At Skillseed, we are a small and cozy team. As an embodiment of how we value quality over quantity, we are very intentional about every member that we bring into our work family. We are grateful that over the years, we’ve had many excellent candidates express interest to join us. I’ve often been asked how we’ve been able to attract and retain team members despite being comparatively unknown and small in size, and I thought to share some reflections from our recent experiences. I hope that these reflections would be useful in some way or another to us in our various roles; whether as founders, folks advising smaller organisations or even members of large corporates / institutions.
So here we go!
Making first impressions count - as early as possible
Our relationship with a new employee begins not when they officially join our team, but when they first come across our job posting. That’s their first touch point with us, and like in any other situation, first impressions matter.
Using a job ad template to churn out job postings on various platforms perhaps achieves the task - but only functionally. Our recent traineeship position attracted more than 100 applications, and this is usually the case for our other permanent and gap year positions as well. Just as how we are fortunate to receive many applications, we are certain that quality candidates will have no lack of employer choices either. Hence, I often tell my team that it’s crucial that we put ourselves in these candidates’ shoes to consider what would catch their attention in a job posting, how we can best represent Skillseed and what we value in just a few paragraphs.
“Skillseed’s job posting for the traineeship was creative, genuine and resonated with me greatly. It targeted fresh graduates like me who were facing an uncertain economy amidst the Covid pandemic and addressed our pain points directly. This particular sentence used in the job posting, ‘You want to use your gifts to contribute to a more just, more sustainable and more hopeful future’ had such a great impact on me. In fact, I chose this traineeship at Skillseed over a full time job offer because I felt that my values were very much aligned with Skillseed.”
Sometimes, we may overlook the fact that the job posting serves more than just informing the candidate about their job scope. It also gives candidates a sneak peek into our organisational culture. Therefore, I believe it is important to make that extra effort to embed the spirit of our organisation into the job posting. This helps to intentionally communicate our values to the candidate and convey what we hope to achieve as a team. For example, as Skillseed highly values relationality, we were mindful to reframe even stereotypical job titles to truly reflect what we envision the candidate to embody. This resonated greatly with our most recent addition to our team, Fook Yan, who noticed that instead of the typical “HR executive”, our job posting stated that we were looking for a “People executive”. For a small organisation that lacks the branding of MNCs, we are blessed to attract very experienced individuals such as Fook Yan who was looking for more than just an administrative role, and wanted to truly have an impact on an organisation’s people. This is something that takes a little bit more time and effort, but one that I highly recommend all organisations to consider.
(P.S. We even include intangible perks in our job description, with a good sense of humor too! Check out one of our past job postings to find out what we mean!)
Trial and error moulding
Cliche as it may sound, we really do believe that people are an organisation’s greatest assets, and we should see them as more than just resources to be used (though this may contradict the concept of ‘human resources’). Years before the SGUnited Traineeship scheme was launched by the government, Skillseed had been running our own fellowship and gap year internship programmes. We had intentionally designed them for young graduates or individuals considering mid-career transitions. This is to allow those in the midst of discovering their passions and potential, and hoping to derive a sense of purpose in the work they do to experience a stint in our organisation, sector and world, without the typical constraints that come with a plunge into a permanent contract.
“After 4 years at my previous workplace, I had learnt all that I wanted and I knew that line of work was not something I wanted to pursue in the long run. So I took the plunge of leaving my job to pursue a period of learning and self discovery. This phase coincided with Skillseed’s call for Gap Year Interns in early 2018. I was drawn by the professional development, travel opportunities, and personal growth that the Gap Year brief promised. And indeed, promises were upheld. The one-year timeline gave me both the freedom to explore and paradoxically, the commitment to stay focused and be fully present with the experience of the internship. To me, it was akin to a one-year study abroad experience.”
Instead of the conventional ‘trial and error’, I envision this as a form of trial and moulding as we help our Skillseedees discover their purpose. Through our fellowship and internship programmes, our employees are given opportunities to be involved in various portfolios and diverse projects to experience different facets of the organisation. This helps them to decide if being in the social sector is what they really want to do, and how as an organisation we can best support them in this journey of self discovery and growth. Such an opportunity, manages expectations on both ends, provides them the reassurance that this is a period of experimentation, and if it works out for all of us, BINGO! But it is also perfectly okay to move on and try other things - with our blessings.
Retain and sustain
Gone are the days when employees are only concerned about paychecks. For young employees today, while tangible benefits are still important, intangible benefits are no longer just seen as a bonus. Besides increasing monetary compensation, how else can organisations retain employees?
For us, it goes back to aligning our team’s work with their purpose.
“After my years in the public service, I was exploring a career switch. Beyond getting the work done, it was important for me to be aligned with the purpose of the work I do. The Skillseed fellowship was a good opportunity for me to apply my skills and knowledge in the social sector and figure out if this is aligned with my personal goals and values. At the same time, I was able to gain valuable mentorship guidance from Huijia and Wilson that provided clarity on my purpose.
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No amount of monetary compensation can be sufficient if our employees do not see any value in their work. In Skillseed’s context, the social value we create happens to be more explicit, where we empower communities through an asset-based approach. For companies outside of the social sector, some intentional effort may be needed to help employees visualise the value they create through their work. One way is through existing CSR programmes.
For bigger companies, well-structured, long term CSR programmes can grow employees in areas of personal and professional development - but we feel that we need not always engage external help to carry out these CSR programmes. Each organisation is inherently full of talents - we just need to take time and expend some effort to discover them. As ABCD (Asset-Based Community Development) practitioners and trainers, this is an area we are deeply passionate about. Of course one may always seek initial guidance from external consultants or trainers, but we strongly believe that by involving employees in the co-creation of solutions, we empower them to be more vested in the outcome of the projects. For example, by tapping on the ‘power within’ themselves and ‘power with’ colleagues, employees who are passionate about environmental sustainability can pilot CSR initiatives such as increased upcycling, reducing waste or energy consumption within the organisation. In fact we are in the process of interviewing our corporate partners and will be sharing more about their CSR efforts and how they have tapped on their internal people assets to achieve shared goals in our upcoming thought leadership article, so stay tuned for that!
I hope that these little tidbits from our experience would be helpful for our community - if you have any insights or stories of your own to share, please drop us a note! We would love to hear from you, and learn and grow together.