If you've visited boards.wales in the last few days, you'll have noticed it looks different. Over the past few weeks I've rebuilt the site from scratch, and the new version went live on 3 November.
Boards Wales started following my experience of supporting people into governance (and not being able to point them towards a single resource for opportunities in Wales!); put every board, trustee and non-executive vacancy in Wales in one place, in both languages. It has grown well beyond what I expected, with more than 350 subscribers to the 'monthly' newsletter (more on that later); average web views of more than 2,000 per month; and nearly 2,500 followers on LinkedIn. But behind the scenes, it was held together by a lot of manual effort.
Why rebuild it?
Every role on the site used to require a fair bit of manual handling. Search for board roles (or sometimes get emailed opportunities, thankyou to those that did that!). Create a new row for each vacancy in Wordpress. Copy the title, organisation, closing date and link, and insert (manually, not paste!) for each role, and then do again for the Welsh version. Manually delete each role. That added up to a fair amount of time on a monthly basis. On top of a family and two day jobs, one at Cardiff Met and the other at the Taff Catchment Partnership - throw in a house move this year - and I hope you can sympathise that the newsletters stopped in February!
I was acutely aware that the manual handling was preventing me from spending my time thinking and writing, but I didn't have enough time to break the cycle. Until I got support from Welsh Government on using AI to redesign the system.
Those who know me from NICW will agree that I never held back from criticising Welsh Government where I thought they could do better. I am also generous with my praise when they get it right, and this programme of support for businesses, called Flexible Skills Programme, really hit the spot for me.
What's new for you
- The roles come first. The jobs board is now the homepage, so you can see every open role as soon as you arrive.
- Search and filters. Search by keyword, filter by chair, trustee or director roles, and choose paid or voluntary roles only.
- A "New" label on anything added in the last seven days, so it's easy to see what's changed since your last visit.
- A page for every role, with the details, a clear closing date and a link to apply.
- A form for recruiters. If you're recruiting for a board, you can now submit a vacancy directly.
The site is also faster and lighter. Visitor statistics use Umami, and there's still no tracking code, cookies or other means to try to steal your data.
What's changed behind the scenes
The biggest change is under the covers, and while most people are still cosy in bed. Every morning, the site now goes looking for new board roles on its own. It searches job sites and recruitment agencies, and it checks the vacancy pages of organisations that recruit regularly.
When it finds something, an AI tool reads the advert and pulls out the details: the role, the organisation, the closing date and whether it's a paid role. The site then filters out staff jobs, spots roles it has already seen, and puts what's left in a review queue.
Fear not, you can still directly submit your own vacancies via the website, and hopefully that's also very straightforward. I will miss the emails but not the manual data entry. If you want to email me I would still value that and hopefully it will be more about the content in future (on that, I am still awaiting my first guest blog!)
I still read every role before it goes live which is crucial because, let's face it, AI can hallucinate like the best of them, and having the 'Me' in the loop should reassure you that there is still human judgement in the system. But approving a role is now one click, not minutes per role. When a closing date passes, the role comes down on its own and moves into a searchable archive. This is also a big deal. For a long time I was manually maintaining a database of every role I'd come across, hoping that it would have value for people. In the end it was exhausting; more manual entry on top of the manual entry for the website, so I gave up in September 2026. However I'm glad I did that for 18 months....god was it really that long? Because the past roles are embedded in the new system which gives quite a rich dataset for looking at previous day rates etc. Something to bear in mind if non-execs start grumbling about their day rate (and maybe they're right?!).
What the time is for
So the data entry for keeping Boards Wales has been the turgid part. I quite enjoy posting on LinkedIn, and I really enjoyed writing blog posts. This upgrade has hopefully freed me from much of that data side, giving me more space to do thinking and writing.
I am now liberated 🤸 to spend more time researching good practice. Finding out more about what makes a board work well, how other places recruit and support board members, and what a good Chair actually does differently. I want to write about it here more often, and share what I find.
I also want to spend more time on the opportunities themselves. That means talking to organisations about reaching a wider range of applicants, and encouraging people who've never thought of themselves as board members to give it a go. It also means more time for Chair Connect, the network for board Chairs in Wales that I run in partnership with GatenbySanderson. With public appointments in Wales changing, this feels like a good moment to do more of that.
Tell me what you think
The new site is still bedding in, so please let me know if anything isn't working, or if there's something you'd like to see.
- Recruiting for a board? Submit your vacancy.
- Know an organisation that advertises board roles on its own website? Tell me, and I'll add its page to the daily check.
- Not getting the newsletter yet? Sign up here.
Diolch yn fawr,
Dave