Employment guides

Guide to successful recruitment

Contents

Successful Recruitment: overall process and planning

Policies and documentation

Selection Panel

Advertising

Short-listing

Selection Interviews/Tests

Deciding and Offering

References and checks

Acceptance and Notice

Recruitment Process Checklist

Equality and Diversity; avoiding unlawful discrimination and ensuring best practice

Successful Recruitment: job description and person specification

Advertising and job application pack

Writing Advert Copy

Where to Advertise

How to place an advert

Job Application Pack

Receiving and handling applications

Informal Discussion

Successful Recruitment – short-listing and selection

Handling Job Applications

Short-listing Matrix

Short-listing meeting

Arrangements for Interview

Interview Questions

Presentations

Other exercises

Conduct of Interviews

Review Process

Group Selection Process

Making Your Decision

Notification, offering and appointing

Conditional Job Offer

Notifying Unsuccessful Candidates

References and other checks

Formal offer and acceptance

Overall process and planning

Recruiting new staff members is not as straightforward as it sometimes seems. There are many things you need to consider to ensure you employ the best person to do the job, and to be sure you do this legally. Before you start, it’s a good idea to sketch out what you need to do, how you might share out these tasks and how long the whole process might take. If the job is a new post then you might also refer to the Reading Voluntary Action (RVA) guide Employing for the first time 

Policies and documentation

An Equality & Diversity Policy is a must before recruiting somebody; if you have one already is it up to date? Ideally, you should also have a Recruitment & Selection Policy; if you don’t have one now, or the time to write one before recruiting, then put in place a process to develop one as soon as possible.

Even this is an existing post, it is best to review the job description and person specification to ensure these are still relevant (see next section of this guide). Do you have an Application Form? Using CV’s as the basis for considering applications can make it difficult to extract the information you want, time consuming and opens up potential for discrimination. ACAS provide sample application forms, job descriptions and person specifications that can be adapted for your own use.

Selection Panel

Your panel should be convened as soon as possible and involved in all stages of recruitment; this will not only ensure that there is a consistent approach throughout the process but will enable them to gel as a team before the potentially difficult stage of interview and decision making is reached.

You will need to ensure that the panel is as representative as it can be, particularly in terms of gender and ethnicity, but also thinking about stakeholders e.g. project partners, service users, staff or volunteers. At the same time the panel must be kept to a manageable size; usually an odd number of people with a minimum of 3 and absolute maximum of 5.

In selecting panel members you will need to think about their experience in terms of selection and their expertise in terms of the nature of the role and being able to judge who might best fill it. Panel members without formal recruitment experience should receive training and you should consider bringing in some expertise from outside the organisation to plug any critical gaps in knowledge. For consistency, you should only select panel members whose availability allows them to participate in all the relevant processes.  

Advertising

There are various ways to ‘advertise’ your vacancy and these are dealt with later on in this guide. What you must consider now is how long is required for news of your job to reach your potential candidates through these various channels and allow them time to prepare and submit a good application to you. For most jobs a minimum of three weeks is usual, but also  consider what allowances you might need to make for publication cycles, weekends, bank holidays or the holiday ‘seasons’ more generally when fixing your closing date.

Short-listing

If, for some good reason, your panel have not all been involved prior to this stage then they must all be involved from now. You will need to have agreed the relevant short-listing criteria from your person specification, prepared the documentation and made arrangements for sharing copies of applications before the closing date and fixed a date to get together for deciding the short list well in advance.  

Selection Interviews/Tests

Another date(s) when the whole panel will need to be available and one preferably fixed well in advance so it can be flagged up in your application pack. The panel will also need to have agreed on the relevant questions, tests, prepared documentation and made logistical arrangements for the session(s).    

Deciding and Offering

If you have had a very long day it may be best to ‘sleep’ on the decision. Although this means you will have to come back together to decide, interviewing is very tiring and a decision may be better made with a fresh mind. You will need to think about who is making a conditional offer, how and when will the other candidates be told/given feedback and how much time to allow your preferred candidate to ‘think about it’.

References and checks

Will you be willing to go ahead with verbal references? What other checks might you need to allow time for e.g. Criminal Records Bureau checks if your post holder will be working with vulnerable people or confirmation of Right to Work in the UK?

Acceptance and Notice

Your preferred candidate should only give notice to terminate any current employment once they have an unconditional offer from you i.e. you have received satisfactory references and documentation. Notice to terminate is then likely to be at least a month, although sometimes the candidate can negotiate on the basis of annual leave owed etc.

Recruitment Process Checklist

Indicative Recruitment Timetable

This timeline is probably about as tight as it can be, relying on being highly organised, with advance notice of interview dates yet recruitment could still take around four months from start to finish and DBS (formerly CRB) checks even longer.

Equality and Diversity; avoiding unlawful discrimination and ensuring best practice

The law is about preventing unfair discrimination and this does not just apply to people already in a job, but throughout the recruitment process. It is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against a candidate for a job because of a ‘protected characteristic’ (e.g. sex, age, disability, race, sexuality or belief) in any part of the recruitment process – in job descriptions, person specifications, application forms, during interviews, in tests, or in short listing.

You will need to be aware that discrimination may not only be Direct e.g. requiring applicants have a particular national origin or are ‘able bodied’ but can, and is more likely to be, Indirect in that an apparently valid requirement tends to discriminate against groups of people who are less likely to be able to meet it when, considered objectively, the requirement is not strictly necessary to fulfil the duties of the job. For instance, this is why there is no longer a strict height requirement for Police Officers, which tended to discriminate against both women and certain ethnic groups.

More information about avoiding discrimination in recruitment is available from the Equality and Human Rights Commission web site at: http://www.equalityhumanrights.com or the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Review web site at http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/employment/discrimination/index.html 

Discrimination in recruitment is not always unlawful and may be justified where the characteristic (e.g. Sex, Race etc.) of preferred candidates is a Genuine Occupational Requirement. You might see an advert for a woman of a particular South Asian background to run a service for women of the same ethnicity seeking shelter from domestic violence. The circumstances where this might apply are restrictive and you should seek advice in any instance where you feel you may be discriminating against prospective or current staff. If you are in any doubt contact RVA’s Advice Service: advice@rva.org.uk

Your objectivity in avoiding discrimination through the various aspects of the recruitment process and achieving best practice standards in promoting equality and diversity will be substantially enhanced by having an Equality & Diversity Policy which, as well as for other good reasons, should be a prerequisite to employing anybody. You can find advice on developing an ‘Equal Opportunities’ policy from ACAS or from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and can find many other examples through a quick web search on ‘equality and diversity policy’.  

key principles:

• The law relating to unfair discrimination applies to all the processes of recruitment in relation to age, race, gender, disability, sexuality and belief

• Unlawful discrimination can be direct or indirect; you need to pay particular attention to avoiding the latter

• Lawful discrimination can be applied where there is a genuine occupational requirement under the relevant Act

• A robust Equality and Diversity Policy will help you to avoid unlawful discrimination and, if followed, defend any claims against you

Job description and person specification

If your are recruiting to a new post then you will already have formed and agreed a clear view of how the role will contribute to your organisation’s plans and perhaps have fleshed out what you will want the post holder to do in an outline Job Description (JD) and Person Specification (PS) – see Defining the Role and Requirements for the Job & Person in RVA’s guide to Employing for the first time

You are now ready to move on to prepare a detailed and structured JD and PS. These are two key processes that will not only assist you in advertising the job and communicating to potential applicants what it is about, but will form the basis for structuring your selection processes to ensure you get the person with the best fit to the skills, abilities and experience required to make it a success.

Where you are filling an existing vacancy, it is still a good idea to check the JD/PS to ensure that any ‘creep’ in the nature of the role that has happened over time is reflected in an up to date description that you will be sending applicants. You may even want to consider a review of the role to ensure that it still meeting organisational requirements.

Job Description – this should include a statement of the job title and overall purpose together with a list of the duties and responsibilities of the post as well as some basic information about the role e.g. lines of responsibility, place and hours of work and perhaps an organisational chart or important lines of communication. As you develop a list of the specific duties and responsibilities it will often be useful to break these down into the main areas of responsibility first and then move on to particular duties within each of these. Alongside the duties specific to this post, there will probably be some generally expected of all employees.

Having got these listed out it is then important that you think objectively whether each of these is an essential requirement or a desirable requirement since this will become a key aspect of measuring your candidates’ respective merits. It is unlikely, and even undesirable, that candidates will meet all of your requirements; they will be looking for, and need some scope for, growth and development in the job. But, you do need to be clear about what your essential needs are to enable the fundamentals of the job to be done successfully. After you do so, you can then organise these in a structured way in the formal person specification.

Each of these stages flows from and is dependent on the previous one, for example:

Job Title:  Project Co-ordinator

Job Purpose: The Co-ordinator will be responsible for the development, management and delivery of the project aims, having regard to the business plan and project funding requirements. The Co-ordinator will ensure the development of project sites and a support network across Reading through engagement of individuals and groups in the community, effective deployment of project staff and resources and maximising project funding.

Responsible to: Centre Manager

Responsible for: Sessional workers and project volunteers

Duties and Responsibilities:

One category might be

Community Engagement and Participation

and a specific duty could be

• Work with the project partner at each site to develop and implement a  plan to engage families from the local community as project participants

Another category could be

Staff Management and Development

and a specific duty could be

• Identify the need for, recruit, train and manage and motivate project  volunteers

Person Specification

The specific requirements to meet the job duties and responsibilities above, together with some general requirements could then be set out as:

Template job descriptions and person specifications are available from the ACAS website.

Advertising and job application pack

It may seem obvious, but the way that you advertise and the information you give to potential applicants will be key factors in successful recruitment to your job vacancy. In addition some advertising mediums are expensive, particularly print, and usually charged on the basis of size or number of words, so most employers will not usually be able to afford to pay for more than two or three placements or use a lot of space/words to get your message across.

This means that you need to give some careful thought about how to reach the right people and provide them with the information that will motivate them to apply for your job.

How you appear as an organisation and potential employer through your advertising and job information pack is probably as important in attracting good applicants as the nature of the role and its terms and conditions. It is also worth remembering that in an advert you are presenting yourself in public to lots of people who may not be interested in your specific vacancy but may be interested as a potential donor, service user, partner etc. Your presentation should be ‘professional’ and portray you in a positive way.

Writing Advert Copy

There is some basic information that it is essential to include; what the job is, who it is working for, how much is the pay, where is it based and how can the potential applicant get more information. If there is something attractively distinctive about your organisation, compared to others like it, then this may be important. It is also normal practice to include a closing date and to indicate if the job is not full time or is for a fixed term.

For many organisations this will be as much information as cost will allow. If you can afford more space/words then, alongside any unique selling point e.g. ‘the leading local organisation….’ or ‘a rare opportunity to…….’ a few details about the job, précised from the job purpose paragraph in your Job Description and, perhaps more importantly, the key attributes of the person you are looking for taken from the Person Specification is all that is really necessary to hook your candidates and get them to take the next step.

Some ‘experts’ will say that you should ensure your advert ‘stands out in the crowd’ to ensure it is read by as many people as possible. For some large organisations, who can afford it and who are perhaps experiencing difficulty in recruitment, this might be appropriate but for most it is almost certainly a waste of money. You are seeking people who are interested in doing the sort of job you have to offer and, provided you have advertised in the place where they are looking, a capable and organised applicant will be searching for your job.

If you have a logo and it tells people who you are then this can fulfil that requirement. Otherwise, unless your logo is a well known ‘brand’ or you are trying to build brand recognition, then you will need to consider whether this is worth the space it takes. Whilst placing logos, don’t forget the requirements of any funders for recognition in all public communications e.g. the National Lottery and potentially using those for any quality accreditations you hold e.g. Investors in People.

So far, we have focussed on print, but recruitment advertising is increasingly moving to internet based media especially web and email, where the basics stay the same but details in presentation may need to change; if you are on your own web site you won’t need your logo. But also the way that you introduce links to further job information will probably alter and the opportunity to bring in other links may arise. In an email bulletin you might be allowed very limited information, but compensated by the fact that full details are just a click away for the reader.

key principles

• Use positive language in the first or second person where possible e.g. refer to yourselves as ‘we’ and your reader as ‘you’

• Use language your reader might, keeping it simple and avoiding jargon – check by looking in the publication you will use

• Keep sentences short, no more than 15 words in each – check back for commas and ‘ands’ to replace them with a full stop

• Be specific and precise about what your job is and who you are looking for to fill it – drawn from your agreed JD & PS – focussing more on the person than the role

• Avoid using language that might be discriminatory, either directly or indirectly, e.g. ‘mature person’ or ‘energetic individual’

• Work to the maxim ‘less is more’ with as much ‘white space’ as possible – this draws the eye to the text, whilst dense print is off-putting

• Review your wording and presentation to suit different media

• Use simple type-styles: Arial, Tahoma, Times, etc, preferably 11 or 12 point font size in the main text and 12-20 point in headings, emboldened for emphasis but AVOID THE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS – as you can see they’re harder to read

• Look in relevant publications (see below) for ideas of what to do, or not to do

• Get somebody, preferably unfamiliar with the job, to read it through to ensure it makes sense

Where to Advertise

Do a quick mental recap of who are the people you are trying to reach. Do you know what publications they might read, networks they might be connected into, places they might frequent? Is your market just a local one or are you likely to cast your net wider, perhaps on a national scale?

Are there well established channels for recruitment advertising for the type of job you want to fill – this could be a publication or website that specialises in Voluntary Sector jobs, or for a specific professional discipline or a general area of interest. Some newspapers have specific days for types of jobs – so check this with them – see the list of Local and National recruitment channels below.  

There are lots of opportunities for free advertising through email bulletins and mailing lists or web based groups or through some organisation’s websites. But also think ‘outside the box’ e.g. what about some of the parish or free community magazines, events where you might be able to leave leaflets or venues where you can put up posters?

Recruitment Agencies

A further option for recruitment is through an agency but, with fees ranging from around 18% to 25% of the annual salary for a successful recruitment, this is probably only worth considering in very specific circumstances. Although you will have access to the agency’s database of job seekers, and they may do some additional web based placement of adverts, this is not an admin free option. You will still have to do all the preparatory work, appoint the agency, provide them with the necessary information and review potential candidates they identify as they come forward. The latter can be a time consuming process unless you have provided very specific instructions and have a good agency ‘consultant’ working with you.

The upsides of using an agency are that, unlike conventional advertising, it will seek out potential applicants rather than relying on them ‘coming to you’ and you will not have to pay a fee if they are unsuccessful. In this context this option is worth considering if you know that you have a position that is likely to be very difficult to fill. However, this is a judgment to be made up front, otherwise you may find yourself with the worst of both worlds;  having wasted costs advertising unsuccessfully, suffered from consequent delay and bearing the additional high cost of an agency fee.

Finally, perhaps for the most senior positions only, you might consider using a recruitment consultant. This will substantially reduce your admin input and bring you the benefits of invaluable professional expertise, but at a high price.  

How to place an advert

Before placing your advertisement(s) you need three things to hand:

• your advertisement copy, saved in a Word document including your own and any other logos in your suggested format

• a list of the potential channels for advertising you have identified

• your budget for recruitment

and enough time to get all the information you need and make the right choice.

For print media (usually web also) you will need to supply the publisher with a copy of your advertisement. It is wise to have an idea of the size you might require – usually referred to in columns by depth in mm, which you can get the measure of by looking at ads in the relevant publication. As well as size, there may be an option of colour or fancy boxes etc. You should also fully discuss the placement of your ad – there may be special days for particular types of jobs or sections within the recruitment pages – it is important to get in the right one. Print publications may also be able to offer you a basic design service for little additional cost, which can be useful if you are not used to drafting/composing.    

For web based companies, some will have a standard rate but others will vary according to your word count; with the former it may just be a case of uploading your ad, but more usually you will have to discuss options and get a

quote – particularly as a first time user. Many web based sites will come with

show how these generate additional expressions of interest (usually page hits or download counts), but not whether these translate into quality applications. It may be that if you have a post that you know is going to be difficult to fill then such options might just stretch your reach a little bit further.

Local & National Recruitment Channels and Costs

Print

Adverts in local and national newspapers or other publications don’t come cheap. They are priced in ‘column centimetres’; each publication’s column width will be a particular size, usually 31-33 mm which, for practical purposes, requires at least two column widths for an advert. So if your ad was to fit in a box 70mm deep by 64 mm wide this would be referred to as 7x2 i.e. 14 ‘column centimetres’. The indicative prices below have been calculated on this size advert, which is usually quite big enough to include all the basic information.

Reading Chronicle is published weekly on Thursday, with an associated free paper on Wednesday. There is an option to appear in the Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead Observer and the Bracknell & Wokingham News. Ads are also posted on the Chronicle website jobs section. The contract details are as follows Tel: 0118 955 3354 www.readingchronicle.co.uk 

Reading Evening Post currently appears 4 weekdays paid and once free as the Reading Post on Wednesday. There is an option to appear in the local Times series, with Wokingham, Bracknell & Ascot and Crowthorne & Sandhurst editions, plus the Bracknell Forest Standard (free) paper. Jobs are also posted on Get the Job and Jobs Thames Valley.  The contact details are Tel: 0118 921 7734 www.getreading.co.uk 

Societyguardian on Wednesday is the main national publication for a wide range of public and voluntary sector jobs e.g. in social care, health care, housing, advice, community development, environment etc. Note that marketing and fundraising jobs appear on Monday, Education on Tuesday and ICT on Thursday. There are different costs for these days and an option to appear in Saturday Guardian in addition. Prices tend to include an entry on Guardian Jobs website for up to four weeks. Contact details are Tel: 020 3353 3400 www.guardian.co.uk/recruiters. 

Third Sector is a monthly paid for publication, focussing on the Voluntary Sector, with news, features and sector advice columns. Recruitment adverts have a significant bias toward fundraising jobs, although this has gradually broadened out into other areas. Contact details are Tel: 020 8267 4748 www.thirdsector.co.uk.

Internet

RVA has an E-bulletin, which is sent to 900+ local subscribers each week, which can feature job opportunities in the not-for-profit sector at no charge. Contact info@rva.org.uk or tel: 0118 957 4123.

If your potential market is further afield then the London Voluntary Service Council have a jobs section on their web site www.lvsc.org.uk and postings are free. You could also try approaching other local CVSs in Berkshire or beyond.

Charity Job www.charityjob.co.uk and Jobs in Charities www.jobsincharities.co.uk both do as they say on the tin and focus on jobs in the voluntary sector.

Jobs go Public www.jobsgopublic.com has a broader remit and reach as the name suggests and in consequence costs are much higher for a basic posting.

For jobs in the sector, Environment Job www.environmentjob.co.uk is worth considering.

Job Centre Plus is also free to advertise www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk but you should be aware that you may well get lots of enquiries from people with little or no relevant experience/skills for your job, which could be very onerous.

Agency advertising

Finally, perhaps for very hard to fill or senior positions, you might consider using an agency for recruitment advertising only; this is a different service to full agency recruitment in that their role is solely to advise on wording and presentation, design artwork and to place your advert in the relevant publications.

It is sometimes possible to secure the services of such an agency ‘free’ in that they will charge you standard rate for the advert, but because they secure bulk buying discounts can offer a basic writing and design service within that margin – e.g. Bates Tavner www.batestavner.co.uk or WPJ Floyd www.wjpfloyd.co.uk 

Job Application Pack

Your Job Application pack should contain enough basic information, together with the application and equality and diversity monitoring forms, to engage potential applicants and enable them to readily get a clear view of what you have to offer and what your expectations are. Further information can be accessed via your web site, or supplied to short listed candidates later.

Together with your Job Description and Person Specification, it is usual to include a short section about the organisation and/or about the particular project, team or function to put these in context. To round this off you might include a covering letter that provides/reiterates general information e.g. how your processes work, the closing date for applications, the interview date if you have fixed one and a contact for any queries or further information. If you can, then stitch this information together with the JD/PS into a single pdf file, whilst leaving the job application and monitoring forms in a word processor format.  These documents can then be made available by email or on your web site, but it is also best to have a few hard copies available to send out in the post.  

Receiving and handling applications

In your job application pack, you will need to indicate how you will be able to receive applications; by email and/or hard copy and make sure you have robust arrangements in place to print, copy and distribute them to short list panel members, whilst maintaining strict confidentiality. Ideally, these arrangements should also include removing personal information pages from applications and numbering them. Equality & Diversity monitoring forms will also need recording.

Informal Discussion

It remains quite common, particularly for more senior positions, to see an invitation to potential applicants to contact somebody for an ‘informal discussion’. This clearly provides the opportunity for more information to be given than could be included in a basic job application pack, particularly about background issues, and to answer specific questions candidates may have in helping them to decide whether to apply. Unfortunately it also allows for inequity and unfairness to creep in. Any person nominated to do this must have a good awareness of the pitfalls and a clear brief about what can be said.

key principles:

• Include enough information to engage your potential applicant and inspire them to apply or seek further information

• As well as a JD & PS include some basic information about your organisation and/or project

• Be very clear about how applications can be received and put in place arrangements to handle them effectively

• Think carefully about any offer of ‘informal discussions’ about your job and how you will avoid discrimination or acting unfairly

Shortlisting and selection

You are now moving into the final stages of the process of appointing to your job vacancy; a time when the effort you have put into carefully thinking through what you need the person to do, the attributes they need to perform the role and the best ways of reaching your potential candidates should soon be rewarded through a successful appointment.

It is also a time when you need to maintain the highest standards of objectivity in what is ultimately a subjective decision about the varied merits of different candidates. This will not only help you to not be swayed in your view by the superficial attractions of a particular candidate’s background or qualifications rather than their substantive skills, knowledge and abilities, but also avoid pitfalls leading to potential discrimination.

Each stage of the shortlisting and selection process plays an important part in enabling you to make your judgement and needs to be designed to reveal as much as possible about how each candidate matches up to some particular aspects of your person specification.  

The first of these stages will be to whittle down your pool of applicants to those who meet your essential requirements, as far as this can be judged from an application form, to create a short-list of candidates who you wish to take forward to the second and possibly subsequent stages; interview, presentation or other exercises/tests.  

Handling Job Applications

Before dealing with the specific selection processes it is worth setting out some general principles and best practice for handling of job applications you receive.

Confidentiality is a key principle that must be observed at all times; this is not just about respecting privacy but also about complying with data protection law.

Arrangements need to be made for receiving, storing, copying and distributing applications to panel members, with clear instructions to all those directly involved about maintaining strict confidentiality. You should ensure provision of secure storage for applications and that redundant paperwork is ultimately shredded before recycling (or put through a certified secure recycling process).

It is best practice for the person receiving applications to remove the front page, containing personal details, and number this and the rest of the form which will be forwarded to the panel for short listing. Equality and Diversity monitoring forms should also be kept separate from applications for later analysis.

Shortlisting Matrix

Using your standard application form and requiring your candidates to address what you have set out in your person specification will now enable you to make an efficient, effective and fair comparison between them. To make the best use of this your appointment panel will need to agree a set of initial criteria to judge candidates’ written applications against – usually in the form of a short listing matrix. Having worked together as a team the selection panel should by now have a shared understanding of your expectations for each criterion, but do make sure that any doubts about this are checked out between panel members.

At this stage it should be sufficient to focus on ‘essential’ criteria and only those that can be judged to a reasonable extent through the written application. For example the criteria in your person specification may include:

Since experience of recruiting/managing staff is only desirable this can be ignored for the time being. Of the essential criteria in the example above you would find it very difficult to effectively judge candidates’ abilities relating to inspiring and motivating others and team working from a written application – these too can be set aside for the time being. However, with regard to interpersonal and communication skills, if written skills are a key requirement, you might include just this element in your matrix since the way an application is written will be a good indicator of this.

By assessing all of your essential criteria in this way and selecting around six of those that can be reasonably judged from a written application you should be able to develop a matrix that your panel can use as a tool to effectively differentiate between candidates. This should be recorded in a written form, both to facilitate later discussion and as a record of the basis of your decision. It is also useful to ‘score’ your candidates against each of the criteria – perhaps on a scale of 1-5, although this is not about a simplistic mathematical exercise. A section for comments can also be included. Using the above examples your completed matrix might therefore look like this in an abbreviated form:  

Shortlisting meeting

Ideally this will have been fixed some time in advance to ensure that all panel members can attend and sufficient time be allowed for you to share your views and reach a decision – a couple of hours should normally be sufficient, sometimes much less. Face to face is best, but if this has proved impossible then try using a telephone conferencing service so that you can still all speak to and hear each other. Various services are available but www.powwownow.co.uk  offers an automated facility charged to each user at their own provider’s national call rate.

An effective way to approach this meeting is to start by checking which applicants each panel member has selected as definite candidates for interview and identifying those who are common to all. One of three things might then happen:

• You find you have two or three candidates in common, together with others where two people have chosen the same or in some cases just one person has selected someone
• You find that you have lots of candidates who have ‘made the grade’
• You each have a matching list of five or six candidates!

In the unlikely event of the latter being the case your job is nearly done and you can proceed to the next stage.

Most likely you will find some common ground with your panel colleagues and can select these candidates for your short list now. You will then need to compare the candidates who were not common to all your lists. It is best to refer to your respective short listing and application forms for each candidate in turn, stating and reviewing your reasons for choosing (or not choosing) them. From here on the process is about sharing and reflecting on each others’ opinions, refining your views and finding common ground; all the time keeping the criteria you have set for candidates and yourselves at the forefront of your deliberations.

For full interviews you should not aim to try and see more than 5 or 6 candidates in a day, depending on the overall time required for each. Having gone through a rigorous process so far, this should give you enough candidates of good quality to select from unless you have more than one post to fill. Remember, you only actually need one candidate – the right one – and taking too many forward to interview will be very time consuming and your decision may be just as difficult at that stage.

An issue that can be a vexed one for organisations with a number of staff is the question of internal candidates. There is sometimes a sense that an internal candidate should be afforded the ‘courtesy’ of an interview; even when they don’t fully match up to others in the running. This is flawed, both in principle and in practice for the staff member, the organisation and other candidates.

To do so clearly gives an unfair advantage to your member of staff and in some circumstances might even run the risk of a claim of discrimination by an external candidate. Interviewing a candidate who is clearly not up to scratch is a waste of their time and yours; time which could and should be much better spent with them setting out the reasons for your decision, reviewing their application and identifying how you might assist them to meet the personal development required to achieve their aims.

Some personal feedback for all internal candidates is essential. Whether you contact external applicants who are not short listed is optional, but no longer normal practice, although it is best practice to give feedback when requested.

In addition to those forms the panel members will need for interviews, you should arrange for one set of application forms to be kept for six months in case of any queries. Both sets of forms will need to be reunited with their front covers. All other forms should be disposed of securely. Equality & Diversity monitoring forms should be retained for later analysis.

key principles

• Make sure you put in place clear procedures for handling, storage and disposal of applications, which maintain strict confidentiality

• Develop a matrix from the essential criteria from your person specification that you can use to ‘score’ candidates for short listing – ignore those that can’t be judged from a written form

• Set aside sufficient time for a short listing meeting involving the whole selection panel – preferably face to face

• As you identify and discuss the merits of candidates to interview – don’t lose sight of the objective criteria you have agreed on for the purpose of comparison

• Don’t be tempted to interview somebody just because they are an ‘internal’ candidate; make better use of both your time by giving appropriate feedback and guidance toward their personal development

Arrangements for Interview

A job selection interview is generally a stressful process for an applicant, and taxing for panel members too. This can be mitigated to some extent by careful thought and preparation in relation to the process, timings and practical arrangements. In turn this should mean that you will get a better picture of your candidates’ abilities and their relative merits. Don’t forget that the interview is not a one way street – you are also being judged by candidates and should be aiming to present yourselves as well organised and efficient.

Before contacting candidates you will need to know what the timings are and where your interviews will be held; to do this you will need to have worked out what the processes will be, how long they will each take and what space(s) are required to enable them to happen e.g. is one room required for a panel interview and another for some practical test you wish them to complete?

requirements at this stage. You should think carefully about which of these processes will be most likely to reveal the information you need, how long is required to complete them, the best order to undertake them and what space, other people and equipment are needed to enable them to happen smoothly and effectively.

Ideally, you will have decided what you want candidates to do and the overall time required for each in advance, so it will just be a case of working this into a timetable for the number of people you wish to see. As you do so, it is always a good idea to allow a contingency of 10 minutes between candidates – you can be sure that some will overrun and you need to allow the panel a ‘breather’ between each interview to collect their thoughts and papers ready for the next.  

If you can, it is best to contact candidates initially by telephone, with your timetable to hand, so that any difficulties with certain times of the day can be accommodated as far as possible. If you do simply notify candidates of a fixed time then ensure you make allowances for any longer distance travel required.

When you follow up with a written notification – Email is usually easiest – make sure you not only give the obvious details of time and place, but also tell candidates who the panel members are, an indication of the overall process and time they will spend with you and clear directions to the location. You will also need to send the brief for any preparatory work together with any additional information you are giving candidates at this stage or a web address to access this.

Always ask candidates if they have any special requirements to enable them to complete the tasks you propose and to confirm their intention to attend.

Interview Questions

These will be the main way through which you will aim to find out how your candidate can match up to the skills, knowledge and attributes you require. As such your questions will be mainly driven by the requirements in your person specification, however it is a good idea to start with an ‘icebreaker’ to help the candidate ease into the interview with a relatively straightforward question. An example could be:

‘can you tell us why you want this particular job and give us three key skills or experiences that you would bring to it?’

Another relatively easy, but potentially revealing question that can be used is:

‘if you were telling a friend or family member about this job what would you tell them (name of your organisation) does and this job is about?’

Your remaining questions should be tightly focussed on specific requirements; you should be clear about what you want to find out and, as far as possible, what you think the ‘correct’ answer is. Using the previous examples from the hypothetical person specification your questions and answers might look like this:

There are a couple of ‘golden rules’ about interview questions; ask open-ended questions and avoid multiple questions as far as possible. Open questions are likely to include words such as ‘how’, ‘tell me’, ‘what’ rather than ‘did’ or ‘have’ – phrasing questions in this way is more likely to get the candidate to ‘open-up’ and talk about their experiences rather than give very short factual responses. Multiple questions, such as ‘tell me about how you achieved xxx, what you did to avoid yyy and what lessons you learnt from this?’ are likely to be confusing for the applicant, and probably for the panel in understanding their answers clearly. It is far better to have a follow-up question on the same subject area. Whilst ‘why’ questions are open-ended they are also by nature challenging and, if used repeatedly, unlikely to get a good response from more sensitive people.

More broadly your aim is to understand the candidate not intimidate them. Your approach should be to compose ‘good’ questions, which are not necessarily the same as ‘tough’ questions. Gentler and cleverer questions will get candidates talking to you in a revealing way, whereas just being tough is likely to do the opposite, make candidates feel ill at ease, clam up and just try to tell you what they think you want to hear.

Presentations

A presentation is not an essential component of all interviews and is really only relevant if presentation skills are actually required for the position to which you are recruiting. If presentation skills are a key aspect of your person specification then try to have regard to the likely scenarios when these will be required and to make your brief for this realistic e.g. ‘imagine we are a commissioning board for care services you have been asked to present to’. If you do need to test your candidates’ presentation skills then the process can be used to reveal knowledge or skills in other areas of your person specification e.g. asking for presentation of their outline plan for organising a large event or consultation process. Bearing in mind what you want candidates to cover, you will need to allow enough time but not too much; a lot can be said in 5 minutes and 10 should be an absolute maximum. It is a good idea to allow time for some follow up questions.  

If your likely scenario would require some form of digital presentation ask for this, but if this is not essential then leave the format up to the candidate; their choice can be revealing in itself. Finally, make sure you allow candidates enough time for preparation, including any research they may have to do.

Other exercises

Sometimes it is not really possible to check candidates’ ability other than through some form of practical exercise. However, as with any part of the selection process, you must be very clear about which aspect of your person specification you are addressing e.g. ‘ability to understanding and interpret financial information’ could be tested by asking candidates to comment on a set of accounts or monthly reports and what further questions they would raise or ‘ability to engage community groups and individuals’ could be tested by setting a scenario and asking candidates to list key points would include in a meeting with a group.

For practical reasons alone, your exercise will need to be supervised and timed. As with the interview the process should be designed to be revealing so, within the constraints of your overall timetable, avoid turning it into a time trial if this bears no relation to what will happen in reality. More sophisticated tests such as verbal or numeric reasoning or psychometric testing will require you to buy in specific expertise from accredited practitioners, and for this reason are usually reserved for more senior positions.  

Conduct of Interviews

Thinking about and planning the environment for your interview is as essential as that for questions, presentations or other exercises. A room layout that is informal without barriers of tables, other than a low table for drinks and papers, is more likely to put candidates at ease. A location where you will not be interrupted is essential. Provide some water and glasses for candidates and panel members.  

Don’t let any presentation related equipment interfere with your personal interaction with the candidate. Ensure that the laptop and projector setup is done and tested in advance and if at all possible get candidates’ digital files sent to you and put on the desktop, tested and ready to run the day beforehand.

You will need to ensure that each panel member has copies of job application forms, a set of question sheets for each candidate and copies of any brief for presentation or other exercise.

At the start of each interview a panel member should explain what you are going to do, how long the process will take, explain the opportunity for candidate’s questions and remind them to ask for clarification of anything they are unsure about. As you proceed through your questions it is a good idea to tell the candidate as you are handing over to the next panel member.  

As a candidate it is easy to forget part of what you have been asked or to give relevant information. Prompting candidates in a way that doesn’t lead them and probing their answers to get to the nub of what you are trying to reveal is fine and necessary if used with care to give them a fair chance to reveal themselves to you. You may also need to clarify aspects of a candidate’s answer e.g. to understand their personal involvement in something if they have been using ‘we’ when giving examples.

Following the ‘rules’ on open and multiple questions should minimise the need for prompting and probing, which if used repeatedly can make the interview feel more like an interrogation for the candidate.

On rare occasions it may even be necessary to interrupt a candidate who has clearly misunderstood your question (which may be your fault). Since this will disrupt their train of thought it must be used with great caution and only when it has become clear that they are on the wrong track, not just going round a loop line to get there.

key principles

• Plan your interview timetable carefully to allow sufficient time for all of your questions and activities, plus some contingency and time for the candidates’ own questions

• Ensure your interview space will be free from interruption, is informally laid out, that all equipment is in place and working and each panel member has copies of the necessary paperwork

• Make proper meeting and waiting arrangements for candidates and for supervision of any practical tasks outside of the interview

• Ensure all interview questions are tightly focussed around the requirements of the person specification, plus any questions to clarify any points unclear from the candidate’s application form

• Design your initial questions to put the candidate at ease and subsequently avoid high pressure type questioning in favour of open questions designed to reveal maximum information

• Make sure that panel members are clear about which questions they are asking, who is introducing the process and who is wrapping it up at the end

• Prompt, clarify and probe candidates to find out what you need to know, but in a fair and non-intimidating way

Two Stage Interview Process

If you have adopted a two stage interview process, you will need to have decided in advance precisely what aspects of your person specification you are going to ‘test’ at each stage. It may be that your first interview is shorter, focussing on limited prime aspects of this in order to screen out candidates between whom you could not easily differentiate at the shortlisting stage.

Having established that your candidates for second interview all meet your basic criteria, your questions should be deep and probing for detail, preferably focussed on scenarios that are specific to the job. For more senior positions there may be particular organisational issues about which you wish to explore the candidates’ approaches to resolving or making the most of. The management styles that the candidates both use with others and respond to themselves might also be key areas to explore as well as working styles with other organisations or partners.

It will generally be best to defer presentations and other exercises to this stage and, given the smaller number of candidates, you may wish to consider involving other members of the organisation outside of the appointment panel.

Group Selection Process

Group selection, often called Assessment Centres, puts all the candidates together for certain parts of the process. These are usually interactive exercises or tasks that are observed by panel members and sit alongside other individual selection processes, including interview(s), which take place at other times. Group Selection can also provide an opportunity for the organisation to present information to candidates collectively and for other members of the organisation, beyond the selection panel, to observe them. Candidates are often required to attend over more than one day which, together with the fact that the group exercises and tasks generally require specialist recruitment expertise, means that they are usually reserved for senior appointments only. Group selection is undoubtedly a much more robust process than standard interview, but expensive and time consuming.      

For more information about ‘good’ interview questions and other selection techniques see www.businessballs.com/interviews.htm   

Making Your Decision

After a full day of interviews you will need some time for individual reflection on the candidates’ performance, going over your notes to refresh your mind, and reviewing the results of any practical exercises completed outside of the interview. If there is not time to do this and allow for full discussion before panel members have to leave i.e. at least an hour, then you should provide for this to happen as soon as possible afterward.

The principle of finding common ground amongst panel members to start with, used in the short listing process, is again useful but it may be best on this occasion to start with those candidates you feel you are unable to appoint. These can then be set aside quite quickly, but with full reasons for their rejection recorded as you do so.

You may then wish to focus on candidates who panel members feel may be appointable, taking it in turn to state their reasons and any reservations. Again the process from here on is about sharing and reflecting on each others’ opinions, refining your views and finding common ground; all the time keeping the criteria you have set for candidates and yourselves at the forefront of your deliberations and referring to your interview and other notes. Again if time runs out, or you just become too tired, then agree to break and reconvene later.

Notification, offering and appointing

General practice is now to contact candidates by telephone. Following your selection decision, you will need to agree within the panel who is going to contact whom and ensure they are familiar with what they should and shouldn’t say to successful and unsuccessful candidates respectively. As matters of good practice and respect these tasks should not be delegated to someone outside of the selection panel.

Always try to get in touch with candidates in the timescale that you indicated at interview, but not at the expense of thorough consideration of your decision. If there is some delay in the process then get somebody to let them know – if there are candidates who are definitely not suitable at this stage then notify them accordingly (see below).

Conditional Job Offer

You are excited, having chosen a successful candidate after all your effort, however when contacting your successful candidate don’t forget that you must carefully present your offer as conditional upon references and any other necessary requirements e.g. Criminal Record or health checks and confirmation of the right to work in the UK. If you didn’t check referee details at the interview then do so now, ensuring these include the current/last employer, and asking candidates to alert their referees to expect your enquiry.

Be aware that even though successful, it is also important to flag up to the prospective employee any areas of development or training you have identified and ensure that they concur with these. This candidate may also want more general feedback on the process, which you should be prepared to give.

Don’t just assume your candidate is going to accept your offer; always ask them to confirm that they are still interested following the interview and start to talk about their potential start dates – all subject to references etc.  

Notifying Unsuccessful Candidates

It’s not the most pleasant or easiest of tasks, but someone has to do it and it’s unlikely that a very reluctant person will do it well – you may also want to share out this task. Candidates who got to interview will have put a lot of time and effort into applying for your job and deserve to be afforded some considered and comprehensive feedback. In principle it’s not a good idea to delay this but if you don’t have time to do this properly immediately then tell them this and arrange a later date.

Quality feedback requires some preparation prior to a phone call to review the panel’s reason for their decision. Try to bring out the positive factors you saw in the candidate as well as being honest about the areas where they fell short of your expectations. If you are able, then indicate the means by which they might meet their development needs.

If you have a clear reserve candidate, then it’s a good idea to ensure you don’t contact them until the conditional offer to your first choice has been accepted.  

References and other checks

It is often a good idea, and expedites the process, to phone referees where this is possible. Any conversation should focus on the key questions in your reference form, but this should not replace the formal completion of this – see pro forma attached. You will need to ask the referee if they are willing to give their opinion verbally and, if they are, this can present the opportunity to ask any follow up questions to elucidate what might otherwise be a bland answer to a question on a form. In a phone call you will need to briefly outline the role and in a written communication (preferably by email) you will need to send the job description and person specification.

This process has assumed references will be taken up after interview, for the successful candidate only. There is an option to take up references for short listed candidates prior to interview, but this is clearly more time consuming and if you have set interview dates in advance you are unlikely to have them by then in any event. References are generally used to confirm what you think you already know and to check some basic facts, however if you have very finely balanced candidates following interview you might consider using references, particularly focussing on specific aspects of the candidates’ skills and abilities to assist with a final decision. You will clearly need to advise them if this is the case.

It is good practice to require your prospective employee to complete a health questionnaire. This is essential if the candidate’s application form has identified any health issues that may affect their ability to do the job, or the reference suggests this. Now is the time to send this to the candidate (see attached pro forma).

You should also start a Criminal Record check where your job offer is conditional upon this. These checks are necessary where people will be working unsupervised with children or vulnerable adults and are undertaken through agencies who charge for their services.

Finally, before commencement of employment you will need to personally see evidence of the applicant’s right to work in the UK – advice on how to carry out the checks is avaiable from the gov.uk website

Formal offer and acceptance

On receipt of satisfactory references and checks you are then in a position to issue a letter offering employment, preferably with a formal contract. If you are not in a position to issue a contract yet (this must be done within 2 months by law) then your offer letter should include the job title, pay and main conditions, start date, hours of work and place of work. You will also need to receive a written reply confirming acceptance and may want to set out arrangements for reporting for work on your new employee’s first day.

July 2014

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