4 ways to adapt your fundraising job search in 20/21
Over the last eight months so much has changed and nothing more so, then in the world of recruitment and employment. A lot of candidates are still approaching their search in the same way and therefore are not positioning themselves in the strongest way at shortlisting or interviews. I wanted to share 4 quick tips to broadly help your search.
1. Prepare for ED&I questions at interview
Over recent months diversity and inclusion has come into sharp focus within the sector. It is, unfortunately, true that as a workforce we are not diverse in our nature, although much work is being done to address these issues it is still true that there is a lot of change that still needs to happen. As such, some charities are asking questions about your approach to ED&I in application forms and interviews. You should prepare answers for questions like:
– How have you championed diversity throughout your career?
– What is the relationship between diversity and excellence?
2. Clarity on your CV around furlough and redundancy
With so many people being made redundant due to Covid-19, or being put back on furlough, it is hard for employers to understand how much of 2020 you’ve been working. It is important that candidates understand that this is often not a reflection on them and gaps in employment don’t send the same warning flag that it would have previously.
– If you are currently furloughed, next to your employer, put your start date to present, and then put furloughed in parentheses next to it
– Or if you have been made redundant, put the month and add due to Covid-19 in brackets
3. Understanding your transferable skills
Applying for a job in a new area or specialism? Now is the time to identify and understand what your transferable skills are for this new area. Have you looked after mass-emails, webpages and social media as an events fundraiser? If so those communication, segmentation and copywriting skills can be moved into IG or digital.
We recently ran a webinar called: 10 things you need to know about digital fundraising. The link to the recording is here, this is a good place to start!
4. Spellcheck, spellcheck and spellcheck
Over my last six years in recruitment, I’ve seen the standard of supporting statements decrease, more spelling and grammatical errors and less passion coming through in the statements. You can see some tips here on writing these. As the job market gets more and more competitive, hiring managers will have to differentiate between a greater number of candidates. When two candidates hold the same skill set (which is increasingly likely), shortlisting might come down to a well-written CV, with no spelling or grammar errors. Make sure you run through Word, Grammarly and also ask another human to check this for you.
At Ashby Jenkins Recruitment we offer a CV formatting service, please do get in touch if you would more information.
