By: David Sinclair

It’s no secret that recruitment is currently hard. Peruse charity Facebook groups on fundraising, marketing or PR; a common theme is the real struggle organisations are having with appointing to vacancies. Two years ago, when we advertised a research or policy job, it wasn’t uncommon to get 200 applicants. Recent campaigns have resulted in 16, seven and, in one case, just two applications.

We’ve been talking for years about the shortages of people wanting to work in health and care, but it feels that many other sectors are now struggling. In the US recently, I was struck that pretty much every local news bulletin had a story about skills shortages. There were stories about the lack of lifeguards, people to train lifeguards, firework technicians and, of course, people in the airline industry. I remember a story from last Christmas in the US about the shortage of in-store Santas.

In the UK, ILC research has recently projected a shortage of 2.6 million workers by 2030. This shortage represents double the current NHS workforce.

Younger and older workers fell out of work during the early parts of the pandemic. Younger people have mainly returned to the labour market, but the growth in older people in work has stalled. UK Labour Force Survey data shows that around 300,000 more workers aged between 50 and 65 are now “economically inactive” than before the pandemic. At a recent ILC event in Washington, the AARP argued that a driver of the “Great Resignation” is that fewer older people are “unretiring” than anticipated following COVID. COVID and associated border closures alongside economic shutdowns have also reduced the levels of economic migration.

We recently organised an event in the British Embassy in Tokyo to launch our Asia Pacific Longevity Dividend reports. We talked about the need for an Ageing Society New Deal to support working longer, tackle ageism and invest in preventative health. Jun Saito of the Japan Centre for Economic research argued that our recommendations were necessary but insufficient to tackle the challenges of demographic change and population decline in the country.

But for the UK, there are also several other causes of the skills shortages.  Before Brexit, perhaps one-third of our applicants were from outside the UK (EU). So our pool of potential candidates has shrunk.

Pay has been squeezed over the past five years, and some people simply don’t want to work for the pay that many employers can afford. Small organisations like the ILC could never compete on pay with the financial services industry or core-funded charities.

For us, it remains the case that ageing is a difficult area to recruit for. Anecdotally, younger people wanting to get involved in social change find housing, the environment or international development more attractive issues to get passionate about.

The ILC team is very age-diverse, with staff in their 20s, 30s. 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Yet we’ve been very conscious that despite many different approaches, we haven’t historically had huge diversity among applicants.

Over the past few months, we’ve been trialling a blind recruitment platform (Applied) to see the difference this would make in terms of the diversity of people wanting to work for us. We were aware of the need to reduce unconscious bias, and in a world where there simply aren’t enough workers, we need to focus less on what people have done, what schools they went to and their age and qualifications.

With Applied, individuals applying need to answer four or five questions, all scored individually, anonymously and separately by a panel. Applied claim that their platform facilitates a 4x increase in the ethnic diversity of candidates. 3x as many suitable candidates and 93% staff retention. Candidates who use the platform seem to love it and get personalised feedback that tells them how they scored compared to other candidates.

What did we find?

Firstly, we think Applied has contributed to us having fewer applications than in the past. For the candidate, it requires answering 4 or 5 questions, and each one of them requires careful consideration and application. When we had 200 applications in the past, a significant proportion (up to 180) were people who had lazily submitted their CV with little real focus on why they wanted the job and whether they could do it. We have saved ourselves a considerable amount of time not having to trawl through the CVs of people who don’t really want the job.

Secondly, the actual scoring of candidates feels easier and fairer and more consistent with a clearer review guide.  It is also much quicker than looking at CVs. And it’s fun to do, not something I usually say about recruitment.

One reason we think the system is fairer is that even with entirely independent scoring of different questions from different candidates, we have found remarkable agreement on candidate scores. Typically, we have seen 80-90% scoring matches among reviewers.

Setting up a job requires more work upfront. But this is a valuable discipline as it forces us to think about what we absolutely need. Questions are specifically designed to assess core skills.

In the past, we have had people apply for jobs whom we have known. These can be people who come to our events or friends of trustees, or current staff. We have always tried to ensure there is no bias but removing the politics at the shortlisting stage is easier. With Applied, we don’t know who is writing which paragraphs, so we can’t favour or disadvantage people we know or names we have heard of.

With Applied, we have attracted more diverse candidates than in the past. That’s not just true in terms of age. And pleasingly, the diversity of candidates applying is represented at the interview stage.

Alongside using Applied, we have started providing interview questions in advance. Again, this requires planning but means we are thinking clearly in advance about what skills we need and what questions would help us answer that. While this isn’t a core part of Applied, we believe this also benefits those who may not feel confident with interviews or may not have done them for a long time. We have found that candidates really like this – and those who want the job prepare more.

Applied have things to work on. They are strong on not using gendered language, but while their diversity questions break younger people into small age bands, they then split over 65s into a single group. A 70 or 75 category would be interesting and useful, as would more evidence on language favouring one age group over another.

So, is blind recruitment the key to helping us get a more diverse group of employees and encouraging older workers who may not think their skills are relevant to apply? Could it help support more older people into work? The answer is probably yes – to take the words of Dr Saito, it’s necessary if not sufficient. In other words, platforms like Applied can help reduce discrimination and encourage older people to apply for jobs.

But supporting people to work longer relies on us keeping people healthier. It also means we must recognise that as we age, what we want by way of reward goes beyond pay. Meaningful occupation (i.e. a good job with purpose) is as important as a decent salary for some.

We are currently recruiting for an Senior Health Policy Lead using the Applied platform.