Recruitment and onboarding

Prioritise access

• Write all advertisements in plain English and provide accessible versions.
• Make the requirements and deadlines clear and easy to understand.
• Ask about access needs early in the recruitment process and ensure they are met.
• Provide multiple ways that someone can contact the organisation for help or clarification on the role. For example, via email or calling.
• Provide multiple ways that people can apply for an opportunity. For example, over the phone or by sending a voice recording.

Set goals that go above and beyond legislative compliance

• Legislative compliance should be a minimum standard for equal opportunity, anti-discrimination and human rights requirements.
• These goals should be reviewed in line with good practice every two years.

Cultural safety and inclusion

• Develop a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP): A RAP supports an organisation to collaborate and share knowledge, skills and expertise to build strong relationships with First Nations people and communities. It assists in building a culturally safe organisation and this includes recruitment and onboarding processes.¹
• Advertise all jobs on a wide variety of media and different platforms to ensure different communities can access the them.
• Consider whether legally applicable positive or special measures can be taken to make a role available only to a certain group as defined by the Equal Opportunity Act and the Australian Human Rights Commission guide to Positive Discrimination.
• Encourage diversity and affirm your organisation’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in the job advertisement.
• Ensure any equal opportunity accreditation (e.g. Rainbow Tick) is displayed on job advertisements.
• Don’t be tokenistic in your recruitment. Young people shouldn’t be recruited as a ‘checklist’ approach to improving diversity in the organisation.¹

Interviews are daunting, especially for young people - it may be the first interview they’ve ever done. Move forward with empathy and remember, we all started somewhere!

Include a young person on your interview panel

YACVic includes a young person on all interview panels.

• Coming from a place of lived experience, the young person on the panel brings their perspectives and contextual understandings.
• They can help ensure the interview questions are clear to young people and frame the interview in a way that makes sense to a young person.
• It can make the person being interviewed feel at ease.

Flexibility

• Offer different times and days when you can conduct the interview.
• Offer different ways to attend (e.g. online or in-person). Young people may not be able to attend an interview in-person or on a particular day because they don’t have access to suitable transport, or may be employed in casual work with no flexibility around shifts.

Interview questions

Provide the person with the questions they will be asked at least one hour before the interview. 

• Interviews can be nerve-wracking. Nervousness puts young people who are generally inexperienced at interviews at a clear disadvantage.
• By providing the questions in advance, it helps people to prepare, think clearly and feel more at ease.

Accessibility

• Ask if the person has any access requirements prior to the interview
• If there are access needs that become apparent on the day and you can’t meet them, the interview should be postponed until changes can be made.
• If automated captioning is available for online interviews, switch it on.

In-person interviews

• If interviews are being conducted in-person, interviews are more comfortable when conducted in an informal 'around the table' setting rather than across a desk, particularly when more than one interviewer is involved.
• Position the person so that they can comfortably direct conversation to anyone in the room.

General atmosphere

• Make people feel comfortable by creating a friendly, conversational atmosphere in the interview.
• Body language should be relaxed and open.
• Avoid confusing or overly technical language; clarify terms used if the person asks or looks confused.
• Repeat questions if needed and welcome any questions from the person being interviewed.
• Be clear on what the person can expect following the interview and the timeframe.
• Ensure the interview panel is as diverse as possible, including different genders and diversity in cultural backgrounds.

For young people, this may be their first job or first job in an office setting, so try not to assume they know what to do.

• Create a ‘new starter pack’ that has everything the young person needs for their role and create checklists that they can use to move through their onboarding.
• Create an  a document that tells people information about a venue or event. It helps everyone know about access in and around the venue.access key to the office and  a document that tells people about what will happen in a certain situation and spells out the unspoken social rules.social script of what to expect.
• Think about what information is necessary to collect. For example, for personnel paperwork - sex assigned at birth/gender information should only be sought if payroll, superannuation or similar systems require it and alternatives cannot be found.
• Be flexible, even if you have onboarding processes set up; if they don’t work for someone, find an alternative.
• When collecting emergency contact information, it’s a good idea to ask what pronouns their emergency contact is familiar with so you use them correctly.
• Add the young person to any workplace virtual communication channels or chats such as Teams or Slack.
• Pair people with a ‘buddy’ so they can direct questions to them and have a familiar face to turn to for guidance.

Your organisation may have a statement of commitment which is a public statement that outlines how you intend to commit or act. This statement can be a good indicator of your commitment to diversity, access and inclusion.

Consider including your organisation’s statement of commitment in your job advertisements or position descriptions. 

1. Koorie Youth Council. (2020). Wayipunga. https://www.koorieyouthcouncil.org.au/wayipunga/