Question: What are the challenges/difficulties you (or your community) face when you are recruiting in your local community?

Answers:

We are in competition with other service providers;
Live in does not sound attractive to potential applicants;
Salary level is much lower than what they are able to make with other service providers. 

I think the most challenging thing about local recruitment is how people respond when they hear that the position is live in – all the excitement fades and they change their minds.
I think one thing that is really difficult to find in our local society and cultural is young people who are passionate about living with people who have disabilities while at the same time want to live in community. 

Our main challenge is to make ourselves known. We have been in Trois-Rivière for more than thirty years and we are still little known. And when we are, our image isn’t always accurate on what we do or want to do. Another challenge is to convince people to come live with the people with a disability. Very few people, at least among those we meet, would accept to leave their house, their apartment, and their pace of life to jump in such an adventure. We are completely against the current of mainstream culture! 

For us, one of the challenges is to know where to put the job posts. We’re not a university town and there’s no Cegep neither so we can’t target students. It’s hard to post in the job center if we don’t fit in their categories. The last posts we put in the newspapers weren’t successful. The places we used in the past don’t give the same results anymore.
 
We lack pertinent tools to present L’Arche. I’m currently working on a PowerPoint presentation I could use in several environments (universities, conference groups, etc…). We frequently go to the same groups (churches, young people…), so from one time to the other we lack originality. We need to be more creative, and also to target the audience. Today, the young people live in a situation of full employment, which means they have the choice of their role. How can we put the emphasis on the roles available while remaining competitive? At least to attract their attention, if not their interest. E.g.: the youth want money and the advantages that come with it, while we offer minimum wage roles but in a fulfilling and rewarding environment.

Nothing really interesting to offer, we would need strategies, tools to interest local people to come work or volunteer. People here know what is L’Arche Le Printemps, but they only know the surface. We could always go make mini-conferences in farmer or « Chevaliers de Colomb » meetings, etc… but will it be enough? 

Our biggest challenge is that we are a very small fish in a very big pond---it is hard to promote a small organization in such a large urban area with a huge population
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I have found that local candidates are not so interested in living in. We don’t have a big issue with recruiting people for our home that operates on a “shift” system, but we do have issues with finding local people who are motivated to live in one of our other 7 homes. I have interviewed and made job offers to 7 different people over the last year and only one accepted the offer. This person is doing really well, and also was apprehensive about the live-in aspect of the role, but has been able to move beyond that, almost immediately.

Local people already have a social network of friends, family, and the schedule of an assistant, being mostly off in the middle of the week, giving up their bedroom in their parents home, or needing to end a lease on their apartment just seems to be a barrier to live the life of an assistant. 

The biggest challenge is getting the information that L’Arche is the live in position with limited time away, many applications don’t know L’Arche or who is Jean Vanier and they are just looking for a job. Therefore we have to filter applications which mean investing time and energy explaining the philosophy or the ways of community life. We, as a region, have decided to start recruitment committees in each individual community. The committees look at recruitment in their local area and also we are creating alumni of past members. 

Question: What plan of action could you (or your community) take to overcome these challenges/difficulties? 

Answers:
 
More strategic recruitment at places where we would be able to reach potential assistants who look for more that just a job and a pay cheque.

Widening the circle of who recruits to reach more people.
I think one thing that would be helpful is to spend some time reflecting how we “ market and communicate” about living in community – what can people learn from the experience – how it can benefit them and their development. I really think it is a foreign concept to people and we as an organization are not necessarily clear about how to articulate community to people who have never lived it before. ( ie. We have 9 new assistants this year and only one of them grew up eating supper around a table with their family.) 

An action plan I am considering (but we often lack resources to put it in action) is a local visibility campaign, an annual plan that would allow us to better make ourselves known to the media and population through original and inviting events. I think that if we come back each year, around the same time of year with something friendly, it would then be more effective to put ads or to meet groups since our work and mission would already be a little more known. These events could include a fundraising show or something to raise money, but also a day or a moment for all like a public fair, a fashion show, a contest…

I think we need to present the people with a disability in their human and friendly sides, we need to reveal them and from this encounter a call to become an assistant could appear. We also need to contact other organisations, create links with young and not so young people groups with humanist values. But where can we find the time to do that in a small community?
List the places that are appropriate to announce L’Arche. 

Target a potential group; choose an appropriate tool to present L’Arche and its needs. Put all this in an effective chronological order. E.g. : target the CEGEP alumni in March, with a modern presentation of L’Arche and the available positions in the region. The community should position itself as a potential employer on the job market for a first job.

Well, if we could add this information in a common place to facilitate the work of the HR rep. Maybe it already exists but I don’t know about it.
We need to continue to do more and more outreach-type activities in order to have our name known. 

What can we do as a community to overcome this? We try to coordinate visits to schools and local church groups using local assistants who can articulate the great experience that they have living at L’Arche. Beyond this, we are not sure how to communicate and speak to the specific fears of living in. Candidates often seem very enthusiastic, especially after an evening in a home, but less so after the shock of an overnight or two. Maybe we should be less worried about hiring them on a one-month trial so they themselves can get over this fear.
We have talked with faith based educational schools, connected with universities around co-ops and community life, used prayer, re designed our website with L’Arche philosophy, incorporated L’Arche Hamilton face book. I have been successful with Christian employment websites. 

Other comments:
 
How to recruit volunteers? Share ways and methods used. We welcome lots of interns during school year. The teachers acknowledge our environment as a potential work place, a place of professional development. But very few interns come back or continue with us. How could we convince them? And what tools can we develop to make the teachers partners with our community?

It’s not simple when you never did it before to integrate different systems or organise to have assistants come from other countries. Are there laws or methods for each country? I have candidates from Madagascar, France (easier), Venezuela and Australia. I don’t know if the same rules apply to all: e.g. the insurance, work permit, etc. It’s complicated and there isn’t much information.