Seek and you shall find... but where?

This year, Australian nonprofit employers need to attract at least 195,000 people to join their teams and causes.

This is business critical.

Without the right people, organisations risk not being able to meet strategic objectives.

The right talent is mission critical. Our communities need a thriving NFP sector.

And leaders know talent attraction and retention is a risk.

81% of board directors rank business disruptions due to talent shortages as a top risk to growth in 2024-2025*.

Demand for great talent is a constant. Competition is not going away.

Tenure is down and turnover remains at 15% on average in Australia.

Yet half of nonprofits struggle to find the right talent through Australia’s main job board.

36% can’t find the calibre of talent they need through job boards, period.

So where do Australian nonprofits find talent?

Job boards are the go-to channel, despite limitations.

Not surprisingly, job boards are the main sourcing channel for all nonprofit employers. Here are some of the key findings from our research:

• 68% of organisations only advertise on one job board.

• 80% use SEEK as their main channel to source talent.

• Nonprofits are 8X more likely to advertise on SEEK than other platforms.

• Yet, at least half struggle to find talent to fill vacant roles through this channel.

• 1 in 5 report a small applicant pool as a key recruitment challenge.

Posting on job boards is clearly not as effective as it could be.

Anecdotally, we know people often find searching and applying via job boards a negative experience. From the sheer volume of jobs to friction in the application process and in many cases the absence of contact details and transparency in the information provided; the overall sentiment about job boards is more negative than positive.

One of the key limitations of job boards is the quality of content (but that's a story for another day).

For some roles, job boards will work. For others, employers need to get creative and proactive with how and where they connect with talent.

Proactive talent search happens, sporadically.

Around 30% of nonprofit people and culture teams use SEEK search and/or LinkedIn search when they’re hiring.

Only 10% have hired someone they connected with via this approach.

While proactive talent search is time consuming, with the right targeting strategy and coupled with compelling recruitment marketing and content across digital channels, this approach can significantly increase reach and engagement with a job opportunity. Our team sources up to 60% of talent outside job boards.

The last resort: Outsourcing recruitment.

7 in 10 nonprofit employers report working with a recruitment partner on hard-to-fill roles, often as a last resort.

This budget-conscious approach seems logical on the surface, yet given hiring challenges and high early turnover (nearly 1 in 3 people leave in the first 12 months), getting guaranteed results from outsourcing to a trusted partner is worth considering.

This content is an excerpt from Heart Talent’s NFP Talent Attraction report, a comprehensive review of the state of talent attraction in the Australian NFP sector.

Download the full report here.

*Gartner: Leadership Vision for 2025