Tools for Recruitment 

Tools for enabling Young People to input to recruitment process

 Why?

Children and young people have a right to be listened to and involved in decisions that affect them because they are citizens in their own right and not just citizens in waiting. This right is laid down in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF 1989) in Article 12 which gives children the right to be consulted by adults making decisions which affect them.

The Getting it Right for Every Child policy guidelines (2008) sets listening to children and young people and involving them in decisions which affect them at the heart of its ethos and practice.

Overview

The following approach was used in the selection day of the current Children`s Consultation Worker.

The idea is that the process is structured in 2 parts, the first part to enable the children and job candidates to get to know each other and relax, selection being a stressful process for all concerned! (An ice breaker activity). Chairs arranged in a semi-circle, young people sitting in alternate seats and candidates invited to occupy the alternate vacant chairs.

The group is then ready to move on to the second part of the process which is structured in the style of `speed dating ` so that each of the young people has an opportunity to spend time with each of the candidates and ask or invite questions. It works best if you have the same number of young people as candidates. For this, young people occupy one of 2  seats at individual tables and candidates are invited to occupy the vacant seat. Some young people also have adult support sitting with them to enable them to record their view.

Ice Breaker

Each of the young people thinks of an animal beginning with the same letter as their name and candidates are invited to do the same. (The young people may do this in advance of the session). This ensures that everyone has a prompt to help remember each other`s name eg Hector the horse. The first in the semi-circle introduces him/herself and the next introduces him/herself and the person before and so on round the group until the last person introduces him/herself and also everyone else! By which time names are remembered and everyone has relaxed.

The second ice breaker activity enables both young person and candidate to interact more closely and get some insight into their personality. `Chit-Chat`™ cards were used. This is a set of cards with one question on each e.g.“What food can you not live without?” A card is chosen randomly from a selection from the pack and read by one person to be answered by the person to their left and so on around the circle. This means that candidates and young people each both ask and answer a question.

Speed  Interviewing

Each young person has a different question/activity and asks this of each of the candidates, allowing the same length of time for each candidate, so that equality is maintained. Candidates are assigned a number so that it is easier for the young person to record their view accurately, and then rotate round the tables in a pre-determined order e.g. clockwise. This activity allows 4 minutes per question per candidate and a couple of minutes extra for recording. Candidates withdraw to the other side of the room during each changeover to allow the young persons’ recordings to be confidential.

Preparation

Young people need to meet prior to the selection day.  At our meeting they did a number of ice breakers and chose 2.  This served to break the ice with this group as well as choosing ice-breakers for the selection day.

Next they sit round a table. A large sheet of paper is used and a stick person drawn. The group has a `quickthink` of the attributes required for the job. They then discuss ways to find this out. E.g. cheery, good at talking, good at listening etc.

They consider all the ideas and work out which they might find out about from the ice breaker activity, e.g. if someone is cheery. They then look at the remaining attributes and aggregate them into 6 questions. They break into 3 groups, an adult with each group, to discuss how to word the question in order to get the answer required.

The scoring system for the ice-breaker is explained to them. The scoring follows the themes e.g. Do you think they were cheery? 

For the speed dating question the scoring is on a scale.

In our case the young people`s score represented a third of the total marks for the interview overall .  It had been explained to the young people that the candidate who scored the highest in their part of the selection process would not necessarily be the successful candidate. After their selection contribution the young people had lunch together and were thanked. Meeting the interview panel and hearing the questions they put to the candidates gives the young people some awareness of the process as a whole and enables them to feel part of it. The committee sent them formal thanks and a voucher to acknowledge the importance of their contribution. They also received feedback as to which candidate had been successful. Some of the young people were able to use the experience as evidence for their Portfolio of Life Skills.