Assessing values in your selection process for children’s residential social care

Many organisations rely on interviews as their only selection tool.

But when you use different selection tools, and involve different people in the recruitment process, you’re more likely to recruit the right person for your role.

This is because you give the person the opportunity to show their potential to different assessors and in different ways. 

It can be challenging for employers to find time to involve more people or invest more time in assessing candidates. So being creative can help with these challenges. Such as: appropriately involving children and young people, and training your staff in how to be involved in recruitment.

Selection tools are different activities and exercises you can use to find out about candidates’ values, behaviours, skills, and competencies. They enable you to find out who’s likely to be successful and happy in your role and in your workplace. 

You can use lots of different tools to assess values, including:

• values-based interviews
• written activities
• work trials
• meetings with the children and young people who they’ll be supporting.

A simple assessment day could be made up of three different exercises such as an interview, a written exercise and an interaction exercise. Candidates would be seen by more than one interviewer or assessor. This is the most effective way of choosing the right candidates, rather than relying on an interview alone.

Start by looking at your values and behaviours framework, your job description, and the person specification. Ask yourself:

• what makes the difference between good and poor performance in the role?
• what are the key values and behaviours you need in the role?

For example, imagine these are your behaviours and values:

• child-centred: putting children and young people at the heart of everything you do
• respect and compassion: treating everyone with compassion and respect
• integrity and responsibility: being open and trustworthy and taking responsibility for everything you say and do
• teamwork: working with other people to achieve the best outcomes for children and young people.

Then define these in terms of positive and negative indicators of what assessors would expect to see – and not want to see – from candidates for each exercise. This will be the criteria to assess all your candidates against and means they’ll be able to assess all the candidates fairly. 

These should be linked to your values and behaviours which you should have defined in your values and behaviours framework (see our guidance on how to articulate your values).

Think about the requirements of the job, and what the job involves, before you decide which selection tools are the most appropriate.

Design selection tools which are relevant to the job and which give candidates a realistic preview of the job. You should make sure that they don’t disadvantage candidates who may have no previous experience or knowledge of this type of work with children and young people.

Here are some examples of selection tools you could use.

Think about how you will assess candidates’ values against the criteria in each selection exercise. 

You could use a table, so you know you are assessing each value at least twice in different exercises and activities. 

We have an example of a table you could download and use. It shows the different values and behaviours in the first column and the assessment tool along the first row. There’s a cross in the box to show which value is assessed in each exercise. 

Make sure everyone involved in the selection process has a clear brief for each exercise, including what the candidates need to do and what criteria they are assessing the candidates against. 

Where possible, assessors should be trained – or at least briefed in detail – to understand what’s expected of them when they’re assessing candidates. 

You should develop a rating scale to use consistently to each exercise, so you can compare candidates’ performance across different exercises. The British Psychological Society recommends using a scale of between 5 and 7 points.

For example:

1. unsatisfactory 
2. below satisfactory 
3. satisfactory 
4. good
5. excellent.

Before the day, you should share details of what will happen during the recruitment process with the candidates. 

You should include any information they need to prepare for the assessments. 

You should ask candidates if they need any reasonable adjustments to be made to the assessment day, so they can fully take part.

You should plan the logistics of the day to make sure you have enough rooms and staff members available to assess candidates.

It’s good to have a timetable for each candidate so they know what they’re doing and where they need to be. The assessors can use their own timetable to keep track of who they’re seeing at different points in the day. 

Here’s an example template of a timetable you can download. The first column lists the time, second column the exercise, third column the room, fourth column the assessor.