About this guidance

Changing our job is a major decision for most of us. It can involve moving house, relocating our immediate family members alongside ourselves, leaving friends and other responsibilities behind as we look towards a new phase in our professional and personal life.

Potential applicants will be looking to the job advert, contextual information, job description and person specification for details that will help us to decide whether this is right for us. Most of us want to feel excited about a new opportunity, confident that we have understood what will be expected of us in the role and will be able to perform well in the role.

Reviewing your recruitment documentation from the perspective of the potential applicants as well as your own employer perspective will help ensure that you have made your vacancy attractive, both in terms of the job itself and its associated salary and benefits, but also with respect to the supporting, welcoming environment that candidates can look forward to joining.

Fixed term project posts are now widespread within the archive and broader heritage sectors and make a significant and valuable contribution across a number of specialist areas. In writing a job description and person specification for a project post, employers have to juggle the requirements and expectations of the funding organisation and the parent body alongside the needs of the service/project itself. This can lead to a temptation to overload the post with unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved within the time constraints and salary on offer. It is worth bearing in mind that project posts need to factor in time for the following:

• Induction to the organisation, the service and the project itself
• Training and Continuing Professional Development which may occur throughout the duration of the contract
• Overheads such as annual leave and potential sickness absence
• If a post involves line management and/or volunteer management, these will absorb a significant proportion of the available time
• The implementation and customisation of new systems (such as digital preservation software or a new content management system) require time for thinking, networking/benchmarking/researching, negotiating with suppliers, testing, tweaking, training colleagues and so forth. This is a major undertaking with a significant level of responsibility. The job role needs to reflect this with respect to the time allocated to the post
• Fixed term projects have their own reporting and monitoring requirements, all of which require time to gather and interpret data, present findings, and respond to questions and issues that arise

Project roles often involve setting up and/or trialling new areas of work and line management of other colleagues or volunteers. These are significant responsibilities for which appropriate remuneration should be offered. Advice on remuneration can be found under ‘Salary and pay grade’, on the ‘Key details’ section of ‘Putting a job description together‘.

Another aspect of project roles to consider is whether it is realistic to expect a single post-holder to carry out a wide and diverse range of different tasks. Within the constraints of a fixed-term contract, it can be exceptionally difficult to be introducing new workflows and systems across all areas of professional archives activity. Finding a pragmatic balance of activity, perhaps by adopting a phased approach or sharing workload across more than one post will achieve better outcomes for project funders and sponsors, the service and post-holder(s).

Freelance Consultant

As you work through the options for your archives vacancy, it may be worth considering whether any aspect of the work to be done would benefit from the involvement of a skilled and experienced freelancer or consultant. The archive sector workforce is complemented by a number of consultancy options with a strong track record of delivering high quality outputs and outcomes for their clients. The Archives and Records Association maintains a list of freelance consultants but this is not exhaustive so it is also worthwhile asking for recommendations of other highly-regarded consultants from your network contacts.

A good job description and person specification will clarify what tasks the post-holder will be expected to carry out and the skills, experience and other attributes that you are looking for.

The Archive and Records Association (ARA) competency framework gives a useful overview of the key competencies needed by those working in the archives, conservation and records management sector. No single job role would cover all of these, of course, but mapping your needs to the competency framework will help you to get a feel for how to summarise and pitch the role to which you wish to recruit.

The competency framework also looks at the five levels of experience an employer might be looking for from an archives role, ranging from Level 1 (entry level, aimed at those without a professional qualification) to Level 5, a senior professional with substantial relevant experience.

The ‘key words’ sections of the competency framework are useful in suggesting the wording you can use in a job description to convey the level of expertise and experience you wish to recruit. ARA professional registration is awarded to those who successfully demonstrate their chosen levels of competence via peer assessment process.

You may also find it useful to explore the Archive Service Accreditation Standard which sets out the standards that an accredited archive is required to meet. While the standard does not specify job roles, it does give a comprehensive overview of the work of an archive service, again helping you to determine where the focus of the job role to which you wish to recruit lies. The standard also gives information about the types of service for which it is essential to recruit someone with a professional qualification.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) also publishes a range of good practice factsheets on recruitment practices.

Once you have completed your first draft of the job description, why not run it past a ‘critical friend’? A colleague from a neighbouring archive service, an organisation with a similar remit and/or archival collections to yours or a member of The National Archives’ Regional and Networks Team may be able to help you test whether you have successfully captured the essence of the vacant role. Your Human Resources Team is also likely to have lots of helpful advice. A checklist of what to look out for might include:

• Are my expectations of this role realistic?
• Is it feasible for the post-holder to carry out all these tasks within the time and resources available?
• Have I accurately reflected the balance of the role? Is this a role which covers a broad range of activities (breadth) or which requires significant skills and expertise in a single area of focus (depth)?
• Does the language I’ve used reflect the level of seniority I am looking for? Is the grade / pay scale for this post consistent with the level of responsibility and the range of activities they are being asked to undertake? Where does this post sit in relation to the Archives and Records Association (ARA) salary recommendations?
• Is each individual statement clear? Is the flow of statements logical? Have I used formatting to help applicants navigate effectively through the document? Would it be clear to an applicant what’s expected of them?
• Have I described the role and used language which encourages inclusive recruitment and values diversity of perspectives and approaches?
• Is all of this information relevant at the recruitment stage?