Safer recruitment and interviewing

Cue 1 Schedule 3 checklist with every item required before a start date.

AMARA 00:00 We are short staffed constantly. What can I safely skip?

NADIA 00:04 Nothing in Schedule 3, and I know that is not the answer you wanted. Recruitment is the first safeguarding control in your service, and under staffing pressure it is the one that gets thinnest.

AMARA 00:17 What does Schedule 3 actually require?

NADIA 00:20 Proof of identity with a recent photograph. A DBS at the right level with barred list checks where they apply. Evidence of conduct in previous work with children or vulnerable adults. The reason previous health or care employment ended. Qualification evidence. A full written employment history with explanations for gaps. And evidence of fitness for the role.

AMARA 00:42 Are gaps a red flag?

Cue 2 An employment gap explored and recorded, versus one nobody asked about.

NADIA 00:44 No, and this is worth being clear about because people treat them as one. A gap is not a red flag. Illness, caring, a visa, a breakdown, prison, redundancy, raising children. An unexplained gap that nobody asked about is the red flag.

AMARA 01:01 So I just ask.

NADIA 01:03 You just ask, and you write down the answer. It is the asking and recording that satisfies the regulation, not the answer being tidy.

AMARA 01:12 References. Everybody writes bland ones now.

NADIA 01:15 Then ask better questions, in writing. Were there any concerns about this person's conduct towards people using the service. Were any safeguarding or disciplinary matters raised. And: would you re employ them.

Cue 3 Reference verification: number on the reference crossed out, organisation number ticked.

AMARA 01:28 And if they will not answer that last one?

NADIA 01:31 That is your answer. A refusal to say whether they would re employ somebody is information, and experienced managers hear it clearly.

AMARA 01:40 Anything practical?

NADIA 01:41 Ring the organisation on a number you found yourself, never the number printed on the reference. Fabricated references using a friend's mobile are common, and that one check finds nearly all of them.

AMARA 01:54 DBS comes back with something on it. Automatic no?

Cue 4 Right to work check applied identically to every candidate.

NADIA 01:57 No. Assess relevance, how long ago, their age at the time, the pattern, and what it actually says about risk in this specific role. Then record the assessment. A blanket refusal is both unfair and indefensible if challenged.

AMARA 02:13 Right to work. How careful do I need to be?

NADIA 02:17 Very, and in a specific way. Check every candidate, before employment starts, in exactly the same way.

AMARA 02:24 Every candidate?

NADIA 02:24 Every one. Checking only people who look or sound foreign is race discrimination. And it is also how services end up with illegal working penalties, because the statutory excuse depends on having done a correct check for the person you actually employed.

Cue 5 Hypothetical question producing the model answer from everyone.

AMARA 02:41 Let us do interviews. Ours are quite chatty.

NADIA 02:44 Then they are measuring fluency, and fluency predicts almost nothing about how somebody behaves at three in the morning when a resident is distressed and nobody is watching.

AMARA 02:56 What should I ask instead?

NADIA 02:58 For a specific past event, never a hypothetical. Tell me about a time you disagreed with how a colleague treated somebody. What did you do?

AMARA 03:08 As opposed to what would you do if.

Cue 6 Behavioural probe: what did you say, who was there, what happened next.

NADIA 03:11 Which everybody answers correctly, because everybody knows the right answer. It tells you nothing except that they have heard of safeguarding.

AMARA 03:19 How do I know a real story from an invented one?

NADIA 03:24 Probe for specifics. What did you actually say. Who else was in the room. What happened afterwards. Somebody recalling a real event can keep answering. Somebody constructing one runs out of detail quite quickly, and you will hear it.

AMARA 03:39 One favourite question?

NADIA 03:40 Tell me about a time you raised a concern about somebody's practice. Then listen for whether anything happened afterwards, and how they talk about it. That single question tells you more about whether they will speak up in your service than an hour of anything else.

Cue 1 New starter counted in the numbers on shift three, then leaving.

AMARA 03:59 We lose a lot of new starters in the first couple of months.

NADIA 04:04 Almost everybody does, and the decision is usually made in the first two weeks, long before anybody had a conversation about how it was going.

AMARA 04:14 What is going wrong?

NADIA 04:16 The same thing everywhere. Two shadow shifts, then somebody calls in sick and the new starter goes on the rota as a full number. They are frightened, they will not say so, and they leave.

Cue 2 Named buddy against the shift in general.

AMARA 04:30 That is exactly what we do.

NADIA 04:32 It is what everybody does, and it is the most expensive false economy in the sector. You saved one shift and lost a recruit, and now you are paying agency and recruiting again.

AMARA 04:45 So what is the fix?

NADIA 04:47 Three things, and none of them cost money. Do not count them in the numbers until they are genuinely competent. Name a specific buddy, a person, not the shift. And ask them how it is going at day one, week one and month one.

Cue 3 Three check ins: day one, week one, month one.

AMARA 05:05 They would tell me if there was a problem.

NADIA 05:08 They would not, and that is the whole difficulty. A new starter who admits they are struggling believes they are admitting they should not have been hired.

AMARA 05:19 So how do I get an honest answer?

NADIA 05:22 Ask a specific question. Is there anything you have been asked to do that you did not feel confident doing? People answer that honestly, and they will never raise it unprompted.

Cue 4 Folder signed beside a person unable to describe the fire strategy.

AMARA 05:35 What must induction cover before a first unsupervised shift?

NADIA 05:38 Safeguarding and how to raise a concern. Moving and handling on the equipment they will actually use, not equipment in general. Fire procedure and the evacuation strategy for that building. Infection prevention. The people they will support. And who to call, and when.

AMARA 05:56 We cover all of that in the folder.

NADIA 05:59 Then let me put it the way an inspector will. Take somebody who signed that folder last week and ask them which way your fire compartments run.

Cue 5 Probation signals appearing in weeks one to four.

AMARA 06:10 They probably could not say.

NADIA 06:12 Then they have not been inducted, they have been documented. And the inspector finds that out by asking a person, never by reading the folder.

AMARA 06:22 Probation. Ours just quietly ends.

NADIA 06:24 Which wastes the one period where ending an appointment is straightforward, and where a fixable problem is still easily fixable.

Cue 6 Probation extended for improvement, versus extended for avoidance.

AMARA 06:32 What should I actually do?

NADIA 06:34 Say at the start what good looks like, in behaviours rather than adjectives. Review monthly, in writing, briefly. And raise anything that concerns you the week it happens.

AMARA 06:45 What should I be watching for?

NADIA 06:47 Reluctance to ask questions, which turns into guessing. Not recording, which turns into a safeguarding problem. Lateness in week two, which does not improve on its own. Discomfort with personal care that does not settle.

AMARA 07:01 Is there one I should move on fastest?

NADIA 07:04 Dismissive language about the people they support. Any of it, at any point. Do not explain it away as nerves or as a joke, because it is the single clearest early predictor of how somebody will behave when nobody is watching.

AMARA 07:21 Can I extend probation?

NADIA 07:22 Legitimately, if somebody is improving and needs longer. Not because you never had the conversation, which is what usually happens, and which just moves the problem three months further away.