# Safer recruitment and interviewing

*The checks that are legally required, and the interview that predicts something.*

## Production summary

- Modules to record: 2
- Total script: 1137 words, about 8 minutes of finished audio
- Voices: Amara (host) and Nadia (practice educator)
- Level: Team leaders, deputies and registered managers

## Accreditation wording that must appear in the description

- **The CPD Certification Service** (planned): Application scheduled.

> Do not upgrade any of these words in a description or a thumbnail. Aligned is not accredited, and planned is not approved.


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## The checks, the gaps and the questions

**Runtime** about 4 minutes. **Words** 598. **Starts at** 00:00 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- State what Schedule 3 requires before a person starts
- Explore an employment gap and a disclosure proportionately
- Conduct right to work checks without discriminating
- Ask behavioural questions that predict conduct

### Script


`[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.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, Schedule 3, legislation.gov.uk
- Right to work checks: an employer's guide, Home Office
- Equality Act 2010, section 60 health questions, legislation.gov.uk
- Safer recruitment in adult social care, Skills for Care

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## Induction and probation: the first twelve weeks

**Runtime** about 4 minutes. **Words** 539. **Starts at** 03:59 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- Structure an induction that meets Regulation 18 and actually works
- Use probation as a decision period rather than a formality
- Recognise the first week signals that predict a poor appointment
- Address a problem in probation while it is still easy

### Script


`[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.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Regulation 18: Staffing, Care Quality Commission
- Care Certificate and induction guidance, Skills for Care
- Retention and turnover in adult social care, Skills for Care

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