Instigate a Rolling Recruitment Programme

Chapter 8 Instigate a Rolling Recruitment Programme




Review the post with the person who is leaving 


Establish why they are leaving 

Establish if the job description is still appropriate 

Review the job description and person specification 

Take action if the post is frozen or removed 

Write good adverts and application packages 


Put in extra effort 

Writing the advert 

Application packages 

Shortlist and arrange interviews properly 


Tips for shortlisting 

Prepare for the interviews 

Prepare your team for the interviews 

Get the best out of the interview process 


Preparing the questions 

Assessment of practical skills 

Prepare the environment and interviewers 

The role of the chairperson in interviews 

Follow up all candidates personally 


Calling unsuccessful candidates 

Follow up promising but unsuccessful candidates 

Take risks 

Arrange a good induction programme 


Before they commence 

Two-week supernumerary period 

Allocate a preceptor or clinical supervisor 

Continually explore all other avenues to get staff 


Student nurses 

Bank and agency staff 

Liaise closely with your recruitment lead 

Don’t discriminate 


Part time does not mean part skilled 

Overseas nurses are not all the same 

Succession plan 


Is your staffing establishment conducive to good succession planning? 

Staff nurse level (band 5) 

Deputy manager/sister/ charge nurse level (band 6) 

Health care assistants 

Fully involve your team in all aspects of recruitment 


Develop their interviewing skills early on 

Get the team involved with the new staff member early on 

If you could have all your vacancies filled at all times with the right staff with the right skills, wouldn’t life be so much easier? Unfortunately this rarely seems to happen in real life, but you can go some way toward making things a lot easier for yourself if you concentrate on the recruitment process all the time, even when all your vacancies are filled. Nurses rarely stay in one post throughout their career. Having a fairly high turnover of staff seems to be the norm.


Change can be a good thing, however, and it’s good for staff to regularly have new people join, with different skills to offer. It prevents them from becoming too comfortable and set in their ways. It also helps you to continually review and change your staffing establishment according to the needs of your unit. Make sure you are always one step ahead so that when a person resigns you will be able to replace them quickly without causing too much disruption.



Review the post with the person who is leaving


Before you even begin thoughts of advertising and filling a forthcoming vacancy, you should first review the role with the person who is leaving.



Establish why they are leaving


Staff may leave your team for promotion or to gain further experience. It could also be for personal reasons such as moving house or wanting to spend more time with children. You should be concerned if any members of staff are leaving for better working conditions, better hours or because of any problems at work. Take note of why they are leaving, and do something to ensure the next candidate will not feel the same way.


Don’t leave exit interviews to the human resources (HR) department. All members of staff have a right to fill in an anonymous exit questionnaire when they leave, but you need feedback too. You don’t need them to fill in any forms; just ask them. Remember though that employees have the right to refuse an exit interview. They should always be voluntary.


When you ask why someone is leaving, aim to ensure the person talks a lot more than you do. Spend most of the time listening and taking notes (even if you do not agree). Ask questions such as the following:



1. Are there any other reasons for leaving?


2. What could we do/have done to persuade you to stay?


3. What have you enjoyed or found satisfying about working here?


4. What aspects of work didn’t you like or found difficult or frustrating?


5. Is there any more training and development you would have benefited from?


6. Is there anything that could be improved in the ward which would make things better from your point of view?


7. What is it about your next job that makes it more attractive than this one?



Establish if the job description is still appropriate


Review the job description with them. Has it changed in any way? If the remit has grown to include other responsibilities such as a vital link nurse role, first ask any of your other staff if they would like to take it on. If not, consider adding it to the job description. If, for example, the person is a link nurse for diabetes and it is a much needed role on the ward, then think about recruiting someone who has, or is willing to develop, those skills. Add it to the job description before you advertise.


The job could have changed so much that the person leaving may say it needs someone more senior with specialist experience or perhaps even someone who does not need the skills of a registered nurse any more. If this is the case, review this idea with the rest of the team. You may all come to the decision that it would be beneficial to replace this person with someone requiring entirely different skills from another pay band. It is advisable in such cases to meet with your finance manager and line manager to go through what you would need to do to change the post and pay band but remain within budget.



Changing the job and associated pay band


You cannot change your budgeted ‘establishment’ immediately because it has to be done through the business planning process. However, you do not have to match the budgeted establishment exactly. You can recruit a band 5 nurse into a health care assistant (HCA) post, for example, but only if you consult with your finance advisor and line manager first, to make sure that at the end of the year you will not go over budget in order to do so. The finance advisor will work it out for you, taking other issues into consideration such as:



image part-time staff in full-time posts


image staff who are on maternity leave


image staff on long-term sick leave


image current use of agency and bank staff.


Try and think ‘outside the box’. There is no reason why you cannot redesign the job into one that suits your ward. You may, for example, like to devise a new role such as an HCA who can also take on part-time ward receptionist duties. This could help enormously at times when your current ward receptionist is on annual leave or off sick.



Review the job description and person specification


The job description may need completely rewriting or just a few minor changes. Do this together with the person who is leaving the job. Your HR advisor will advise you on what you can and cannot do with the job description according to your organisation’s policies and procedures.


Redesigning roles when a member of staff leaves helps to replace outdated jobs and allows your remaining team to progress by taking on different responsibilities. You can design jobs around the patient and changing workloads rather than the other way around. It is not a difficult thing to do. The key is to ensure you involve the right people, i.e. your finance advisor, your HR advisor and your line manager.



Take action if the post is frozen or removed


Unfortunately, it is common nowadays for ward managers to be prevented from replacing staff members when they leave. If your budget is cut back like this, then you need to take action to prevent the rest of your team from becoming overworked. Take some time to work out exactly what it will mean for your team. One less member of staff means that five shifts per week (i.e. 5 out of 21 shifts) will have one less person. You therefore have to make adjustments to your roster. Choose which shifts will have one less member of staff. For example, in order to maintain safety, you could cut one person from each weekend shift. However, you must not ‘burn out’ the rest of the staff working at weekends, so you would need to agree with your team which aspects of work will no longer get done at weekends. Patient safety and care are essential, so generally it could be the paperwork such as audits (performance indicators, etc.) that will not get done. Agree this with your managers – in writing. If they won’t agree, then work together with them to identify something else (equivalent to the work of one member of staff per shift) that will not get done.


If you are already busy on every shift, then you cannot achieve the same amount of work with one less staff member. Find more efficient ways of working with the staff you have. Usually this means that you have to agree certain aspects of work will no longer get done or will get done in a different way. Do not just cope and allow your team to work extra unpaid hours to cover up for short-staffing. It contravenes the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidelines on managers’ responsibility for balancing job demands with the availability of staff (HSE 2011).



Write good adverts and application packages


Don’t leave the writing of your job adverts and application packages to your HR department. State exactly what you want in the advert and give them the material for your application packages. List what you want to be sent out to each prospective candidate.



Put in extra effort


Don’t leave anything to chance. The recruitment teams in HR departments have a huge remit. They have to oversee the recruitment for all personnel within your organisation. Don’t expect them to give you special treatment. They will send out standard application packages and do not usually have the capacity to make up specific ones for your ward. So send them additional information to add to your application packages. Don’t approach it with the attitude ‘it’s not my job’. That will get you nowhere. If you really want to recruit the right staff, then you have to put in the effort, whether it’s your job or not.



Writing the advert


Involve your whole team in devising what to put in the job advert. Include the person who is leaving. They are the ones who browse through the job adverts regularly. Ask them which adverts are the ones which catch their attention. Ask them which parts of the job would be the most attractive for new staff. Getting that advert right is crucial. Most advertising is now carried out online through sites such as ‘NHS Jobs’ which means prospective candidates get to see only the first four lines of the advert at a glance, so concentrate on making these the most eye-catching.


Make the closing date for 3–4 weeks’ time. If you give only 2 weeks, you are ruling out all potential candidates who are on annual leave at the time of the advert. Put the interview date on the advert too. It quickens up the process. The interview date could then be around 2 weeks after the closing date. Having the interview date on the advert gives the candidate plenty of time to prepare. Waiting until you shortlist candidates before you decide on an interview date only serves to delay the process unnecessarily. You will also have a number of candidates who will not be able to attend, thus prolonging the process even further by having to set a second date. Make things easier and straightforward for you and the candidate by putting both the closing date and interview date on the advert in the first place.


Remember to attach the revised job description and person specification when you send the final advert to your HR recruitment department.



Application packages


When the HR team receives enquiries, all they are required to do is send out a copy of the job description and person specification. Some send out information about your organisation too. If you really want to interest potential candidates, give your HR department further information about your ward.


Again, ask your team what they think would be good to include in the application package. A group of people are a lot more creative than one or two on their own. Possible options include:



image a photograph of your team, happy and smiling


image a copy of your team’s annual plan of goals/objectives


image some quotes from your staff saying what is good about working on your ward


image an explanation of your method of working, e.g. team or primary nursing, and perhaps even a sample of your roster showing how you organise yourselves and to prove that you do not expect them to work awful shift patterns.


Be careful not to give the impression that the ward is better than it is. The last thing you need is to recruit people under false pretences; they won’t stay long. Disillusioned newcomers will disillusion your team.



Shortlist and arrange interviews properly


Most health care organisations now have a database of professionals who have been removed from the register or any former employees or agency staff who should not be employed with you again. Before you shortlist the candidates, make sure that all the names have been checked against this database.



Tips for shortlisting




1. Shortlist within 5 days of the closing date. Make sure you block out some time for this in your diary when you put in the advert.


2. Shortlist with another person from your team. Don’t shortlist on your own. At least one of the people involved in the shortlisting needs to be on the interview panel.


3. Base the shortlisting on the person specification. Check that the candidates meet all the ‘essential’ criteria. The ‘desirable’ criteria need only be used when a particularly large number of candidates meet the ‘essential’ criteria.


4. Keep a note of the reasons for selection and rejection of all candidates which confirms that the same criteria were used for all candidates. Send a copy to the HR department, so that they can deal with any follow-up requests for information from rejected candidates. It will also help should there be any complaints or allegations of discrimination.


5. Get the results of the shortlisting over to your recruitment department as soon as possible

Related posts:

  1. Manage Your Time
  2. Manage Difficult Situations
  3. Manage Staff Performance
  4. Look After Yourself

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Jun 15, 2016 | Posted by in NURSING | Comments Off on Instigate a Rolling Recruitment Programme

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