When recruiting, how much thought do you put into the audience that you’ll be targeting with your vacancy?

Do you feel confident that you understand what would motivate a particular age group to apply for a position at your organisation?

Do you know what would make someone to leave your organisation or, possibly more importantly, what would make them want to stay?

These are amongst a number of questions that inspired a recent research piece that we conducted in partnership with the PPMA. We have worked with the PPMA for a number of years now and officially partnered with them in 2015. They were the perfect partners for a project like this – sharing not only our curiosities but also our commitment to helping public sector organisations adopt and maintain a forward-thinking approach to their recruitment.

We wanted to take the concept of target audience and really explore certain aspects of it. We were hoping to uncover some new insights and spark and fuel a further conversation moving forward. We chose two distinctly different age groups for our initial research – 16-24s and 50+. We were intrigued by the potential differences, and similarities, in their motivations, perspectives and ongoing ambitions when it came to the workplace and their careers.

We then launched two simultaneous surveys that would form the foundation of the research, hosted on Jobsgopublic.com and promoted through social media.

After over 2,000 responses, we had our results. Having analysed the data, we were proud to officially present the research at the 2018 PPMA Annual Conference to a crowded room.

The results of the research were fascinating – whilst many outcomes weren’t the most shocking, others did take us by surprise.

The good news is that there are some real opportunities for employers to make themselves more attractive to prospective candidates in these age groups. There are also actions you can take to potentially significantly boost your staff retention as well as increasing productivity.

To download a full copy of the research, please fill in your details below and we’ll send you a copy by email straight away.

We hope that this will be the first of many pieces that will help provide key insight and help employers effectively target exactly the audience they are looking for. If you have any comments or thoughts, please get in touch with Olivia Harris or Sam Wilson by emailing marketing@jobsgopublic.com.