Charities and non-profit organisations are facing many pressures when it comes to hiring.
With the Covid-19 pandemic impacting people’s mental and physical health over the past 12 months, the services of many charities are in greater demand than ever. As such, they may find they need to recruit more to cope with this increased need. However, due to the financial impact of the pandemic, budgets are likely to be reduced, making this more challenging.
Additionally, with much of the furloughed workforce looking for voluntary positions to fill their time, volunteer recruitment processes have been put under strain as charity teams struggle to cope with a higher volume of applications.
Many organisations are still relying on outdated methods to manage their hiring, with long application processes for candidates and no easy way to manage incoming applications for both paid and voluntary positions.
Luckily, recruitment technology, such as an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), can help.
What are the benefits of recruitment technology for charities?
1. It’ll help you reduce costs
If charities need to reduce their costs, how can investing in a new piece of technology help? This might seem counterproductive but using an ATS can help your organisation to reduce its overall recruitment spend over a period of time.
The ATS market is booming, with plenty of choices for organisations of all sizes, with all budgets. Technology no longer needs to cost tens of thousands of pounds and you can get started immediately.
Recruitment technology allows you to track the sources of your applicants so you can monitor which job boards are actually delivering you with suitable candidates, allowing you to refine which advertising suppliers you work with. An ATS can also make it cheaper to source candidates by searching your existing talent pools for your required skill-sets.
Perhaps the biggest cost saving associated with an ATS though is the cost of the time it’ll save you through reduced admin and automation.
2. It improves the accessibility of your recruitment process
To make your recruitment process truly inclusive, it needs to be accessible to everyone, including those with any physical or cognitive disabilities and those from marginalised backgrounds.
Many ATSs are equipped with features to help you meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, including colour variations, and clearly signpost the recruitment process to make it as easy as possible for candidates to apply.
Additionally, many charities have long PDF application forms that are required to be completed due to safer recruitment requirements; this can be problematic for applicants who don’t have access to a desktop or laptop. Translating this application form to an online format means that candidates can complete their entire application on a mobile device.
3. It improves the candidate experience
Providing a good candidate experience is important for charities. Candidates are likely applying to work for you because they care deeply about your cause so it’s important to make a good impression.
An ATS and accompanying careers site can provide a seamless candidate journey, from the moment jobseekers land on your website to learn more about your cause and values, to the ease of filling in their details and clicking the ‘submit’ button on their application.
Technology can also generate automated application confirmation emails and updates for candidates, ensuring they always know where they stand in the process and saving you from having to reply to every candidate separately.
4. It gives you greater insight
Your recruitment tech can also make reporting a much easier task, which is handy if your charity is focusing on improving any particular metrics or looking for ways to measure the success of your Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy.
By keeping a close eye on your key recruitment metrics, such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire and application sources, you can make smarter, data-based choices when it comes to future recruitment decisions.
5. It helps you nurture your volunteers
Webrecruit provides careers sites for a number of charities who use ‘Job Alerts’ functionality to keep their volunteers up-to-date with any paid positions that become available within their organisation.
This saves you having to notify volunteers of paid jobs manually and increases your chances of quickly being able to hire someone who’s already familiar with your organisation and its mission and values.
Ready to start building your business case for recruitment technology? Download our free eBook, How to Build a Business Case for Recruitment Software.
