Here at CharityJob, your voice is important. That’s why in October 2022 we sent a survey to all candidates who’d used CharityJob in the last six months to understand more about the pain points you face when looking and applying for jobs, and how we can work with recruiters to improve recruitment.
We’d like to start by saying a huge thank you to each and every one of our almost 500 candidates who responded to the survey.
What you told us—summary findings
Here’s a summary of our key findings—you can read the full findings in our research report.
Pain points when looking and applying for jobs
When we asked candidates to select the pain points they face when applying for jobs, the most commonly selected answers were:
(1) ‘having to complete long application forms’ (faced by 59% of candidates) and
(2) ‘not hearing back from recruiters about job applications’ (faced by 54% of candidates).
Other common responses included ‘having to write cover letters’ (40%), ‘jobs having too many requirements’ (34%), ‘salaries not matching responsibilities for roles’ (29%), ‘lack of transparency on hybrid and flexible working’ (29%) and ‘not finding jobs that I’m interested in’ (28%).
Main pain points
When asked to select their main pain point and next most common pain point, ‘having to complete long application forms’ and ‘not hearing back from recruiters about job applications’ were also the most commonly selected.
You want recruiters to change how they recruit
We asked candidates for one piece of advice to recruiters to improve recruitment and your application experience. Here’s what you told us.
Recruiters should:
- be clear in job descriptions (this applies to job requirements, job level, salary, benefits, flexible working, remote or hybrid working arrangements, location of the job and the application process)
- stop using long application forms and processes
- give candidates feedback—and at the very least, always let you know if you’re unsuccessful
- reduce the number of requirements and make sure that the salary is appropriate
- be open to older candidates and those from other sectors and roles
- use CVs and don’t ask for information elsewhere that’s already on a CV
- let you know if the closing date may change.
What we’re doing about it
We’re committed to improving the experience of our candidates and helping the sector improve recruitment, both in terms of effectiveness and also the crucial issues of fairness and diversity.
We’ve shared these findings with recruiters and are encouraging them to make the necessary changes. So far, we’ve shared your advice to recruiters with them, and a full report on findings from the candidate feedback survey.
We’ve taken the following actions to improve recruitment and your candidate experience:
- We’ve encouraged recruiters to be clearer and more inclusive in their job descriptions, to show exactly what they offer and be open to a more diverse range of candidates.
- We only advertise jobs that have a clearly stated salary.
- We’ve explained that using long application forms and processes deters candidates and have urged recruiters to use other methods. We’ve created the Quick Apply application method to make it quicker and easier for you to apply for jobs. This offers the option for recruiters to add short screening questions, avoiding the need for long application forms.
- We’ve created a salary checker that lists market values for charity roles, so recruiters can check that they’re paying you fairly.
- We’ve added a message to our job ads to let you know if the recruiter is scheduling interviews as they receive applications, rather than waiting for the closing date. This way you’ll know if the role might close earlier than advertised.
- We’ve asked recruiters to check that any requirements listed as ‘essential’ for a role really are (because we know they often aren’t).
- We’ve championed the use of fairer recruitment methods and we also offer anonymous recruitment to improve fairness in the early stages of hiring.
Not hearing back from employers about job applications is one key issue that needs to be addressed…
It can take hours to craft the perfect application for your dream job. Once you’ve submitted it, or worse, been interviewed for the role, waiting to get a response can be excruciating. You refresh your email every five minutes and jump every time your phone buzzes. Then, when days of waiting turn into weeks and you’ve still not got a response, you may feel angry and start to doubt yourself or lose confidence in your abilities.
Our survey findings showed just how many of you are not hearing back from recruiters. Below are some quotes from responses to the question: ‘If you could give one piece of advice to recruiters advertising on CharityJob to improve your recruitment experience, what would it be?’
Advice to recruiters:
- “To encourage recruiters to follow up on providing interview feedback. I’ve been interviewed and shortlisted many times but no feedback provided on interview after rejection.”
- “To hear back from recruiters and if possible to send explanations even if brief on why our application was unsuccessful rather than just stating that it was. This would help us know what to improve when applying for similar jobs be it at the same organisation or others.
- “Reply. It is only courteous to acknowledge an application and to let applicants know outcomes It is bad for the brand of the charity to not reply, shows a lack of professionalism and awareness. An applicant is a potential future donor or volunteer…ignore them at your peril”
When we looked at other research, we learnt how widespread this issue is.
One source found that 75% of applicants never hear back from employers after applying for a job and 60% never hear back from employers after an interview. Another study found that 75% of jobseekers haven’t received any feedback from a recruiter after a job interview.
Research by Glassdoor also found that mentions of ghosting (employers dropping out of contact with candidates at some point during the application process) has increased by 208% since 2019.
So we could understand more about the impact not receiving a response to their applications has on candidates, we asked those who completed our survey an additional question. We found that a huge 79% of applicants would be less likely to apply for a role with an organisation that hadn’t responded to them in the past.
Our #GetBackToMe campaign
We’ve launched our #GetBackToMe campaign to encourage all recruiters to respond to all applications, and give feedback to all candidates where possible, especially if you’ve got through to interview.
We want to get the message out about how to do this easily, using our end-to-end hiring platform Applicant Manager, to as many charities as we can. We’re also explaining why they should be doing this and how else they can improve recruitment.
Help us to raise awareness by supporting our campaign. #GetBackToMe
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