Applying for a job at Empower? Here is what to expect

Thank you for your interest in working at Empower Agency.

Transparency, fairness and inclusivity are some of our core values. It is really important to us that all potential applicants get the opportunity to show us their talents at every stage of the recruitment process so we have put together some guidance outlining how we do recruitment at Empower so you know what to expect.

Our recruitment process

The stages of a typical recruitment process at Empower are as follows:

1. Application
2. Shortlisting
3. An initial telephone interview
4. A face-to-face interview with role-related tasks

‍Your application

For all our roles, we share:

• An advert outlining the details of the role (salary, location, working hours etc), an idea about what the job entails, the benefits package we offer our employees and details about the recruitment process, including interview dates for each stage so that potential candidates can keep the dates free in case they are shortlisted
• A job description detailing the attributes, skills and experience we are looking for, along with an outline of what to expect in the first 3 months of the role

In the first instance, we ask you to complete a short application form. This is an online form through our recruitment platform Workable.

There are a series of questions we ask to ascertain your motivation for working at Empower, how you share our core values and what agency experience you have. There may also be a question specific to the role you are applying for.

Please take the time to answer these questions in full. One word answers will not be sufficient to get you through to shortlisting. We are really keen to see how interested you are in us as an organisation as well as what skills and experience you could bring to the role.

In the box marked ‘cover letter’ please be sure to tell us about any experience that is relevant to the position you are applying for. Please DO NOT tell us about which university you attended, if any. We do not specifically look for candidates who have a degree so this information will not be taken into consideration.

We are a Disability Confident Committed Employer, which means we guarantee an interview to any candidate with a declared disability who meets the essential criteria for the role they’re applying to.

We want you to have every opportunity to shine and show us your talents. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make sure the process works for you.

All job applicants will receive equal treatment regardless of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion or belief, education, or socioeconomic background.

To support us in achieving this, our recruitment process is anonymised. Applications will have all identifying information such as name, photos, university education, gender etc removed before being given to the team who will be shortlisting.

At Empower, Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is a crucial and permanent part of our business strategy. To help us ensure a fully diverse, equitable and inclusive working environment, all candidates will be asked to fill out a voluntary survey so we can track and further our DEI efforts in our recruitment processes. The information shared in the survey is strictly optional, and please be assured that it cannot and will not affect your job application in any way. It’s also 100% anonymous, and is not linked to your name, identity, or application.

Shortlisting

After the closing date, all of the anonymised applications will be read by a selection of the Empower team, who will make up the recruitment panel. The panel will typically consist of one of our Director / Founders and a selection of other members from across the team.

All candidates who declare a disability who meet the essential criteria will be offered an interview.

We will contact all applicants via email about the outcome of their application, regardless of whether you have been shortlisted or not. We value transparency and honesty and feel it is important that we let every candidate know either way.

If you are invited to interview you will be given as much notice as possible. We will provide you with a Calendly link so you can select an interview slot that suits you. If none of the dates and times provided are suitable, please do let us know and we will do our best to find an alternative.

We want our recruitment process to be fair and inclusive and, as such, we will ask candidates if there are any reasonable adjustments we can make to help them with the interview process. We will consider all requests and will do our very best to accommodate them.

Our two-stage interview process

Being a remote-first organisation, our interviews are held remotely using Google Meet as not all of our team members are located in the same place.

Inviting someone to join our team is a big deal for us and we put a lot of time and effort into the process. We don’t want to waste anyone’s time, so if we figure out you are not the candidate we are looking for at any stage, we’ll let you know.

Initial telephone calls

The purpose of the first telephone calls is to give us the chance to meet a larger pool of candidates who we feel, from the initial applications, may have the relevant skills and experience we are looking for and who share the same values as Empower. It is also an opportunity for candidates to know more about us as an organisation. It is really important to us that there is a mutual interest on both sides.

You’ll have a half hour chat over the phone with some members of our recruitment team so we can find out more about your experience and ambitions. It is also an opportunity for you to ask us any questions you have. If we think you’re a good match for the role and you have the most relevant experience, we’ll book you in for a face-to-face interview via Google Meet.

The face-to-face virtual interview

To keep things fair and for you to show your best, we will provide you with a list of questions we’ll be asking during the interview. For some roles there are also a few short tasks to complete, which we will provide details of well in advance of the interview to give you plenty of time to prepare. This will also be a chance to meet some of the people you’d be working with, and ask any questions about working at Empower.

There will be a minimum of two members of the Empower team on each interview panel and they will take turns to ask questions. They will also be taking notes throughout the interview but please do not let this put you off. It is to help them to remember what each candidate said and will inform their discussion after the interviews.

Towards the end of the interview, candidates will be given the opportunity to ask any questions they may have.

After the interview, the panel will get together to discuss each of the candidates in turn and make a decision about who we will offer the position to. You will be contacted via email or phone to be told the outcome either way and you will be given the opportunity for feedback should you want some.

Role-related tasks

For some roles there are also a few short tasks to complete, which we will provide details of well in advance of the interview to give you plenty of time to prepare. The tasks will be relevant to the role and may take the form of a written task and/or a presentation for example.

Use of AI

We work closely in the field of AI and have recently launched our AI Manifesto, which you can see here.

Whilst we do not condemn or discourage the use of AI, we have adopted an ethical approach to using AI tools which is aligned with our core values and we have committed to disclosing when we have used AI to assist our work.

We feel it is important that we live our values and our commitment to our AI Manifesto and integrate it across all of the work we do at the agency, including recruitment.

In keeping with our Empower values we would like to encourage the same transparency of the applicants in our recruitment process. If you have used AI tools such as ChatGPT to assist you with your answers, we ask that you please let us know. Please be assured that it will not affect the outcome of your application in any way.

Whilst we acknowledge that AI tools are useful at times and we appreciate that job applications can be tedious and repetitive, we would love to hear about your personal experiences and opinions, not those of AI. Please note, we won’t accept applications that are evidently AI generated so please bear that in mind before submitting your application and when preparing interview tasks.

If you have any questions about the role or our recruitment process or careers at Empower, please email our Operations Manager, Catherine Raboteur, at catherine@empower.agency

Thank you again for your interest in joining the team here at Empower and we wish you all the very best with your application!