Applying for a charity sector job

[isitme111]

I'm job hunting and have seen jobs in the charity sector that seem interesting both admin and support type of roles for which I have relevant experience. How likely is it that a charity may already have someone lined up for the role? I know this can happen in other sectors - is it likely in the charity sector as well. One of the charites is a small independent, around 30 staff members. The application questions will take a fair amount of time to work on which I don't mind if it's a fair recruitement process. Has anyone got any experience of charity recruitment which they can share.

Haven't got experience but just wanted to say i feel the same way about applications! So much work and they really shouldn't be allowed to advertise if it's earmarked for someone internal.

Good luck!

I tried for ages to get into charity work- they get so many applications, it's really competitive even without the other potential applicants from within. I had relevant experience too but relevant charity experience trumps other experience every time.

Very unlikely in my experience . I work as a data officer for a charity (not an analyst, but higher than an admin- we do technical “back end” stuff on all the systems we use, work on project support and manage the help desk, test new system deployments etc. I had school admin experience but no technical experience when I joined. We advertise, get 100s of applicants but struggle to shortlist 5 or 6 to interview. I think the combination of work from home plus techy roles attracts a lot of overseas applicants but they are not suitable as we are hybrid workers. We rarely get internal applicants for data posts (I think they are scared of us nerds 😜)

you could look for some voluntary admin work (we take volunteers in data who do 1 day a week, 4 hours or so) . Be honest about your skill level particularly with excel and IT and don’t be afraid to say you are willing to learn as all these systems require learning anyway. And don’t use chat gpt to do any part of your application as techs can see straight through it. We are a large children’s hospice and regularly recruit.

Charity sector is incredibly competitive right now because so many charities have had redundancies. So not likely to have an internal candidate in mind but do expect compensation to be high.

I've been applying for more senior Head of/Director level roles and there have been hundreds of applicants up against me. And I have years of experience at that level in charities (I got to final rounds several times but pipped to the role based on tiniest of distinctions). I've now secured a job outside of the sector as it's just too unstable feeling right now.

I work in the charity sector and it’s impossible to answer that question as every charity is different.

at the moment we get at least 100 applications for each vacancy.

Thanks everyone for all your insights, really interesting to hear. I've spotted a job I like the sound of so I think I will probably give it a shot and see how it goes.

We don’t usually have people earmarked for roles, even ones we think are earmarked for someone have been taken by external.

Go for it, a small charity would be foolish not to consider all possible applications, having paid for the role to be advertised externally .

If it is earmarked for someone internally then the role usually isn’t advertised externally