Could be time to change your deodorant – but it’s more likely you’re putting off talented applicants with old-fashioned hiring methods. Consultant Helen Green explains how to get the phone ringing again.

people working in social housing know how rewarding it can be but the fact is, people simply aren’t flocking to find jobs in the sector. Particularly conspicuous by their absence are applicants from other fields: clearly, housing isn’t selling itself well enough to potential recruits. It could be time to take a long, hard look at your recruitment practices and work out how you could do it better.

In an environment of rapid change and expansion, housing organisations can no longer rely on recycling employees from an existing pool of staff. New blood is badly needed, bringing with it new talents and experiences. But although this is widely acknowledged, the way many organisations recruit and treat their staff has failed to keep pace with change.

Many recruitment practices arise from a desire to be fair. But organisations serious about becoming employers of choice need to ask whether some of their processes are working against them.

Let’s take a look at what those might be.

Concentrating on housing experience rather than people

Are you sure you’re properly defining the role and the skills that will be required to do it? Typically, organisations respond to recruitment as the need arises and look for someone in the same mould as the previous postholder. This might seem sensible but it can put off perfectly good people working in other industries who feel they don’t have the housing background to do the job.

A better approach is to use every vacancy as an opportunity to review the role.

Consider the changing needs of the organisation and look at alternative means of providing the service – outsourcing, for example. Perhaps the job could be enhanced by automating routine tasks or assigning greater autonomy or particularly interesting project work to it – a good way to attract graduates to posts that were previously non-graduate level. What skills and behaviour traits are really needed to do it, and are they already available in-house?

The potential for flexible working is another important point, because options for working from home or job sharing could open up the role to groups such as carers with responsibility for family members.

Taking this a step further, you could adopt a “competency-based” approach.

It’s traditional to produce a job description and person specification outlining the role and focusing on the skills, knowledge and experience needed, but this may not be the best way to attract recruits from outside the sector.

Instead, try emphasising the attitudes, values and behaviours needed. You should clearly describe the role, rather than asking for a number of years’ experience of social housing and demanding knowledge that can generally be developed on the job.

Key attributes to look for might include the ability to network and build relations, manage conflict, build effective teams, resolve problems, negotiate and influence. You should also look for excellent communication skills and sound judgment.

If you identify broader attributes, you’ll have more success recruiting from outside your typical pool. This is also a good way to increase diversity. Bromford Housing Group – which came fifth in the Sunday Times list of best companies to work for in March and 13th in the Financial Times 50 best places to work in April – says it looks for outside applicants who share the organisation’s values and who have self-confidence, a “can do” attitude, and the ability to focus on customers and work well in teams. For each role, they set out expected behaviours and managers are trained how to identify the right qualities during interviews.

A bad first impression

The housing sector is not known for highly sophisticated marketing and advertising, which is one reason jobseekers from other sectors are deterred from applying.

To increase the chance of recruiting a wider variety of applicants, including from new and under-represented groups, organisations must find innovative ways of promoting roles.

This includes being more creative about where you look for people, as well as the messages you’re conveying. You can do this by placing positive stories in the local press about aspects of working in housing, linked to recruitment advertising; targeting sectors, industries and specific employers that you know are making large numbers of staff redundant ; and recognising that 98% of students use the internet, according to the 2003 Graduate Prospects report. Good trade magazines will be able to offer you an ad on their website as well as in their paper edition.

You’ll need to take a different approach if you’re targeting people embarking on their second career than you would for new graduates or women returning to work after having children.

With graduates, it is better to talk in terms of their career, rather than their first job. Research suggests graduates are most motivated by interesting and challenging work, followed by good colleagues, competitive salary and opportunities for skills development. Emphasis on issues such as homelessness and the environment is also likely to appeal to the more values-driven graduate market.

Women returners are more likely to be attracted by practical assistance and flexible working arrangements. For example, South Oxfordshire Housing Association sponsors Trio, a local childcare network that gives staff access to after-school and holiday clubs, registered childminders and nurseries.

For all recruits, there are many positives you can concentrate on. Sell the dynamism of the sector and the exciting roles on offer – the increased investment in housing and regeneration is a real opportunity. You could also stress the need for commercial acumen, negotiating skills and market awareness – a commercial business with an ethical purpose is attractive to many people.

Be aware that the term “social housing” might have negative or old-fashioned connotations for potential recruits who are not familiar with the sector’s modern-day business culture. So consider focusing instead on specific aspects of the work, such as developing sustainable communities or supporting vulnerable people.

Housing organisations often offer an attractive employment package compared with other sectors, so flag up benefits such as flexible working, generous pensions, holidays and job security.

Piling on the paperwork

The public sector has a reputation for bureaucracy when recruiting. Applicants may be lost to other organisations during lengthy processes or, more worryingly, recruits from different fields may be put off altogether by application paperwork that confirms negative preconceptions about housing.

You need to consider how your recruitment process could be streamlined and made more flexible – how the application experience can be more positive. An important element here is to make sure recruitment managers are properly trained in the legal framework, your own policy and best practice in recruitment and selection. You can then give them greater freedom to adapt overall procedures to suit their particular recruitment needs.

Servite Houses found it was losing people during hiring, particularly for its care services division, so it made some changes. It minimised paperwork by holding open days and interviewing people on the day, built up a pool of candidates who had been through the selection process but were not recruited and shortened the gap between closing date and interview. It also reduced the time taken to check on criminal records by inviting successful candidates to complete the disclosure forms with their new manager 48 hours after interview.

Rejecting CVs

Housing associations and councils often use application forms to set a level playing field and make it easier to compile a shortlist. But many applicants would prefer to provide a CV, which is more easily updated for each new application. If you’re serious about casting the net wider, you need to think more about what suits the candidates.

Genesis Housing Group, for example, leaves it to managers to decide whether to accept CVs instead of application forms. The group has found this particularly effective when recruiting for finance, marketing, human resources and management roles.

Recruiters often fear that making it too easy for people to apply will lead to an unmanageable number of inappropriate applications, but there are ways to get round this. For example, you could include guidance in the job pack as to what information should included in a CV.

If you’re concerned about increased volume, you could compile longer shortlists and hold shorter preliminary interviews or do initial screening by telephone.

Not making the best use of technology

The internet is fast becoming the main method candidates use to look for jobs, but not all social landlords are making the most of online opportunities. You can use your own website or trade media websites to advertise jobs and publish detailed information about them. If you receive applications through the internet, you can screen them using software that looks for key words – but ensure you are not inadvertently discriminating against people whose first language is not English. They might not have spelled some words correctly but this shouldn’t count against them if spelling is not important for the job.

One excellent way of slimming down the work required for recruitment is to send email alerts about vacancies to a database of candidates who’ve enquired online about jobs before.

Use of the internet requires careful planning. It is not just about automating paper processes – to get the real cost and efficiency benefits, the whole selection process needs to go online. Organisations may need specialist advice from software developers or recruitment consultants who specialise in web-based recruitment to make their sites and online forms easy to use so applicants don’t give up half way through.

Of course, recruitment is only the start. You’ve still got to integrate new staff to make sure the time and money spent getting them onboard isn’t wasted – particularly important for novices to the sector. But the right people are out there and all you need to do to find them is think about giving your recruitment processes a makeover.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Helen Green is an independent housing consultant and author of Staff Recruitment & Retention: A Good Practice Guide. It is a joint publication by the Chartered Institute of Housing and the Housing Corporation and costs £25 plus £2 P&P. Call 02476 851752, email pubs@cih.org or go to www.cih.org/publications