Candidate Care – how good are your recruitment manners?
Howard Lake | 10 February 2012 | Blogs
Charities often talk about donor care and rightly so – building and maintaining relationships with supporters makes sense. A happy donor is a loyal donor who will hopefully give long term support and may well encourage others to come on board as well. So why don’t charities apply the same logic to their recruitment process?
Today I spoke to a great fundraiser (whom for the purpose of this tale I am going to call Jane). Jane has spent the last few months working as an unpaid intern for various charities trying to get as much experience as she can so she can get her first paid fundraising job. Recently, Jane applied for a job with one of the largest and most recognised charities in the UK. Jane did not receive a response to her application. She then followed up with another email asking if the position had been filled and if the charity could provide any feedback to her application – still no response.
Now it is likely that this charity will have been inundated with applications, but is that an excuse to not respond in some way? Each application represents an individual – someone who will go on to tell others about their experience with your organisation, good or bad. They are also potential or existing donors, and if it is an entry level position they are possibly future leaders of the charity sector. So next time you’re recruiting staff, ask yourself if you are happy with the message your charity is sending out.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.