Charity Careers Scotland to boost Scottish voluntary sector employment

A unique online recruitment portal – Charity Careers Scotland – has been launched in a bid to support and boost the Scottish voluntary sector and its employment market. The new service is created and managed by Bruce Tait Associates, Scotland’s foremost fundraising consultancy and voluntary sector recruitment specialist. www.charitycareersscotland.co.uk is now live offering a revolutionary recruitment journey, and is populated with more than 5,000 potential candidates wanting to work for a charity. The project is supported by Scottish Enterprise through its Innovation Support Funding.

David Smith, director of innovation, Scottish Enterprise, says: "Helping companies establish new innovative products and services to improve business efficiency is a key role for Scottish Enterprise. This in an exciting development for Scotland’s not-for-profit sector, and our support for Bruce Tait Associates will allow the company to target new markets, at home and internationally.”

Charity Careers Scotland is the brainchild of Bruce Tait, chief executive of Bruce Tait Associates and former chair of the Institute of Fundraising Scotland. He points to recent research and explains how the new recruitment portal aims to tackle staffing issues for charities and agencies operating in Scotland, while playing a key role in developing the Scottish charity employment market.

The ‘Scottish Charity Workforce Survey 2013’* identified that 82% of charities in Scotland have frozen or reduced staff salaries over the past year, potentially stalling career progression. Around half of Scottish charities stated they have difficulty filling crucial fundraising roles, which would secure ongoing funding for the organisation and beneficiary services. Furthermore, one in six charities reported cutbacks to managerial staff, and the majority cited their greatest recruitment barriers as being a lack of required skills and being inundated with inappropriate applications.

Bruce Tait says, “The Scottish charity market faces some unique challenges. With disparate regional communities, the market for each role and for employment is often quite small. Despite funding cuts, the good news is that charities aren’t closing their doors to new entrants; they are striving to bring in new talent and employment remains at a healthy level. But, because charities aren’t able to offer competitive salaries, opportunities for career progression could become limited and stifle the job market.

“The voluntary sector has a vibrant and engaged workforce, but too often charities fail to sell themselves to candidates. By giving charities the opportunity to better tell their story, we hope to energise the recruitment process and enable organisations to attract and motivate top candidates, despite any salary limitations.

“With Charity Careers Scotland, we have developed a number of tools to help charities really sell themselves and find the right employees, and to support candidates in identifying the right organisation and role for them. It is vital that more young people consider careers working for a charity and the site will be an important gateway to understanding more about charities in Scotland and the career opportunities they offer.”

Charity Careers Scotland supports Scottish charity recruitment across several levels:

• it facilitates recruitment for any charity position, from CEO to IT, fundraising to service delivery staff;
  
  
• the service enables Scottish charities to save time and money in their recruitment through its automated and easy to use processes;
  
  
• a revolutionary recruitment journey helps to secure the best match of experience, skills and talent to the role;
  
  
• as a unique gateway to the sector, Charity Careers Scotland will attract candidates that have a specific desire to work for a charity.

Once applications are made, Charity Careers Scotland uses a revolutionary ‘Checking Questions’ function that allows a charity to set three ‘must have’ questions, which quickly eliminates inappropriate applications and enables selection filtering for correct matches and short listing.

The recruitment portal offers an easy to use automated process with a range of advanced resources for both charities and candidates embarking on the recruitment journey. It offers charities their own customised and branded recruitment area where they can upload documents, videos, social media links and case studies about the organisation, its work and the exact requirements of the vacancy. Advisory tools and salary benchmarking help the charity build a detailed and accurate job description before going live.

A candidate can access tools and advice for creating CVs, application guidance and interview tips; learn about the charity sector, search for a specific charity, cause, or job role, and receive relevant job alerts as new vacancies are posted.

Charity Careers Scotland is being launched today, Friday 22^nd March, at a reception for 50 senior Scottish charity figures. Further events to introduce and demonstrate the new portal will be held in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and London over the coming months.