4 recruitment challenges facing Awarding Organisations right now and how to solve them

Awarding Organisations (AOs) and End-Point Awarding Organisations (EPAOs) continually face multiple challenges – changes to regulatory requirements, subsequent qualifications, and assessments reviews, and, above all, ensuring that the learner experience is consistently the best it possibly can be.

To continually evolve, grow and provide learners with the best opportunities to succeed, hiring and retaining the right people for your organisation is essential. As a specialist recruitment partner for AOs and EPAOs, I speak with clients daily who are responsible for recruitment and in recent conversations, the same recruitment / retention challenges have been cropping up.

These include, but are not limited to:

1.Not receiving adequate / relevant / strong applications in response to job adverts.

2.Candidates dropping out of the recruitment process either before interview or between first and second stage interview.

3.The offered candidate either being counter-offered by their current organisation or accepting a different new role elsewhere.

4.Losing great potential staff members due to office-based requirements.

Below are some ideas and tips to help overcome some of these current recruitment challenges.

1.Advert and Job Description

• Is the job advert clear and concise? Removing a long list of desirables from a person specification can vastly increase candidate attraction and matching to skills and experience.
• Does the job description demonstrate reasonable expectations of the potential post-holder?
• Is there a section in the advert and / or job description that gives a prospective employee a sense of what your organisation is all about, for example your mission, values, and ethos?
• Does your advert and job description display the benefits / package on offer, including career progression path / opportunities?

2.Recruitment Timeline

• Do you outline the recruitment timeline in your advert or job description? This can be useful in terms of managing candidate expectations as to when they are likely to hear from you as they go through the process.
• If the interview process involves multiple stages, consider the gap between each one. The current market is candidate short and therefore candidate driven, so I would advise that gaps between stages of more than 1 week are likely to result in candidates accepting other offers and withdrawing from the process.

3.Offer Stage

• Have you clearly stated the benefits / package on offer in your advert and / or job description and are you adhering to this with your offer? Can you provide information regarding earning potential in the role? For example, salary increases in yearly increments, details of salary bands and points on each scale, opportunities for salary progression based on performance.
• If you have a salary range for the position, are you prepared to offer the top of that range to a suitable candidate? As an organisation, do you have a clear idea as to what would constitute a suitable candidate at each level of the salary range?
• Are you making a fair offer to the candidate, based on their skills and experience, as well as the budget / grade for the role?

4.Working arrangements

• If the working arrangements are heavily weighted towards being office-based, is there a clear rationale behind this?
• Also, on office-based days, are there any benefits you offer? Consider in-person training sessions and social events in particular.
• Are you prepared to offer flexibility in relation to individual candidate needs? There are many and varied reasons as to why someone may need a very flexible working pattern – being flexible naturally makes you a more inclusive employer and widens your potential pool of candidates.

TPP is a consultative recruitment partner and, as such, I often advise clients on all aspects of the recruitment process, from writing the job description for a position to negotiating an offer for a candidate.

I am more than happy to discuss these or any other issues you are facing further. Please get in touch if you would like to understand how TPP can help your organisation maximise your chances of running successful recruitment campaigns.

I can be reached by email (rachel.ridout@tpp.co.uk), phone (02071986090) or you can book straight into my diary here.