How to attract the best talent for your FE business!

It’s coming up to the end of January (ALREADY?) and the FE Sector is continuously progressing, despite the negative effects of Covid-19. Vaccines have been approved, normality is hopefully on the horizon (don’t count on it) and opportunities are arising within FE organisations across the country.

You may have vacancies but are unable to get the right people applying for the roles. You may have interviewed candidates, made offers but found that they have rejected to go elsewhere. You may have had a role open for months and months but not getting the calibre of candidate apply for the role in which you need.

You will undoubtedly be puzzled and left wondering why this is happening and to be completely honest, there will be a number of different reasons as to why. I wanted to help you all understand what these could be so I hope you can take one thing away from the below.

First and foremost, it’s really important that this is read with an open mind. Not every point will apply to you, but it certainly may apply to others. It’s vital (genuinely) to look at each point and thing ‘does this apply to us’ because if it does, a change may be needed.

Structuring your process

There are two things here in which I can offer advice on.

1.    The biggest piece of advice I can offer is do not wait. A lot of businesses wait until they have more than one candidate before they go to interview. Why? Let’s put into view: A candidate applies to your role who, on paper, looks perfect. However, you’ve decided that you won’t interview until you’ve got a certain number of applicants that are worth interviewing. A few weeks goes by and when you eventually ring the candidate, they’ve taken another role. However, had you of interviewed the candidate there and then, they would have been available and your role has been filled.

A lot of this is down to time constraints within your role but getting the people in your team should take priority. Make time because once you’ve got your team sorted, your role will inevitably become easier.

2.    Have a clear process. Are you doing first and second stage interviews? Are you asking for a presentation or a micro-teach? Have this planned from the beginning so each candidate is put through the same process. And whatever you do, don’t have a massive gap in time between the stages. The candidate will find something else and if you’re interested, you need to get them into your role ASAP.

Make sure you don’t have more than two stages for interview. Anymore, and you’re wasting your time.

For a recruitment process, I would recommend:

First Stage Interview

-      An initial telephone call between yourself and the candidate. Find out about the candidates themselves; what is their past working experiences? What are they like as an individual? Would their personality fit your team? Are their salary expectations matching yours? Why are they looking to leave their current employer?

Second Stage Interview

-      This would either be face to face (Covid dependant, obviously) or via Video Link. Depending on the seniority of the role, a presentation/ micro teach could be asked to be prepared. This will show the candidates determination to work for you, in the sense that they have taken the time to prepare for the interview. This should be followed by competency-based questions, which is based around your job description.

Attraction

Don’t be a bore! What makes your company stand out and why would somebody want to work for you? Reading a list of job duties isn’t really going to hit the right buttons but finding out about the team or the perks of the job certainly will. What incentives does the business offer? Do you all get together for a beer after work or organise a night out every quarter?

Naturally, it’s important to include the duties of the job because that’s what they’re there to do, but people spend a large proportion of their lives at work, so they need to know they’re going to enjoy it.

Interviews are a two-way road

The number of employers I have encountered over my working career, not just in Educated Appointments, who have this obscene, arrogant view of their business is baffling. ‘Well if they don’t want to work for me, they can do one’ or ‘well if they can’t make that interview time, don’t bother’.

The only thing you are achieving here is making yourself look like a dick and nobody wants to work with one of those.

You are not only interviewing the candidate, but they are interviewing you too. To attract the best people, you need to be a boss they want to work for. Otherwise, the other company down the road who has also interviewed them will snatch them up.

Be open-minded. Be calm and endearing. Be welcoming. The candidate needs to see that this place is going to be exactly what they’re looking for. Some job roles can be really, really boring, but people do them because they love their manager. There’s a quote on LinkedIn flying around that says, “people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers” and it’s spot on.

There are other things managers can do for their staff but that’s for the next blog, retainment!

Show me the money!

Now it’s important to understand that money isn’t everything, however you need to be realistic and not take the piss. And what I mean by that is, if your competitors are paying £25-28K for a tutor, don’t advertise your vacancies at £22-25K.

Yes, you will save money, but you will lose quality and naturally this is what will drive the business and your reputation. You want to open your talent pool far and wide and people should be paid what they’re worth. There is a difference between a tutor who does the bare minimum and a tutor who goes out of their way to offer a wholesome candidate experience. That’s not just money, that’s a number of reasons but to attract the best people into your business, don’t minimise the talent pool by offering a salary that is lower than everybody else.

Sure, you will have budgets to keep to, I get that. But it’s important for senior managers to review these in order to attract the top talent. If paying somebody 2/3K a year more is going to get you the experience you need to take the business to the next step, it will pay dividends.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and I hope I’ve been able to help you in some way in figuring out your recruitment process. I’m always available for free advice if you’re struggling in recruitment, just email me: joseph@educatedappointments.co.uk