Developing focused recruitment strategies to engage youth in informal opportunities

Author(s):  
Caitlin K. Martin ◽  
Sheena Erete ◽  
Nichole Pinkard
Author(s):  
David Du Toit

The landscape of paid domestic work has changed considerably in recent years with the growth in the number of housecleaning service companies in South Africa and elsewhere. Housecleaning service companies transform domestic work into a service economy where trained domestic workers render a professional cleaning service to clients. In South Africa, little is known about the factors that employers at housecleaning service companies take into consideration during the selection and recruitment process. A key feature of paid domestic work is the gender, class and race constructions of domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women, usually women of colour, from low socio-economic backgrounds. Whether we are seeing a change in the demographic profile of domestic workers with the growth of housecleaning service companies remains unclear. This paper therefore focuses on the recruitment strategies of employers at selected housecleaning service companies in Johannesburg in an attempt to shed light on the challenges that jobseeking domestic workers may face. Open-ended interviews with managers revealed that gender, race, age, long-term unemployment, and technical and personal skills of job-seeking domestic workers have a strong impact on the recruitment process, while immigration status plays a somewhat reduced role. This paper concludes that housecleaning service companies have not changed the demographic profile of domestic workers in South Africa yet, and that paid domestic work is still predominantly a black woman’s job.


In the era of Globalization, advancement of technology and stiff competition, particularly, in the I.T. Industry, companies have to adopt new H.R. strategies and practices so as to constantly evolve and grow. In this context, existing recruitment strategies have to be replaced by new strategies. Many companies are now extensively depending on the internet to connect to larger audiences globally. Organizations are in a position to attract profiles, resumes from potential candidates by announcing their vacancies on their own websites. E-recruitment is evoking interest among the companies typically over the last few years. The spread of information technology and growth of Internet has paved way for companies willing to hunt for talent on the job seeking websites. In the years to come, social networking will soon be an indispensable part of the hiring process. It is cost effective, does not require setting up an office and forms an effective tool for recruiters. The main purpose of this study was to understand the application of factor analysis in social science research and to reduce a large number of variables into manageable smaller factors for further analysis of the employers’ perception on social media recruitment with reference to the I.T. Sector in Bangalore.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lida Feyz ◽  
Yale Wang ◽  
Atul Pathak ◽  
Manish Saxena ◽  
Felix Mahfoud ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Great and costly efforts are required to recruit potential participants into clinical trials. Using social media may make the recruitment process more efficient. Merely 20% of clinical trials are completed on time, a finding mostly linked to challenges in patient recruitment [1]. Recruitment through social media is increasingly being recognized as a tool to efficiently identify eligible subjects at lower costs [2, 3]. One of the key reasons for its success is the strong adherence of users to specific social media platforms. Facebook for instance has over 2.38 billion active monthly users of which about 75% access the network on a daily basis [4]. As such, the platform and other like it offer great potential to quickly and affordably enroll patients into clinical trials and surveys [3, 5-7]. At present, little evidence is available on the efficacy of using social media to recruit patients into cardiovascular and hypertension trials [8]. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of social media as an approach to recruit hypertensive patients into the RADIANCE-HTN SOLO trial. OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of social media as an approach to recruit hypertensive patients into the RADIANCE-HTN SOLO trial. METHODS The RADIANCE-HTN SOLO (NCT02649426) is a multicenter, randomised study that was designed to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of endovascular ultrasound renal denervation (RDN) to reduce ambulatory blood pressure at 2 months in patients with combined systolic–diastolic hypertension in the absence of medications. Between March 28, 2016, and Dec 28, 2017, 803 patients were screened for eligibility and 146 were randomised to undergo RDN (n=74) or a sham procedure (n=72) [9]. Key entry criteria included: age 18-75 years with essential hypertension using 0-2 antihypertensive drugs. Patients were recruited from 21 hospitals in the USA and 18 hospitals in Europe. The study was approved by local ethics committees or institutional review boards and was performed in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided written informed consent. All recruitment materials including social media campaigns was approved by local ethics committees of the involved sites. Recruitment strategies included social media (Facebook), conventional advertisements (ads) (magazine, brochure/poster, radio, newspaper), web search (the clinical website, craigslist and web-browsing), and physician referral. Both newspaper ads and posters contained brief information about study entry criteria. Newspapers were distributed at public transport places and posters were displayed in outpatient cardiology and hypertension clinics. Radio ads were run for 30 or 60 seconds providing a short summary of the study, entry criteria and contact information. Ads were run in major metropolitan areas on radio stations with large adult listener bases during popular days and times. Facebook ads were targeted towards subjects >45 years old within a certain distance from a recruitment site (range 20-50 miles). Criteria were modified over time in order to increase response rates [i.e. distance was increased or decreased, age was increased to >55 year]. Facebook ads referred to a dedicated study website translated into country specific languages. If interested, subjects could complete an anonymous online screening questionnaire which provided direct automatic feedback on study eligibility. Eligible subjects were asked to provide contact details (name and telephone number) to receive additional information, a process coordinated via a secure online portal (Galen Gateway Patient Recruitment Portal, Galen Patient Recruitment, Inc., Cumberland, RI). Study site were only able to contact potential candidates within their area. The study sponsor was not able to access any personal data. Trained local site personnel or contracted secondary screeners contacted candidates by phone to verify eligibility and answer potential questions. A subsequent outpatient clinic visit was scheduled during which the study was explained in greater detail and the informed consent form could be signed. Statistical analysis Categorical variables were expressed as percentages and counts. Continuous variables were described as mean  standard deviation (SD) when normally distributed, data was compared using an Independent-Samples or Paired-Samples T test to analyze the difference between recruitment methods. In case of non-normal distribution, median data was presented with the interquartile range [IQR]. All statistical tests are 2-tailed. A P-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS statistical analysis (version 24.0).   RESULTS Results Facebook ads were active during a 115-day recruitment period between August and November 2017. A total of 285 potential candidates were recruited by different recruitment strategies in this specific time period, of which 184 (65%) were consented through Facebook (Table 1). The average age of the subjects consented through Facebook was 59 ± 8 years and 51% were male (Table 2). Facebook reached 5.3 million people in 168 separate campaigns run in proximity to 19 sites in the US and 14 sites in Europe. The number of candidates per site was variable with a median of 23 [17 – 26] candidates per site that passed the questionnaire (Figure 1). A total of 27/184 subjects were eventually randomised. Total cost for the Facebook ads was $152,412; costing $907/campaign and $0.83/click. This resulted in a total cost of $828/consent. During the same recruitment period, 7-day radio spots were launched with a total cost of $2,870; resulting in 9 inquiries with eventually 5 potential candidates and 2 consents ($1,435/consent).   CONCLUSIONS Conclusion Targeted social media was a successful and efficient strategy to find potential candidates for a multicenter blood pressure clinical trial. Whether this approach can be replicated across other disease states or demographics remains to be studied.


Trials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice MacLachlan ◽  
Karen Crawford ◽  
Shona Shinwell ◽  
Catherine Nixon ◽  
Marion Henderson

Abstract Background Recruiting participants to randomised controlled trials (RCTs) is often challenging, particularly when working with socially disadvantaged populations who are often termed ‘hard-to-reach’ in research. Here we report the recruitment strategies and costs for the Trial for Healthy Relationship Initiatives in the Very Early years (THRIVE), an RCT evaluating two group-based parenting interventions for pregnant women. Methods THRIVE aimed to recruit 500 pregnant women with additional health and social care needs in Scotland between 2014 and 2018. Three recruitment strategies were employed: (1) referrals from a health or social care practitioner or voluntary/community organisation (practitioner-led referral), (2) direct engagement with potential participants by research staff (researcher-led recruitment) and (3) self-referral in response to study advertising (self-referral). The number of referrals and recruited participants from each strategy is reported along with the overall cost of recruitment. The impact of recruitment activities and the changes in maternity policy/context on recruitment throughout the study are examined. Results THRIVE received 973 referrals: 684 (70%) from practitioners (mainly specialist and general midwives), 273 (28%) from research nurses and 16 (2%) self-referrals. The time spent in antenatal clinics by research nurses each month was positively correlated with the number of referrals received (r = 0.57; p < 0.001). Changes in maternity policies and contexts were reflected in the number of referrals received each month, with both positive and negative impacts throughout the trial. Overall, 50% of referred women were recruited to the trial. Women referred via self-referral, THRIVE research nurses and specialist midwives were most likely to go on to be recruited (81%, 58% and 57%, respectively). Key contributors to recruitment included engaging key groups of referrers, establishing a large flexible workforce to enable recruitment activities to adapt to changes in context throughout the study and identifying the most appropriate setting to engage with potential participants. The overall cost of recruitment was £377 per randomised participant. Conclusions Recruitment resulted from a combination of all three strategies. Our reflections on the successes and challenges of these strategies highlight the need for recruitment strategies to be flexible to adapt to complex interventions and real-world challenges. These findings will inform future research in similar hard-to-reach populations. Trial registration International Standard Randomised Controlled Trials Number Registry ISRCTN21656568. Retrospectively registered on 28 February 2014


Author(s):  
Robert M. Klassen ◽  
Jade V. Rushby ◽  
Tracy L. Durksen ◽  
Lisa Bardach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Durba Biswas ◽  
Chikam Maiti ◽  
Biplabendu Talukder ◽  
Md Azharuddin ◽  
Sayantan Saha ◽  
...  

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