How To Take Charge Of Your Public Sector Hiring Process
Whether you’ve got a vacancy in your public sector team for a Chief Finance Officer or are creating a brand-new Head of Procurement role - before you start thinking about applicants and interviews, you need to set a few things in motion.
To ensure you have a smooth hiring process, follow these critical eight steps:
Plan
Before you start looking for your future employee; plan.
Gather together information about the role, especially if it’s a new position. Think about the tasks it will incorporate, how it fits into the structure of your public sector organisation, the skills and key attributes you require of the post-holder, and details of the hours and days you want the employee to work.
When you have established these, you can create a job and person spec, which will stand out to your ideal candidate.
Prepare the Job Description and Profile
Using your organisation’s vacancy approval process will enable you to create a detailed and accurate job description and profile. This will also be crucial is setting the salary level for the post.
The job description should be engaging and attractive, making the most qualified talent want to apply. It’s helpful to list the primary duties and what a typical day might look like. The person spec should list the essential criteria (the skills, experience and aptitude the candidate must have) and preferred criteria (the ‘would be nice to have’ list).
The essential criteria will include qualification level, experience of working in the sector, hard and soft skills.
Preferred skills will be useful in helping you choose interviewees if there are many interested applicants as you’ll be able to see who can bring extra skills to the role. These could include specialist skills such as knowledge of other languages or first aid training, and soft skills such as cultural awareness or the ability to handle conflict in the workplace.
Post and Promote
Some organisations will search for candidates internally first, before advertising on external sites. Internal searches can include referrals, secondments or promotions.
External promotion usually focuses on online recruitment, although some of the public sector still use press advertising.
It's important to include the essential and desirable criteria; the job title, location and remuneration. Also details of whether it's full or part-time, permanent or temporary, and how to apply.
State clearly if you require candidates to include a cover letter with their application. This can be a good gauge of their attention to detail – one of my clients received over 80 applications for a recent post, but only seven had cover letters!
Consider Working with a Specialist Recruiter
Choosing to work alongside a specialist recruiter, such as Westwood Harris Burns, can ease the burden of the hiring process. Alongside freeing up your time, a specialist recruiter can handle all aspects of the hiring process from compiling the job description and advertising the post to selecting the candidates.
Additionally, when speed is critical in recruiting for a role, your recruiter will most likely already have a suitable candidate in the pipeline.
Application Process
Decide whether you want to have an application-only based process, an application form with CV and covering letter, or just a CV.
The benefits of an application form are that all information will be presented in a consistent format making it easier to select candidates for interview.
Asking for a covering letter enables you to get a more detailed glimpse of the person, their skills and attributes, likes and motivators that wouldn’t be included in the CV, to help you build a better picture of the person as a whole.
Selecting Candidates
Decide on a shortlisting process, if needed, and use your job spec and essential criteria to rate each applicant, to ensure fairness.
Holding Interviews
When you’re setting dates for the interviews, make sure everyone taking part has cleared diary space. Remember you will need time not only for the interviews but for the selection process afterwards.
Allocate someone to ‘meet and greet’ and to coordinate any tests the interviewees will be asked to fulfil, such as competency-based tasks or presentations.
Book the rooms you will need and allow space in your schedule for breaks for the interviewing team.
Selection
Once you have decided on the successful candidate, you can make an oral offer of employment as soon as possible, but bear in mind this is legally binding.
Ensure your contract of employment specifies how references will be taken up, and that confirmation of employment will be based on them, so that the candidate knows who to ask for references (if they haven’t supplied details in advance). Check additional requirements, too, such as DBS.
Remember to ensure that the process for acquiring references should be consistent in the organisation.
The initial offer should be backed up by a written contract at your earliest opportunity.
Onboarding
Successful onboarding can make the difference between a great first experience and a lasting bad one for the new employee.
Therefore it's crucial to make sure you have a thorough plan in place which includes a clear and detailed description of the role, orientation (where everything is, what to do in case of emergencies, etc.) alongside a welcoming desk, parking permit, office keys and anything else they will need.
Over the first week, arrange induction meetings with key colleagues they will be working alongside to show how they fit into the team and provide them with information about the organisation’s goals and culture.
Over the first three months, the new employee should receive a personal development plan with milestone goals to tick off along the way. Keeping regular formal or informal meetings will enable you (and them) to keep track of progress and offer an opportunity for questions.
Give your new employee a great onboarding experience, and they will soon be contributing to your high performing team.
Westwood Harris Burns are specialists in Executive Search and Senior Finance appointments within the Public Sector; with particular expertise in NHS, Housing and Charity Sectors. With over 60 years combined experience, we have extensive knowledge of the market, proven track records and established networks, allowing us to provide a wide range of services to both clients and candidates alike.
To learn more about how we can support you to either build your team or career, visit our Get In Touch page.
