Safeguarding in Staff Recruitment

contributed by HyperLink on 22/02/2012

For many organisations that are dealing with children and vulnerable adults, safeguarding is a key challenge.  When recruiting for posts working with vulnerable young people and adults the interviewing and selection process is critical. Having a clear process that adds extra rigour to the selection process by identifying negative behavioural indicators is vital.

A group of key managers involved in recruitment and selection were asked to review the existing selection processes.  Information was gathered on the number of interviewees,  the number of appointments, and the reasons why panels recommended not offering a post because the applicant was deemed 'not safe'. Using this data a range of questions were designed to elicit information about behavioural traits.

Specific  Outcomes

Existing practise using behavioural interviews showed that

• they were carried out on two or three preferred candidates following the completion of 'traditional' interview and assessments (depending on how many candidates were taken through and how long the interview lasted this could consume an additional 2 and 24 hours of management time for each post)
• they were conducted by 2 managers using 6 sets of questions and that some of the questions were very similar offering the potential to reduce the questions being asked and shorten the interviews.
• it was common that they took between one and two hours for each candidate
• the number of people trained to carry out behavioural interviewing had dwindled placing a considerable time burden on those remaining
• there had been no safeguarding allegations made against staff during the period behavioural interviewing was carried out.
• if behavioural interviewing could be somehow incorporated into the selection process it offered the potential of only inviting potentially 'safe' candidates for traditional interview.

Key Learning

1. Behavioural interviewing must be retained by the organisation but preferably in a more streamlined format
2. That an 'on-line' approach to initial selection of candidates incorporated elements of behavioural interviewing would help sift out unsuitable candidates before traditional interviewing and assessments were conducted.
3. The value of behavioural interviewing is in narrative responses to questions posed and does not lend itself to multiple choice type responses.
   

Lasting Benefits

• Clients using on-line behavioural questioning can expect to
  demonstrably increase the safeguarding checks within the recruitment and selection processes
• increase the calibre of the candidates that are invited to attend formal interview and assessment centres
• reduce the time and associated costs of behavioural interviewing over manual methods 

Key Learning

1. On-line safeguarding questioning as part of the application process will visibly promote the organisation's embedding of Safer Recruitment techniques to all.
2. Organisations will achieve considerable time savings of managers previously used intensively in post-interview screening.
3. Comparison of candidate responses to questions can be more easily achieved when recorded via an on-line process rather than by manual note taking during interviews.