Did you know that in the UK there are over 189,000 registered charities? With more and more competition for donors, charities have to think outside the box. Getting the right people to join your organisation and develop new innovative fundraising strategies is more important than ever. With the competition for quality candidates increasing how will you attract the right candidates?

At Flow, we read through hundreds of job specs every month. Some are good, some are terrible and the occasional one is great.

One thing that almost every one has in common is that they are written with the presumption that the applicant will be printing the spec out to read. These days few of us own a printer and many access documents on their mobile device. With this in mind, why not have another look at your job specs and bring them to life?  There’s no reason not to include links to key parts of your website, clips of TV shows or DRTV ads relating to your cause or microsites about a key programme area.

If the role is within a great team who love working for you, why not video interview a couple of the staff about their experience of working in the team, complete with a view of the office (a tidy part of it!) or have the outgoing post holder talking about ‘a day in the life’ of the role, then share the video on YouTube and put a link to that in the spec?

Yes, you still need a written job spec to explain the role in detail and give candidates a chance to write a targeted application but these links can be a part of it to give it some colour.

All of these things will make the best candidates see the role as a living, breathing career choice rather than a bland list of essential criteria and as a result, they will be much more likely to take the time to apply.

At Flow, we specialise in finding those candidates who may not be actively looking but that we know are looking for a particular type of role or team structure. We find out the best bits of a role and use these to write a compelling advert and brief the top candidates about why it’s a great role for them. With just a little tweak to your job specs you can start to move in the same direction.