Competency-Based Recruitment Strategies
Recruitment: The process of surveying all sources of personnel, inside and outside the
organization, to locate and attract the best possible candidates for new or vacated
positions.
Many human services agencies have a difficult time
recruiting top quality applicants for the very demanding
jobs they are trying to fill. Baby-boomer driven
retirements coupled with a shrinking labor supply
suggest that the recruitment challenge will only get
tougher.
 Tip:
Recruiting good job applicants is
everyone’s job. HR usually takes the
lead and coordinates an agency’s
recruitment activities, but every
employee, every supervisor and
every manager has a role – and
shares in the benefits – of recruiting
the best applicants.
The recruitment challenges faced by small private
human service agencies may be very different from
those faced by the largest state, county and city public
agencies. Yet they face many common challenges –
some requiring basic systemic changes, and others
that can be addressed in the short term. Both must be addressed if human services agencies
are going to be successful over the long haul in attracting applicants with the needed education,
experience and competency sets.
Closing the Recruitment Gap
Your gap analysis may have revealed that you need to attract more and better-qualified
applicants. Ultimately, the applicants you hire
are only as strong as those in your applicant
Targeted Recruiting
pool.
The following steps will help you develop a
gap-closing recruitment strategy to better
attract more applicants and to build a pool of
high-quality applicants.
 Identify your Recruitment Strategy
Team
 Brainstorm possible recruitment
strategies
 Select the best recruitment options to
investigate and pursue
 Draft plan
 Get leadership buy-in
The Lorain County (Ohio) Children Services
Board hires only applicants with a MSW degree
or those who agree to complete the requirements
for the degree within two years of hire. They also
value having a diverse workforce that includes
more African Americans, Hispanics and males.
Although a small child welfare operation of fewer
than 150 employees, the county recruits
nationally. The HR Director searches the web for
the demographics of Schools of Social Work
graduates across the country and conducts
targeted recruitment where there appears to be
high potential. Whenever possible the HR
Director seeks an invitation to attend a meeting
of student associations such as a chapter
meeting of the National Association of Black
Social Work Students.
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Gap-Closing Strategies – Tool 2
Recruitment
Step 1: Identify the Recruitment Strategy Team
Form a workgroup whose primary objective will be to develop a gap-closing recruitment plan for
your agency. The team should include:
 Key Human Resources personnel.
 Staff who have knowledge and responsibility for day-to-day operations.
 Other work units as appropriate given your agency’s size and organizational structure.
 Individuals with networking contacts to community resources such as other human
service agencies, and University Schools of Social Work and/or Criminal Justice.
Bringing together a Recruitment Strategy Team from different parts of your agency offers a
number of advantages:
 Team members may have a variety of networking contacts.
 Team members may bring new perspectives that result in creative ideas that surface
through brainstorming.
 Team members may become more invested in the recruitment process and
support/encourage involvement of their respective organizational units.
Step 2: Brainstorm Recruitment Ideas
Your first team meeting should be a
brainstorming session to generate as many
approaches to recruiting quality applicants as
possible. (Your Recruitment Strategy Team
may need more than one meeting to
brainstorm ideas.)
As with any brainstorming exercise,
encourage “out of the box thinking”– some of
the best long-term strategies evolve from
ideas that initially sounded impractical.
Ask the following questions to help prompt
the team to think broadly about gap-closing
recruitment strategies:
1. Why do we have difficulty recruiting
enough qualified applicants?
An Agency-University Partnership:
Maine Department of Human Services and
the University of Southern Maine
After years of frustration with the cumbersome and
inefficient hiring requirements imposed by the Bureau
of Human Resources, the Department of Human
Services received the Bureau’s approval in the spring
of 1995 to pilot a new process for screening and
“qualifying” applicants for Child Welfare Caseworker
positions. The University of Southern Maine was
invited into the partnership to help design a
competency-based screening process that continues
to this day to deliver top quality, screened applicants
for vacancies arising within the Department.
From Freda Bernotavicz and Amy Locke Wischmann,
“Hiring Child Welfare Caseworkers: Using a
Competency-Based Approach.” Public Personnel
Management. Spring 2000.
1. How can we recruit more applicants?
2. How can we recruit better-qualified applicants?
3. How can we improve the diversity of our applicant pool?
4. Can we design our recruitment strategy to reduce unwanted turnover?
5. Do we need to fill vacancies faster? If so, how?
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Gap-Closing Strategies – Tool 2
Recruitment
6. Do our recruitment and hiring activities need to be timed to coincide with the
commencement of new employee orientations or formal training sessions?
7. Are our recruitment efforts hampered by the regulations of a central HR agency? If so,
what can we do to alleviate the situation?
8. Any other relevant issues?
Use the Sample Recruitment Strategy Planning Template on the next five pages to help you go
over specific gap-closing strategies and organize your plans for investigating them.
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Sample Recruitment Strategy Planning Template
Strategy
Online
Recruiting
Strategy is
Designed to
Close this
Gap:
Description
Not reaching
majority of
applicants,
especially
young college
grads
A large percentage of employees hired
by human services agencies for entry
level jobs are seeking their first “career
job.” Many are young, either fresh out
of college, looking to establish a new
career, or relocating to a new area. The
newspaper want-ads are not an
effective recruitment source for most of
today’s applicants. Placing vacancy
announcements online is more effective
and economical than using most
traditional forms of advertising.
Possible Tactics








Campus
Recruiting
and Job
Fairs
Need to
improve
overall
applicant pool
Both professional and paraprofessional
applicants can be effectively recruited
at job fairs sponsored by state
workforce development agencies.
College recruiting can be a very
effective method for attracting
applicants for professional jobs.



University
Partnerships
Not enough
applicants with
specialized
social work
degrees
Developing a variety of recruitment
strategies with area universities,
community colleges and Schools of
Social Work to encourage students to
pursue careers in the human services.

Team Action Items
Individual/s
Responsible
Deadline/s
www.Monster.com
www.CareerBuilder.com
www.Jobs.net
www.Hotjobs.yahoo.com
Ihiresocialservices.com (job site specializing
in human services jobs)
www.Socialworker.org/joblinks (specializes
in human services jobs linked to the
National Association of Social Workers
website)
www.NABSW.org – National Association of
Black Social Workers
Send team of HR representative with an
experienced social worker or frontline
supervisor to fairs – provides an opportunity
for job seekers to ask both job specific and
hiring process/benefits questions.
Send an “ambassador” from the agency to
classrooms of social work majors to “guest
lecture” or provide an agency overview.
Schedule experienced employees or
supervisors to speak on a “hot topic” in the
human services field at a brown bag
luncheon at a local college or university.
Collaborate with university deans and
professors to help generate student interest
in the field.
Develop stipend program partially covering
college tuition and other expenses of
college students who agree to work for the
human service agency for specified periods
of time. (See an example by the Kentucky
Cabinet for Families and Children and ten
university social work programs
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Strategy
Targeted
Recruitment
Internships
Strategy is
Designed to
Close this
Gap:
Description
Possible Tactics
Lack of
diversity in
targeted job/s
You may need a more diverse
workforce that better reflects the client
population you serve. For example, you
may need to recruit employees with
specific language skills, or with
specialized degrees (e.g., MSWs or
Criminal Justice).
Target community job fairs to increase diversity
among new recruits. See an example by the El
Paso County, Colorado, Department of Human
Services who created a Diversity Coalition to
recruit and retain minority staff. (see Six Doable
Steps)
Need to
improve
overall
applicant pool
Interns sometimes are paid a stipend,
but in most instances interns are
fulfilling an academic requirement of the
college or university. Although
supervisors and/or casework staff must
spend time supervising and training
interns, the potential payoff is having a
“known” applicant who is familiar with
agency operations.
See the El Paso County, Colorado, Department
of Human Services for an example (see Six
Doable Steps)
Need to
improve
overall
applicant pool
If current employees are happy in their
jobs, they become one of the best
sources of recruitment. Some human
service agencies are so well regarded
as a “great place to work” that they turn
away quality applicants.

Word of
Mouth

Team Action Items
Individual/s
Responsible
Deadline/s
Even if employees are not actively referring
vacancies to friends and acquaintances,
their positive “word of mouth” about the
agency is a powerful recruitment source.
Great frontline supervisors in organizations
that engage and value employees are
critical to being considered a “great place to
work.”
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Strategy
Strategy is
Designed to
Close this
Gap:
Description
Possible Tactics

Employees
as
Recruiters
Keeping
Jobs Filled
Need to
improve
overall
applicant pool
The next step beyond “word of mouth”
recruiting is encouraging employees to
recruit others.
Too many
unfilled
vacancies
Many human service agencies carry a
large number of vacancies relative to
the number of filled positions. There are
many reasons – bureaucratic approval
processes, heavy workloads preventing
hiring managers from having the time to
go through the selection process, and
failure to anticipate vacancies. It is
critically important to keep positions
filled. Vacant positions increase the
workload of all employees and add to
the stress of already stressful jobs.
Too many
applicants get
hired with only
the minimum
credentials
Some human services organizations
delay hiring until staff vacancies reach
crisis proportions. They then initiate a
recruitment process that is designed to
bring new employees on board as soon
as possible. The unfortunate result is
hiring employees who meet the
minimum requirements, but nothing
more.


Individual/s
Responsible
Deadline/s
Issue periodic reminders to staff that
vacancies exist and their referrals are
appreciated.
Offer “recruitment bonuses” to staff that
refer applicants who are eventually hired.
Tie the bonus to the successful completion
of the probationary period.
Hire employees in anticipation of vacancies that
are projected to occur. (See examples by the
Delaware Department of Children, Youth and
Families and the Michigan Department of
Human Services – they have significantly
reduced their vacancy rates by recruiting and
hiring new recruits so there is a ready pool of
trained workers to step into vacancies as they
arise. (see Tomorrow's Vacancies)

Maintain a
prescreened
applicant
pool
Team Action Items

Have a pool of pre-screened, interviewed
applicants always available to be called for
a second interview with the hiring
supervisor. When using this approach, it’s
important to minimize the amount of time
between the initial interview and the second
interview to prevent top-quality applicants
from being hired elsewhere.
Human Resources will need to do
continuous recruiting and screening, even
when there are no current vacancies.
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Strategy
Realistic
Job
Previews
(RJP)
Improve
Hiring
Flexibilities
in Highly
Centralized
Systems
Strategy is
Designed to
Close this
Gap:
Description
Unwanted
turnover
among new
workers who
did not
understand
their job when
they were
hired
Realistic Job Previews are designed to
prevent applicants from taking jobs that
they have little knowledge of, or are not
suited to perform. A RJP is a recruiting
tool designed to reduce “early” turnover
by communicating both the desirable
and the undesirable aspects of a job
before applicants accept a job offer.
RJPs can be in the form of videos, oral
presentations, job-shadowing
opportunities, and pamphlets or
brochures.
Hiring process
takes too long
- high quality
applicants are
looking
elsewhere for
jobs
Many public-sector human service
agencies are regulated by merit
systems that make it difficult to attract
and maintain the interest of top-quality
applicants. Top applicants in today’s
economy are searching the Internet for
jobs that are available now. They aren’t
interested in taking a civil service exam
and sitting on eligibility lists for months.
In some systems, rigid requirements
and lengthy inflexible scoring processes
wash out well-qualified applicants.
Possible Tactics
Team Action Items
Individual/s
Responsible
Deadline/s
Develop a Realistic Job Preview (RJP) – (see
The RJP Tool Kit: A How-To Guide for
Developing a Realistic Job Preview)



Seek central HR agency approval for hiring
flexibilities
Move to online recruiting
See Michigan as example of a merit system
that has transformed their recruitment away
from written testing to online recruiting.
Additional
Strategy:
Additional
Strategy:
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Gap-Closing Strategies – Tool 2
Recruitment
Step 3: Determine Feasibility
Early in the planning process –
perhaps following the first meeting –
team members should begin
researching the feasibility of promising
ideas.
Ultimately, your team will have to
come to agreement on the recruitment
strategy, commit it to writing, and
obtain whatever approvals are
appropriate for the agency’s culture.
Including a cost-benefit analysis or
Return on Investment (ROI) data may
facilitate the approval process.
Reputations and Recruitment
Many human services agencies have a reputation in the
community as a bad place to work. If employees feel
unsupported and mistreated by the agency, they talk about
it to friends and family and the negative reputation wards
off potential applicants. In some instances, the bad
reputation is well deserved and is fueled by years of
management practices that erode the confidence and selfesteem of employees. However, organizations can
transform themselves and build an organizational culture
that values, empowers and engages employees. Such a
culture change is not easy and does not happen overnight.
It requires strong leadership and a commitment to
identifying the appropriate values and rewarding the
associated competencies throughout the organization.
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