Introduction
Since you are all working with vulnerable people, we need to make sure that the students you are recruiting are dedicated, safe and reliable. Because of this,the Guild does have to ask a lot from you in regards to recruitment of volunteers. This will potentially be a lot of work for you, especially at the start of next term. However, if you manage this successfully then you should gain a dedicated and enthusiastic set of volunteers which will help the rest of the year run smoothly. In order to help you with this, we have put together this handbook to talk you through the procedure and give you tips for how to manage it successfully.
We have taken the feedback from last year’s committees and volunteers on board and have made the process as simple as we can, whilst still ensuring that volunteers are being as rigorously checked as we need them to be. There are several things that we have to do to make sure that we and you are following our Child Protection Policy and best practice.
One of the main changes is that we are now going to allow recruitment throughout terms one and two. People can apply at any time and you will be able to advertise and select new volunteers as and when you need to.This should allow you to reduce the workload on yourselves at the start of term 1, whilst making sure that you have enough volunteers throughout the year.
With this process, as with any others, please remember you can contact us with any concerns or queries. Email call us on 0121 251 2411 to ask us or to arrange a meeting if you want to chat in more detail. We will also have a meeting in the summer term to talk you through the process, where you will be able to ask any questions you may have.
Before you start to recruit
There are several things that you need to think about before you start recruiting volunteers.These are all included in the summary table at the end of the ‘Committee Training Handbook’ – use this to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
How many volunteers do you need?
The first thing to consider is how many volunteers your group needs to run. To decide this, you need to think of how many volunteers you need for each session, how often you expect volunteers to attend and whether or not you have the facility to expand your group if you had more volunteers (do you as a committee have the time and ability to do this? Is there the demand for it in the community?). Talk to the outgoing committee to help you.
You want to think about the minimum amount of volunteers your group needs to successfully run on and what your ideal number would be. It’s not always a case of the more the better – volunteers will get frustrated if they have gone through the application process but there isn’t a chance for them to volunteer and the more volunteers you have the more work this is for your committee.
Decide:
- How many volunteers does your group need?
- How many current volunteers will still be volunteering next year? Send a list of all of these to .
- How many new volunteers do you ideally need? Remember that people will drop out but that you can recruit later on too if you want.
- How many people does this mean you need to initially invite to interview and accept as volunteers? Interviewing roughly double the amount of volunteers as you need is a realistic benchmark.
Write a Role Description
In order to advertise for new volunteers, you will need to write a role description so that students know what they can expect and what you will expect from them. This should outline:
- The aim of the group
- The general duties of a volunteer
- The person specification (what skills and experience you are looking the person to have)
- If the volunteers need to attend any specific training or have a DBS
This role description should help volunteers know what to expect and what they need to try to demonstrate on their application forms. It also gives you a criteria to ‘mark’ the application forms on. We will talk more about this later.
There is a blank role description form at the end of this handbook which you can use this to write yours. You need to change everything that is underlined. There is also an example role description which should give you some ideas of what to include.
If you want us to check this through for you then email it to .
Advertising
The last thing you need to do is consider advertising. How are you going to advertise your society to new volunteers? Things to consider:
- Do you have an easy to find facebook page?
- Sign up for a stall at the Summer Jobs and Volunteering Fair (11th June 2014)
- Make sure you remember to sign up for a stall at the Societies fair (can do this in term 3).
- For the societies fair - how will you stand out? How will you make sure it is clear what you do? Are you having one general sign-up sheet for people only interested in fundraising, campaigning etc? orwill you be forwarding people onto the website instead. Or if you run more than one group, do you want a separate sign up for each one? How will you make people excited about your group at the Societies fair?
- Are you going to advertise in any other ways?
You also need to make sure that your group’s page on the Guild website is up to date. Unlike other groups, you can’t do this online yourself (this is because you don’t have online members). So, please email any changes to . We suggest you have a look, rewrite it and send it to us by the end of July – this way we will be able to make sure it is updated before any new freshers start looking. Unfortunately we can’t put photos on this page – include a link to your facebook group and include photos on there.
Information Sessions
At the start of term, after the Societies fair, we will run information sessions for people who are interested in applying for any of the Guild of Students’ volunteering groups. For this session, you need to write a short presentation (no more than 5 minutes) about your group. Be creative with your presentation! We will have a computer if you want to use powerpointand you can have leaflets for people to take away if you want.
Draft Emails
You don’t have to do this but if you have time this term or over the summer, you might like to draft emails for the following and save them:
- Inviting someone to interview
- Rejection email
- Telling someone they have been accepted as a volunteer and telling them what the next steps are.
There is more information about all of these further down in this handbook.
Write the questions for your application form and interviews
You can choose what questions you want to ask on your application form and at your interviews.
For your application form, there are some questions that all forms need to have:
- Personal details: name, email address, date of birth, gender, phone number
- Why would you like to volunteer with ______?
- What experience do you have that is relevant to your chosen project(s)? What experience do you hope to gain whilst volunteering?
- What skills do you have that will help you volunteer successfully on your chosen project(s)?
- Do you consider yourself to have an ongoing medical condition or disability which may affect your ability to volunteer? If yes, please give more details of how we can support your volunteering.
If you want to, you can add other questions to this. If you think one of the questions above isn’t relevant to your group then let us know – we can be flexible.
You need to decide on 3 or 4 interview questions to ask applicants, remember you will need to ask all your applicants the same questions. These could include:
- Questions about their experience or skills (eg‘Which of your experiences do you think is most relevant to this role and why?’ or ‘Tell us what you have done in the past that will help you to volunteer successfully’)
- Questions about their strengths such as ‘What can you bring to the group?’ or ‘Where do you think your strengths lie?’
- Questions about what they hope to gain or learn from volunteering with the group
- Questions about a specific skills (eg ‘Tell us about a time when you showed dedication’ or ‘Can you tell us about a difficult situation you’ve been in?’)
- Scenario questions (eg ‘You have to entertain 2 children for 10 minutes whilst the committee go and buy tickets. What would you do?’ or ‘You are chatting to an elderly person when they get upset unexpectedly. What would you do?
The Summer Jobs and Volunteering Fair
All community volunteering groups are invited to the summer jobs and volunteering fair from 10-3 on 11th June. This will work as a mini Societies fair, allowing you to promote your group and recruit new volunteers. We are suggesting that you do a short recruitment window in the 1-2 weeks after this – we will be running DBS sessions in this time for these people too. We hope it will give you the opportunity to recruit a few volunteers at the end of term. This will mean that you know you have some new volunteers who can start volunteering as soon as term 1 starts. It will also give you and us a chance to have a ‘trial run’ of the recruitment process so we can all iron out any flaws before the main bulk of recruitment in September/October. The only difference will be that the online applications won’t be ready yet – you will have to administer this with paper forms.
If you haven’t already signed up to this but want to then email asap.
The Application Process
The table below tells you about the application process, from the start of term to the point where prospective applicants start to volunteer. Any student that wants to volunteer with a Community Volunteering group can only volunteer with your group once they have completed the following:
Week 1-3 / Tell the volunteers more about your group.Attend an information session run and advertised by Student Development for prospective volunteers. We would encourage you to have a presentation or leaflet made to hand out.
Sessions will be run in the Guild Council Chambers.
Ongoing during term 1 and 2 / The volunteer will complete an online application.
The committee will be able to download this information onto a spreadsheet.
Ongoing during term 1 and 2 / Group reviews applications and organises interviews with successful applicants.
A list of all successful applicants will be sent by the committee to Student Development.
Ongoing during term 1 and 2 / Volunteers complete relevant training
They will need to complete an online Safeguarding Training session for either children or adults. This training is compulsory and they will not be able to volunteer until they have completed it. This is done through canvas (in a similar way to the committee training). Student Development will monitor and record this.
Ongoing during term 1 and 2 / Apply for a Criminal Records Check from the Disclosure and Barring Service (if required)
DBS application forms can be given out during the student’s interviews or the students can collect them from student development counter.
The student will then have to sign up to a DBS session via the guild website.
If the student already has a disclosure certificate that is less than 2 years old, they can use this instead of applying for a new one.
Student Development will monitor and record this.
As soon as possible / Student can start to Volunteer
Once the above process has been completed the volunteer can then start to volunteer. We will send to you a list every Thursday of everyone who is ready to volunteer with you so you can see who can attend sessions that week.
If at any point, you decide that you have enough volunteers and don’t wish to allow any more applications, email and we will remove information from your page of the website until you tell us otherwise.
You can send out the following information to your volunteers or forward them onto the website where they can download an information leaflet.
Administration
The most vital part of having a successful application process is making sure that it is administered correctly. You need to know what stage each applicant is at at all times. You also need to make sure that the applicants know what stage they are at.
Stages that people might be at:
- Sent in application form - waiting for decision from the group
- Invited to interview
- Successful interview – waiting to hear if they accept
- Accepted as a volunteer – waiting for them to complete training/DBS
- Ready to volunteer
- Rejected
Student Development will manage the administration of the section between them being accepted as a volunteer and being ready to volunteer. Your group needs to administer the rest of the process.
Tips of how to do this successfully:
- Make one member of your committee responsible for the administration of these forms. This should be someone organised. This will be quite a lot of work for one person but means forms are much less likely to get lost. This person could participate less in interviews/form reading if they are worried about the workload.
- Decide how you are going to identify who is at which stage of the process. We will send you a spreadsheet with an idea of how to do this but you can do it however makes sense to you.
- As often as you like (ideally a couple of times a week at the start of term but less often as the year goes on), download the spreadsheet of all volunteers from the online application forms. More information about exactly how to do this will come soon, once we know!
- Make sure you email people when you have received their application form, once you have decided whether or not to interview them, after the interview and once they are ready to volunteer.
- Decide whose responsibility emailing people will be – will it be the same person as is administrating or someone else? This will probably depend on the size of your group.
If you feel confused about how to do this (or have never used excel before!), email and we will give you more advice on how to do this. Once the system is in place, it should be very straightforward.
Volunteer Application Forms
The role descriptions for each group and the application form will be advertised on the volunteering section of the Guild website. You can also make them available through the advertising methods outlined previously e.g. facebook.
The students will then be forwarded onto your individual group page on society search function. They will then be able to complete an online application which will be imbedded in the page. You will then be able to download this information into a spread sheet.
As the Guild website may be changing providers soon, we don’t yet have information on exactly how you will download the information. However, we have been assured by IT that it will be very simple and we will make sure this is communicated to you in plenty of time.
Online applications will be ready from the start of term in September.
Dealing with Application Forms
The nominated administrator should share the applications between the committee – you don’t all have to read everybody’s application. Once you have your share, deal with person at a time. Read it their answers thoroughly.
You need to mark each question out of 5 based on the criteria below.
- Hasn’t answered question
- Short or poor answer with no detail or examples – hasn’t shown how they meet the relevant criteria on the role description.
- Attempts to answer the question with one or two averageexamples. Has started to show how they meet the relevant criteria on the role description.
- A good answer given, with some good descriptions and/or examples. Makes a good attempt to show how they meet the relevant criteria on the role description.
- An excellent answer with full descriptions and relevant examples. Has clearly shown how they meet relevant criteria on the role description.
Make a note of the marks you have given them for each question.
After you have marked them for each question, total it up out of 15. Anyone who has a score over 10 should be interviewed. However, this is flexible – if there is someone you feel has more to offer than their score reflects then you can still invite them to interview and see what they are like there. This is likely to be especially relevant for international students or people with English as a second language. If you aren’t sure, ask someone else from your committee for a second opinion.