Recruitment in the not for profit sector poses some unique challenges compared to the private sector. We recently sat down with On Demand HR client and CEO of Young Life Australia to get a better understanding. Glyn, I was just saying that in the recruitment market and during your time as as CEO what have you found that have

been some of the challenges in recruiting people for an organization so recruiting employees for an organization like Young Life? What have you observed? What you find is you got a lot of really well-meaning people who want to come and help, but often maybe not skilled in in that particular area of interest you have.

And so they see a job “Oh I could do that”, you know, and not really realizing that actually is a professional job as well. You do need to be professional and you do need some skills behind you and you need some qualifications in the particular space that you’re engaging with.

I think what you also see sometimes, you know, is people who may not be able to get jobs in other spaces, more professional spaces, thinking, oh, I just come here, then, they’re all good, meaning people and will do that.

Whereas, you know, I think sometimes the quality of the candidate might not be there. And so the pressure on the not for profit then is, you know, looking for someone. But that’s that’s often sort of a fair chunk of it that the group of people applying as well.

Again, not saying bad people, but just maybe not the right skill sets and the right motivations, et cetera, et cetera, in terms of and professional skills. But then at the same time, you know, for the not for profit.

You can’t you’re not paying the money that, you know, private enterprise is paying. And so, there’s a compromise along the way sometimes of really trying to manage that space. And go OK, what are we doing here? You know, what’s the best that we can do?

Because we we’re not actually paying the money. Yeah. That that the other organization, if you’re in business and you’re selling widgets, I mean, you sell a million widgets. Yeah. Hey peace out. You know, we’re not selling widgets where we were caring for people in our particular case.

It’s just an interesting space. Do you find most people who do obviously seek employment with Young Life, most people are obviously Christian orientation. What do you find? Is it is it almost all people that you that are coming to the Young Life of that Christian orientation?

Is that some how do you how do you sort of manage that that aspect of it? Yeah, I mean, in our case, I mean, we clearly advertise that we’re looking for people of faith in that in that realm it sort of just sort of weed out some people along the way, but not always.

And so, again, you if you look at some of that stuff. Yeah. I mean, I just think about our recruitment processes in the last 12 months, you know, Covid. Yeah, great. But clearly, there’s a lot of people out of work, you know, who’ve been out of work and are are maybe on, you know, some sort of welfare benefit

or whatever and need to apply for, you know, just a certain number of jobs and you sit there. Oh, my gosh. I mean, this person is not even remotely close. Right. So so there’s a lot of that stuff.

But then there’s you know, you often just get one or two, sometimes three people, theres the gold that we’re looking for. But it is a challenge. And it’s always been a challenge, you know, because, again, people you know, when you are a faith based organization, that doesn’t eliminate a bunch of people, because I know I can’t sign

on to the bits that we need to sign on to. At the same time, you people, we all view faith differently, you know. And so do you find that some people come to employment with Young Life through the existing kind of let’s call it the network of the people that Young Life either serves or

the volunteers that serve it that sometimes materializing the employment, sort of them seeking employment that way or me. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, I think traditionally that’s how we’ve employed everybody. Well, up until the last 10 or 15 years.

And you growth sort of determines actually you just can’t keep producing enough people sometimes in the midst of that. But yeah. And so that’s certainly I mean, it’s clearly in our volunteer ranks. You know, the majority of our volunteers are actually young people who have come through as young people themselves, and they want to invest back because

they’ve been recipients of that that piece and then a bunch of those end up I’d love to work for Young Life at different points. So, yeah, so that’s been a real win at that level. But again. You’re not employing on goodwill at the end of the day, you still need a job done.

And so you’re still looking for people with a particular skill set and particular qualifications to to fulfill your requirements. So, you know, as much as, again Young Life has seen a lot of kids go on and become doctors and lawyers and teachers and nurses and all those sorts of things.

Oh, how lovely. But they may not be great fundraises or communicator’s or or managers or whatever that is as well. So again, you’re just looking for that. Youth workers, you know is one thing. But our area managers, what we call an area manager who’s the person responsible for supervising volunteers and delivering that

program peice on the ground they have got to be able to manage volunteers. And so that’s a skill set by itself. A little bit of fundraising involved in that role as well. So, yeah. So there’s this broad set of skills out there that is required in our organization so often, you are just not producing enough people to be able

to do all that. It sounds like in a nutshell, kind of what you would ideally want is someone who’s a kind of a champion of the the mission, combined with the technical skill set to deliver what the organisation needs and continues to need.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s what we’re looking for all the time. I mean, that’s a trial and error process, too. You know, I think, you know, people come I always say to people, Young Life is are they going to be the best job you ever had

Or it’s going to be the worst job you have ever had. Again, because there’s not the financial remuneration to actually keep you engaged. If you’re not in it for the right reason, but the struggle on the other side, you know, is that you’re dealing with people and people disappoint you often and not because

they’re bad, just they’re just people. They’re just people. Right. We all have our foibles.