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Blog posted by: Mike Wilson, Monday, 26 July 2021.

We have worked with our members to build a bank of job descriptions to help you recruit for key roles in the sector.

The pandemic has transformed the world of work, including in the homelessness and supported housing sector, from working at home and flexible working to underlining the critical role of frontline staff. But when it comes to recruiting for this new world, with competing demands on time and limited resources, attracting the right staff  remains essential but challenging.

Our members regularly share some of the issues they have recruiting and it is clear finding the right staff is particularly difficult for smaller organisations without HR departments. We’ve also heard from members who have been refused DBS status because job descriptions did not include enough information about the caring responsibilities involved. This illustrates the real impact on service delivery of poor job descriptions.

An effective job description is the first step in successful hiring. It can help improve staff retention, and ultimately save an organisation time and money. But in reality, putting together a job description can be time-consuming and it is often hard to know where to start, especially when you’re a busy frontline service.

So we have created new job description templates to help the sector find passionate and talented people. We also produced DBS guidance for recruitment to help organisations decide which roles should be subject to a DBS check and which level of check is relevant.

The templates and guidance are both available on Homeless Link’s Job Board website. The Homeless Link Job Board is a unique recruitment portal, putting employers and candidates together in one place, to ensure quality jobs can find quality job seekers in the homelessness and supported housing sector.

The Jobs Board hosts roles at all levels of seniority from frontline roles to senior management. Reflecting this, our job descriptions templates cover a wide range of roles in the sector, including advice workers, chief executives, communications managers, housing outreach workers, involvement officers, project managers, service managers, support workers and trustees.

All of the templates are free to download and use, to help support you in hiring and human resource management.

To help you to find the right staff visit the jobs board and browse job description templates and check out our DBS guidance for recruitment.