Advertising for the right people
Tips
To support individuals to exercise choice and control in the recruitment of their own staff, organisations need to be able to not only gauge a good match between individuals and staff but also find the appropriate staff for the job.
In many cases this will mean advertising with the right people in mind and thinking differently about how and where to advertise in order to attract them.
Before advertising externally consider recruiting from within the organisation. The one-page profiles of your employees already capture their skills and interests and can be good starting point in finding the right person from within your existing workforce.
When you prepare an advertisement carefully consider the words you use to describe what is required. Instead of focusing on the location and hours look at interests and skills as well as the detail of when and how often the work takes place.
Use an example one-page profile as the advertisement to provide a snapshot of who you are looking for.
In your advertisement be as specific as you can. Remember to consider:
- Who are we looking for?
- What are skills and interests of the person that would be right for the position?
- What would be ‘important to’ the right person for the job?
- Where can you find the right person? If you are looking for particular skills or interests explore where you might find them, i.e. if you are looking for a person with IT skills, consider how you could get in contact with the right audience.
- What type of communication is most appropriate? Utilise the different media available including local newspapers, social media, community networks, etc.
- What might draw the attention of the right person?
- What support will the organisation provide to the right candidate?
The same approach applies for volunteer recruitment, being clear about who and what you are looking for and what their potential role will be within the organisation. This will assist you to narrow the focus from broadly looking for volunteers to addressing specific gaps or roles and therefore attracting particular people and you are more likely to spark the interest of the right person.
Additional resources:
- The Workforce Capability Framework
- The disability career planner and capability framework implementation guide
- Technique, tips and template – using one-page profiles in recruitment (employers)
- Technique, tips and template – using one-page profiles in recruitment (employees)
- Technique and tips – using reverse one-page profiled when advertising positions
- Technique, tips and template – using ‘important to and for’ in job design within recruitment
- Technique and tips – writing job advertisements.
Definitions:
The term individual(s) refers to an individual with a disability and their family and/or circle of support.
The terms staff/employee(s) refer to paid or unpaid members of the workforce regardless of their employment relationship with their employer i.e. permanent, casual, full-time, volunteer, etc.
Intellectual property rights are jointly owned by National Disability Services Ltd, PeopleAdvantage Pty Ltd and Helen Sanderson Associates respectively. © This publication is copyright. All rights reserved.
