Participant Recruitment Assessment Instrument. November 2013

Transcription

1 Participant Recruitment Assessment Instrument November 2013

2 Introduction Employment and training program managers often assume that a high demand for their services will allow them to meet their enrollment goals without any difficulty. Unfortunately, many managers discover that this is not always the case, and as a consequence, their programs fail to meet their critical enrollment goals. This assessment instrument is intended to serve as a guide for evaluating the way your project recruits participants and will provide you with an opportunity to assess your current efforts and identify new strategies and techniques for increasing enrollments. The process of recruiting participants should begin immediately after the grant has been awarded. The first step is to review the Solicitation for Grant Applications (SGA), your proposal, and your signed statement of work to determine and confirm participant eligibility requirements and enrollment goals. This review should be conducted with any project partners that agreed to be participant referral sources. The next step is to develop a recruitment plan with monthly goals, and this instrument will provide you with the guidance needed for maximizing enrollment outcomes. 2 Participant Recruitment Assessment Instrument

3 Recruitment Planning Yes No N/A 1. Have you reviewed the Solicitation for Grant Applications (SGA), project proposal, and statement of work to confirm the enrollment commitments made by your agency and participant eligibility requirements? 2. Have you identified and contacted all of the community partners in your proposal that agreed to be referral resources and reconfirmed their referral responsibilities, expectations, and goals? 3. Have you identified and considered any new recruitment resources such as the rapid response teams working with companies having layoffs, churches, community-based organizations, and community leaders? 4. Have you scheduled a planning meeting to develop a formal recruitment plan that includes all project staff and agency partners? 5. Does your recruitment plan clearly spell out the recruitment and enrollment goals for each month in the project? 6. Have you prepared a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with program partners that outlines each party s recruitment roles and responsibilities? 7. Does your recruitment plan have a mechanism for tracking referrals and the outcomes and reporting those outcomes to your partners in an easy-to-read format? 8. Does your plan provide adequate time to recruit participants before the program start date? 9. Do you have plans to review your recruitment plan periodically against goals and providing your partners with feedback on their referrals? 10. Have you prepared a sufficient number of enrollment applications to accommodate demand? 11. Have you engaged sufficient staff and volunteers to handle the response to your recruitment efforts? 12. Does your plan ensure that the time between a prospective client s completion of an application and the start of program activities is kept to a minimum? 3 Participant Recruitment Assessment Instrument

4 13. Have you developed a project brand that appeals to program participants? 14. Does your project s brand include the name of the project, its logo and a tagline? 15. Does your project s name convey what it does? 16. Is your tagline short and memorable? 17. Does your tagline clearly convey a benefit to participants, e.g., a better job, career advancement, better wages? 18. Have you identified any barriers that might deter a prospective participant from enrolling (for example, lack of transportation, child care or financial constraints) and developed strategies for overcoming those barriers? Outreach Strategies Yes No N/A 1. Does your website have a recruitment announcement on its home page? 2. Does the announcement link to a web page that provides enrollment requirements, a program description and a description of benefits? 3. Does your website provide a virtual tour of your program space? 4. Does your website provide participants with a way to enroll online or download an application? 5. Does your written or online application allow you to track how participants learned about your project? 6. Are you using social media for recruitment purposes? 7. Does your website have links to social media websites that describe your project? 8. Are you using smartphone applications as an outreach strategy? 9. Are you using Web-based tools to track participant visits to your program s website or social media pages? 10. Are you using print media such as posters, flyers and brochures to announce your recruitment efforts, and are they prominently displayed in your offices, partnering agencies, and One-Stops? 11. Are you using ads in local newspapers? 4 Participant Recruitment Assessment Instrument

5 12. If available, have you submitted your recruitment announcement to the local public access television station for posting on its community bulletin board? 13. Have you considered placing articles about your project in the newsletters of your partners? 14. Do you offer no obligation opportunities for prospective applicants to learn about your program? 15. Have you developed a radio public service announcement for participant recruitment? 16. Have you developed a PowerPoint for recruitment presentations? 17. Have you written a press release announcing the program s start-up and distributed it to the local media? 18. Have you considered using inexpensive giveaways * to announce the project s startup? 19. Do all of your outreach materials contain relevant contact information including your website address, an address, the name of an individual to contact, the program s address, and your program s phone number? 20. Are you maintaining a regular presence at your local One- Stop? 21. Are you providing One-Stop partners with your recruitment materials? 22. Have you considered holding an open house with your partners to kick-off the program s start? 23. Do you provide incentives * to program staff and current participants for recruiting new participants? 24. Have you engaged successful participants as champions in your recruitment efforts? 25. As your program matures, are you looking for opportunities to engage graduates in word-of-mouth recruitment? 26. Have you identified any opportunities to increase your program s visibility and credibility by piggy-backing on the marketing and outreach efforts of your partners? *NOTE: Grantees should ensure that all grant expenditures are in accordance with allowable costs under the H-1B grants. As the purchase of giveaways and incentives is not an allowable use of grant funds under the H-1B program, some grantees use leveraged resources for these items. 5 Participant Recruitment Assessment Instrument

6 Intake Yes No N/A 1. Have you streamlined the intake process? 2. Is the intake process user-friendly? In other words, is it brief, engaging and non-bureaucratic? 3. Have you designated staff or volunteers to handle inquiries from prospective clients and have they been trained accordingly? 4. Is your work environment welcoming? 5. Do you provide prospective applicants with an opportunity to tour your facilities? 6. Do you provide flexible hours (day, evening, and weekend) and locations for intake? 7. Do you have a referral process in place for those individuals who are not eligible for your program or who do not meet the program s criteria? 8. Do you have a follow-up plan for recruiting participants who showed partial interest but did not complete the intake? Developed by Coffey Consulting, LLC for the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Workforce Investment, Division of Strategic Investments (DSI) 6 Participant Recruitment Assessment Instrument