Anonymous accounts calling out bad sector practices seem to be popping up almost daily, suggesting change is in the air. The brain behind @CrapRecruitment talks about why these accounts are needed and why now is the time.
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Everything we do as charity professionals is aimed toward making the world a better place. However, we often fall short at applying the same critical eye to improving the experiences employees have within charitable organisations. This starts as early as recruitment.

Job hunting is hard. Really hard. Against the backdrop of uncertainty, grief and anxiety the pandemic brought us, and now a war raging in Europe – job seekers feel more uneasy now than ever before. But that’s ok because we have fair, transparent and job-seeker friendly recruitment processes across the sector, right?

Wrong.

We should, but we don’t. So many organisations are falling short of providing job seekers with even the most basic of positive, non-discriminatory, recruitment experiences. And remember, this is often a candidate’s first impression of an organisation – so it matters.

Employees can often be an organisations biggest advocate; they can volunteer, donate, and support for life, but all this is put at risk by clinging on to unfriendly recruitment practise.

In recent years there has been a spate of anonymous twitter accounts popping up such as @ShowTheSalary and @NonGradsWelcome who have done incredible work and forced the sector to make real change. @CrapRecruitment and others such as @FlexibleFirst and @NonDriversWelcome have sprung up to address even more of the issues within the sector, that we see organisations doing very little about. It is unfortunate that it is harder to challenge this practice directly than it is anonymously. – Maybe this sector isn’t as forward-thinking and accepting as it thinks it is. But it can be, it just has to listen.

@CrapRecruitment was set up to address the issues seen specifically within the recruitment process. And there are so many.

The work of @NonGradsWelcome shone a spotlight on how unnecessary a degree requirement is for most fundraising roles, and how recruiting managers need to challenge the lazy thinking behind using a degree as shorthand for certain skills. The same applies for requiring other educational qualifications such as GCSEs and A-levels. We are asking organisations to simply be more specific about what they need and how any qualifications relate to the candidate’s ability to perform in the role.

Recruiting managers must remember that what is included (or omitted) from a job ad is important. It is setting out your stall as an employer so due care must be applied. We see so many job descriptions with 20+ pieces of ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’ criteria. This again is often laziness. The manager hasn’t stopped to think about what is required before posting the job description. JD. This can be so off-putting for candidates who read these person specifications thinking that absolute perfection is expected from the start. This can be avoided by applying thought, consideration – and defining what is utterly essential to do the basic requirements of the role, and what can be developed in the role with support.

We are also looking at the wider experience candidates have when job seeking. Early closure of job ads is a particular bugbear as it means the goalposts are constantly moving for candidates. How does an organisation expect to find the best candidate when they set a date, and then close the role a week earlier?

These are just a couple of issues that perpetuate crap, and often discriminatory, recruitment practices across the sector. There are so many more – but the good news is that resources to support improving recruitment practices are easy to come by too.

We know it’s time for a change. The sector holds itself to a high standard when reaching out to recruit donors – it's time the same care and attention was applied to recruiting our staff.

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