Recruitment

A long-established charity campaigning for social justice in an international context needed to recruit several new employees. Its young and enthusiastic staff group, conscious of their inner-city location, wanted to ensure that the workforce reflected the local community, which up to then it did not.

With three posts to fill, they decided to make sure that a black candidate was appointed to the secretarial vacancy, and to make the recruitment to the two campaigns officer posts open. Accordingly, they used their equal opportunities monitoring form to shortlist only black candidates, and a relatively inexperienced young woman was appointed after she and four others were interviewed. The other posts were both filled by white men.

It soon became apparent that the new secretary was unhappy in her post, and she was not able to relate well to overseas enquirers, of whom there were very many. After only four months she resigned, and during her exit interview, she explained that she had found out about the decision to appoint a black person, and had felt that hers was a tokenist appointment.

There was no incentive to do well, and in any case, nobody had offered her training - they just had assumed that she would be able to relate to the organisation's international contacts.

After taking advice from outside, the charity learnt some important lessons:

• It's illegal to recruit people because of the colour of their skin or other characteristic that defines their race, even if you are trying to redress an imbalance.
• You need to be absolutely clear about what the job is about, and measure candidates for their potential to meet its requirements.
• People who are not appointed on their own merits rarely succeed, and always need support.

Next time round, they developed a clear person specification, identified a series of tests to measure the key criteria, and then targeted their recruitment drive at all local people. They shortlisted both black and white candidates, and the successful one was a black man with extensive secretarial experience in the developing world.

He's now doing very well, especially in handling overseas contacts. Confident that he won the job on merit, he is not afraid to ask for help in performing it better, and expects to stay there for several years. But the charity still had the expense of recruiting twice, when a clearer focus on the law and a better-planned campaign would have saved money and effort in the long run.