Giving Compass' Take:

• In this post from Doctors Without Borders, one doctor gives us a detailed account on the process of recruiting, which comes with plenty of challenges.

• All those working in the aid and humanitarian sector can relate to the difficulties in finding high-quality professionals. But perseverance — and thorough interview preparation — usually yields good results.

• For more on Doctors Without Borders' important work, check out this article.

Before joining Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders I’d had experience of recruitment in several ways. In the practices I’d been involved with we recruited staff and I’d often been part of the interview panel, though the process was normally led by the practice manager.

I’d also recruited or selected which applicants should get appointed to training schemes for General Practice, first through traditional interviews and then through being quite heavily involved in what evolved to be a national recruitment process. However I’d not expected recruitment to be a big part of my work in MSF …

In the project the management team is small. For much of the time I’ve been here, for one reason or another, there have only been two or three of us in the medical team, so I’ve been involved in the recruitment of several nurses, health promoters, pharmacist cover, a data operator and, more recently, a maternity cover doctor.

It was up to me as the medical team leader to identify that we would need to recruit. We have managed to employ one person to cover the absence of two doctors going off on marriage and honeymoon leave, and then the leave of a different colleague who is going on maternity leave.

MSF jobs are all advertised on one well-known local recruiting site. After a couple of weeks I went to my HR colleague and asked how many applicants we had for the job.

The total so far was 126!

Read the full article about recruiting a team to help refugees in Jordan by Mike Tomson at Doctors Without Borders.