Guidance notes for Service Users involved in Recruitment

Introduction

Employing the right staff is an important part of providing good quality care. Involving people like you who use our Services is one of the ways of making sure we recruit the right people.

These guidance notes are written to help you understand:

Principles

Any involvement of service users in recruitment and selection should be organised in a way that:

Responsibilities

Confidentiality

The manager of the vacant post has the responsibility delegated to them to ensure that recruitment is managed within both the law and the policies laid down by the council.

You are responsible for ensuring that you act fairly when contributing to the recruitment and selection of staff.

Everyone involved in recruitment has a responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the interview process. Therefore any information obtained during the interviews or through the references must only be shared with the responsible manager and people involved in the interviews.

Equal Opportunities

The way that staff are recruited is affected by the law. This ensures that all employers do not recruit staff on the basis of their gender, race or religion (unless it is absolutely a requirement for the job). It also requires that the employer make reasonable adjustments to the job or the environment to enable disabled people to be employed. The council believe these laws are in the best interests of everyone. It therefore has an Equal Opportunity Policy which is committed to the principles of equality and social justice. This means people will be treated fairly regardless of their colour race ethnic or national origin, language, religion, gender, marital status, sexuality, disability, age, social background or any other unjustifiable reason.

An example of where difficulties might occur is in a residential home, where the staff are all women and amongst the applicants there is a man. Even though residents of the home would like to have the choice of a man or woman caring for them they are not allowed to take this into account. The selection must be on the basis of the person with the most suitable skills and abilities. How to do this is covered later in these guidance notes.

The Vacancy

There are many reasons for posts being vacant, including

This is a good opportunity to look at the whole staff team to make sure it is delivering what the service users need.

You may be asked to comment on the good and bad points of the service you are getting, and what you think is needed for the future. For example, in a residential home you might want more staff to start work earlier or stay later than before. You may think it would be better to have staff who do different things. Your comments will help to make sure that the job being advertised is what you need.

The Job Description

Once we know what sort of job we are going to advertise, we can make sure there is an up-to-date job description.

The job description lists the sorts of task the job holder will be asked to do. This might be `doing' things like cleaning or cooking, or it might be `managing' things like a unit manager job.

Your views are important, to help us to focus on employing staff to do the right things. An up-to-date job description will help everyone understand what we should or should not be asking staff to do.

The Person Specification

The job description shows the tasks to be done. The person specification shows what a candidate will need in order to do the job (these are essential criteria), and what would be a bonus (these are desirable criteria).

To avoid unfairly discriminating against anyone, it is important to be clear about what qualifications, experience or abilities a candidate must have in order to do the job, and not to pick someone just because you like them. The person specification helps us to be clear about what we are looking for, and it helps the candidate because they know what evidence of past experience they have to provide.

The person specification is split into three main areas, as follows:

For some jobs, like a Social Worker, a professional qualification is essential. For other jobs, experience is more important than having passed exams.

We all have past experiences which can be helpful in applying for jobs, even though we may not have been in paid employment. This is particularly true for caring posts, where candidates may have personal experiences of caring.

This is the area that is the most difficult to measure, because to some degree we are all tempted to pick people who have similar personal qualities to ourselves. The person specification helps to lay down what sort of personal qualities are actually needed to do the job. Try to avoid listing things like `have a sense of humour' which are difficult to measure and not job-relevant.

Before recruitment starts the responsible manager will talk with you about the person specification and whether it needs to have anything added to meet the requirements for this particular job.

Advertising

The purpose of advertising is to attract a number of suitable qualified and experienced people. All vacancies are advertised in an internal vacancy sheet that is made available to all staff. In addition a vacancy may be advertised in specialist publications or the local press.

Each advert normally includes:

The manager of the post is responsible for writing the advertisement.

Shortlisting

Following the advertisement interested applicants are asked to complete an application form. This application form is used to decide who should be shortlisted and invited for interview.

The purpose of shortlisting is to exclude those people who do not meet the criteria contained in the person specification.

The interview process

The interview process will vary from job to job depending on the responsibilities of the post

Examples of the sorts of process that could be included are as follows:-

Whichever processes are used the following standards apply:

The part you play in the process is a matter for discussion between you and the responsible manager.

You should expect to be clear about:

The interview itself

Interviewing staff can be interesting and exciting, but it can also be tiring. Therefore your part in the interview process needs to take account of how long you feel able to participate.

The room needs to be comfortable for you to sit in, with drinks at hand.

It is often helpful to have someone to assist you with the practical arrangements. This person can do the fetching and carrying for you. They can also make notes of what each applicant says, making it easier to compare candidates later. Your helper could be a friend or carer or a member of staff. Think not just about the questions you want to ask but also what you consider the most important things for the applicant to say.

Some questions must be avoided because they have nothing to do with how well the person will do the job. For example you must not ask questions about how many children people have or want to have, nor should we focus on someone's race or religion

Making a decision

To reach a decision each part of the process will need to be carefully considered to ensure that the best overall candidate is appointed. It is not enough just to look at the person with the highest score. In addition there needs to be a careful check that the candidates meet each part of the essential criteria on the person specification.

For example an applicant for the post of Unit Manager of services to people with a disability may have done exceptionally well on service user issues, but if they are unable to manage staff who do not do their job properly the applicant is not appointable.

Ultimately the decision about which applicants are successful rests with the manager responsible.

You will be informed of the decision made and why that decision was reached.

Post Recruitment Evaluation

After each recruitment it is good practice to review whether the process worked. You may be asked to complete a simple questionnaire. This will enable the manager responsible to continually improve the way users are involved in recruitment.

Involving Service Users in Recruitment and Selection of Staff

Post Recruitment Evaluation

Glossary of Terms

Explanation of some of the terms used in these guidance notes

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