Salaries, Silence and Stipulations

Salaries, Silence, and Stipulations

Forewarned is forearmed. This is the most ranty of all my newsletters. I reach depths of mild irritation that have only previously been expressed in a handwritten letter to a Sunday newspaper written on headed paper. I love that new media is giving an outlet for those whose handwriting is so scrawly and illegible that they have been turned down from medical school for that reason alone, and not because they did not get the grades or felt queasy at the sight of blood.

This month's tirade...

This is an open letter to all those who are hiring, about to hire, and will be hiring in the future.

Frederick Hillinger High Horse House Easyformetosay Road Little Whinging United Kingdom

Dear Employers,

Hiring new staff is easy. Hiring the very best is easy. Hiring efficiently is easy. All you need to do is have a clear understanding of what you want, how much you need to pay for it, where to advertise, how to advertise, how to shortlist, how to interview, how to make an offer, how to give timely feedback, and how to treat people with basic human decency at every stage.

Job Descriptions

As a fundraiser recruiter, I see dozens of fundraising job descriptions every week. There is a vast gulf between the best and the worst, and none of them has really nailed it down. This is your chance to sell your role, your benefits, and what makes you special.

Use this opportunity to set the tone of the recruitment process and the job's excitement and culture. What's the most fun thing about the job? What is your team and organization pursuing?

We all know that the job description includes any other duties, and we all know that terms and conditions apply. A good job description has many benefits, such as attracting a larger pool of candidates and making you stand out among the over 1,000 fundraising roles advertised at any one time (1,389 at the time of writing).

Person Specification

Your entire person specification for a fundraising position should be:

• Experience of, or the potential to raise funds in the specific income stream.

What you don't need to include:

• A long list of every single skill required.
• The ability to use Word and MS Paint.
• The ability to run your specific CRM.
• A degree.
• Their favourite colour having to match the brand.
• Having experience of raising gifts of exactly ￡19,641.
• 117 years of experience working at this specific level.

There is only a very light correlation between number of years’ experience and actual skills. You can’t possibly tell me that my degree in conservation made me a better fundraiser than someone with lived experience.

All you need from a fundraiser is for them to be able to fundraise.

Salaries

Just put the actual salary.

Not a range like this: ￡20k-40k DOE.

Not a range if you can’t actually offer it, or they get the top of the range after 25 years of service.

Putting a salary front and centre is vital, obvious and inclusive. Not including a salary will mean you miss out on so many people. And we certainly would work on that role.

Shortlisting

Do this in a timely manner. Hiring the right people is one of the most important things you will ever do, and any delay in the process will increase the risk of losing people. If you are taking a week to shortlist its too long.

When recruiting fundraisers you aren’t going to get hundreds of even vaguely qualified applicants, Book an hour in to go through them as soon as physically possible after the closing date, even shortlist as you go, get people engaged in the process.

Interviews

Do not be combative with your interviews. Candidates have their pick of jobs, and they are interviewing you as much as you them. Consider sharing the questions in advance, consider if you really need a task or is there a suitable alternative.

Does the ability to write a complete fundraising bid in 45 minutes really demonstrate the skills required to do the role?

Do you need a 4 stage interview for a fundraising assistant role? Can you do them remotely?

Be flexible, quite a lot of people have stuff to do at 3.15pm so they may not be able to make the 100 mile round trip at that specific time.

Once you have interviewed, tell the candidates, or the recruiter, when they will have the results, and stick to it. Even if the result is we need to speak to a couple of people again.

Oh, and don’t do role plays. Everyone hates them.

Making the offer, and saying no

When you have your candidate, offer them as much as you can, you want them to feel valued and you really don’t want to risk insulting them for the sake of a thousand pounds. Their current salary should have no bearing on the offer you make. I have worked with candidates who are moving jobs and are happy to half their salary, I have had candidates that are severely underpaid for their skills and job. It will just perpetuate accidental discrimination.

Hopefully if you followed all the above advice, you will have yourself a very excited new member of staff. You will also have some very disappointed people that have invested significant amounts of time in a process that is very stressful. Please give a few minutes over to share feedback with the candidates. Ideally, this would be more than just that the other person has more experience.

In angry summary

Be a good person, treat people how you would want to be treated and prioritise your recruitment.

If you don’t heed the advice above, you will end up paying a specialist recruiter, ideally me, to do this for you.

Yours overzealously sincerely,

Freddy

Let’s take a breath.

It think it is important to remember that there is no such thing as the perfect candidate.

The closest thing you will get to the perfect candidate for the job is probably the person you are tyring to replace. Maybe next time I can talk about retention.

The stuff I have to include to make all this ranting and writing worthwhile.

If you would like to have a chat about how I can make recruiting fundraising professionals pain-free and straight-forward then click this link:?Click here to book into my diary to see how I can help you recruit excellent fundraisers.

If you would like to find your next fundraising job click this link:?Click here to book into my diary to see how I can help you find your next job.

If you would like to get in touch with me at all, you can do that via my LinkedIn profile, by emailing?[email protected]?or calling?020 7198 6140

You can connect with me, follow me or even block me here:?Frederick Hillinger

Follow TPP for lots of sector news, loads of jobs, and all the non profit sector experts you could ever want here:? TPP Recruitment