A Brief Overview of Recruitment and Retention Research

Link post

To provide practical support for animal advocacy organisation’s recruitment efforts, we (Animal Advocacy Careers) have just published a couple of new blog posts:

Since the first of those two posts seems potentially useful to a wider range of groups, I’ve copied the abstract below:

Empirical research on how to effectively recruit and retain staff may help organisations to operate more effectively. Such research may also help Animal Advocacy Careers to offer more useful services to the animal advocacy movement. Accordingly, Google Scholar searches were conducted to identify existing reviews and meta-analyses of academic research on recruitment and retention. In total, 52 relevant research items were reviewed and included. Promising actions to improve recruitment outcomes include the use of structured interviews, general mental ability, and conscientiousness to select candidates, improvements to the usability and aesthetics of websites and job ads, and being personable and informative to candidates. Promising actions to improve the retention of staff include the provision of socialisation, education, and support (e.g. mentoring) for new staff and focusing on employee commitment rather than control. Some of the other identified actions seem likely to have positive effects on recruitment and retention but, given the associated costs, may still not be worthwhile; salary increases probably fit into this category.