss data safety before they donate 50 laptops.

3. You receive an email from a new partner who has got in touch to ask if they can receive 10 laptops for the refugees they support. At this current time, we are already at full capacity.

4. The leadership team are running their weekly meeting to review their week and have requested you attend at 5pm to take minutes.

5. A runner has arrived at a delivery point with 20 laptops for an organisational partner, but can’t get hold of the contact person. They are asking you to help coordinate.

Imagine you only have time to do two of these tasks, which two do you choose to do and why?

?? Anonymous Review - I created a google doc with all the responses, and removed the names from each application. This was far more time-consuming than the tech that we offer at Applied and was the most work I had to do by managing this hiring process manually. As a hiring panel of 3, we scored each answer once (from 1 -5 star marking scale), reviewing each application from our own sheets independently and in a different order to one another against a pre-defined marking rubric we'd built for each question, which reduced ordering effects and ensured consistency.

?????? Shortlisting - By taking each candidate's score from every question and re-constituting to give an average score from 1-5 for each candidate, we were able to easily decide on objectively the best 5 candidates to invite to interview. We ensured that all candidates were kept up to date with timelines and we were true to our commitment to get back to them when we said we would.

?? Structured Interview - A list of structured questions with a marking rubric were defined by the exec team, focussing on the core skills and competencies that were required to excel in the role. Each candidate was scored independently by the exec team, and couldn't see each others scores until they submitted their own, removing groupthink and emphasising crowd wisdom, we were able to interview consistently and without bias.

?? Hiring - Looking at all the scores and notes across the hiring process we discussed the top-performing candidates on balance of their ability to do the actual role we were hiring in. It was a quick and easy decision and we were confident that we were all in agreement about who was the best candidate for the role.

And that's it. Simple.

The feedback we had around the fairness and enjoyment of the hiring process we offered was overwhelmingly positive. I have to take my hat off to Moses Seitler and Vicky Taylor for putting faith in my ways to letting me support this hiring round.

If you're interested in using this sort of methodology in your own hiring processes, there is, of course, brilliant technology that Applied offers to support this.

Having gone through all the manual work, it is a considerable investment to get any hiring right without an applicant tracking system in place. If I was a paid employee, I'd probably have spent far too much time than I'd have liked getting this process to work, and that's without the data and automation around emailing interview scheduling, and feedback that an applicant tracking system would have offered us.

What lessons can you take from how we hired this way at Screen Share UK ?

If you're hiring at even the smallest of organisations, there are no excuses for not doing it right.

We received hugely positive feedback even from candidates that were unsuccessful and we put it down to sticking to timelines, keeping candidates in the loop, and offering a truly inclusive process that focused on skills above all.

"I’ll be honest, in all my years of employment I have never received such a nicely detailed and considerate email and I think it’s wonderful! It automatically made me feel better about the rejection and I am genuinely really happy that you have found the perfect person to help you grow and prosper," (Candidate)

Alongside WuQing Hipsh , Patrick White , Florence Woodfin , and Stuart Smith we offer totally free training all around how to hire objectively and fairly. The training is designed to cover these core principles in-depth, so that you're able to nail your hiring.

The link to sign up for these sessions is here.

p.s. Whilst you're here, if you are interested in learning more about volunteering at Screen Share in any capacity, be it to donate laptops, deliver them as a runner (like I do), or work in the tech team do feel free to drop me a DM or reach out to the team via the link here.

#hiring #screenshare #applied #anonymoushiring #anonymousrecruitment