Tips for Recruiting in the Public Sector

Finding new hires from the public sector is a mad grab event, as you need to attract as many potential hires as possible to find the right one for you. You also need the best people for the job, with glowing reviews and the skills you need. Finding and hiring these people isn’t easy and can take a lot of time or resources. That’s why you need to utilize these tips for recruiting in the public sector.

Proper Listings

The start of any recruitment process is spreading the information that you’re looking for people to work for you. The best way to do that is to make proper listings of the job and position and post them where people can see. However, if you’re serious about recruitment, be upfront about the job and you’ll pull in a lot more serious candidates for the position. That way, you waste as little time as possible. To post a good job listing, follow these guidelines.

Upfront About Responsibilities and Expectations

The most important thing you can do to find candidates that are serious about the position is to properly display the job’s requirements. If you just post about an opening in your agency, you’ll get a lot of people coming in without the credentials that you need for your new recruitment. List out all the requirements you want your applicants to have and the responsibilities for the job, so people know if they can actually fulfill the job’s requirements before they apply.

Include Benefits and Pay

When you’re creating your recruitment listings, you’ll want to play up why working for you is better than any other place. Offer hard facts that people can see to entice new recruits and hires from the public. Include things like pay and any benefits you offer, as that will bring in the people who actually want the job. You don’t want to waste time and resources on someone who walks out once they learn about the pay.

Be Specific About Your Requirements

One way to weed out people who don’t fit your needs is to specifically list your requirements and set them reasonably. Lay out all the education and skill requirements that someone must have before you hire them. This will help eliminate a lot of underqualified people before interviews. However, make sure your requirements match the position, as requiring multiple years of experience for a basic entry-level job is a great way to never fill the position.

Post Online and In-Person

After you get together your job listing, you should advertise it in places that get a lot of high traffic with people you’re looking to hire. Online listing sites are a great place to reach a wide number of people, and you can even target specific demographics that meet your requirements. Along that same thought, you should post signs in places with people who might fulfill your requirements, like colleges and community centers. This is the best way to get the word out to the most people possible. However, you can’t limit who sees the information and might get undesirable applicants either way.

Hire Through Recommendations

Other than job listings, you can try to find hires through word of mouth and recommendations from people already at the workplace. Getting people who already work with you to recommend people is a great way to foster a better work environment and find qualified individuals faster. Plenty of places run recommendation programs that encourage current employees to recommend friends. The only problem is how slow this process is and how few people you can reach. You might not get as many applicants, but the applicants who do come should fit the job requirements.

Shorten Your Interview Process

You should shorten your interview process when possible and eliminate the unnecessary steps. Hiring or recruiting can take a long time, and you don’t want to make it take longer by including extra interviews or following slow processes. Locate any steps that you can get rid of while still following the law and keeping yourself safe. Some common steps are extra interview sessions for the same person or attempting to run your own background checks without a professional background screening company.

Outsource Background Checks

Background checks are one of the most important things a company can do for their own protection, but they cost a lot of time and money to run by yourself. That’s why it might be a good idea to outsource your background checks to save yourself both time and money. Finding a good company is key to running efficient background checks. Ideally, you’ll want to find a company that can handle your specific background requirements, like NERC background checks, while being quick and thorough. You might benefit from finding a company that offers other services too, like employment verification and record storage.

Follow Your Internal Policy

The last tip that you must consider is your own internal policy for recruitment. Almost every job and company in the public sector have policies that they follow. It’s best to follow these policies, as they’re in place for good reasons. This heavily changes from each place you’ll work, so make sure you study up on the internal policies carefully before moving forward with recruitment strategies.

Now, these are some of the basic tips for recruiting in the public sector. You may need to change some of them to fit your specific regulations and policies, but these tips should help you create a good starting plan for your recruitment. Soon, you’ll have new skilled hires to fill your ranks and help your agency work harder.