Alongside working with their technology partners, many R&D projects find that they need to recruit people into their teams who have specific skills and experiences related to digital project such as producers, project manager or community managers. This can be a challenge since such talent are not always within the direct network of many arts organisations. Here are five different ways in which to access this talent:

1. Engage with local meetups & communities
It is very likely that near you there will be meet-ups or communities of interest related to specific digital communities including social media. These are often very active communities and not only can they be used to suggest people for your new role, they are valuable communities to be generally engaged with simply to widen your network.

2. Use your existing external network
There are likely to be practitioners and organisations whose digital work you admire and if so they are likely to have a strong network. They can therefore be a very useful recruitment channel, especially if you can provide them with some sort of incentive.

3. Use it as a development opportunity for a colleague
If you are a larger arts organisation, there is a chance that someone with your wider team e.g. in marketing & communications may have the skills to act as a digital producer but are not necessarily being given the opportunity. Working out how to access your internal talent and backfilling their other role can be an effective recruitment method and saves time given they already know the organisation well.

4. Discover the talents of your audience
If you are any good – which of course you are – then there will be people in your audience who have the skills you need and would jump at the chance to use them to help the organisation who’s work they love. It may feel strange to use a marketing channel such as audience email newsletter to recruit but it can work.

5. Paid-for recruitment channels
In some cases when looking for a specialised role you may want to consider paid-for-recruitment channels which focus on particular digital talent.

Finally when recruiting it is also recommended that you have someone who fully understands the role from the digital perspective involved in the sign-off of the recruitment brief as well as the selection process. This will ensure that the opportunity uses the language and incentives that your target audience respond to.

Image of spider web courtesy of flickr user Anosmia