Analyse your contribution to the selection process

In this task we were told to do a role-play on the selection process. We were first told to do questions for candidates. The whole group done 15 questions and after as a group, we had to talk to each other to create 15 questions for interview. By doing 15 questions I have learned some of the questions that there could be in the interview. From these 15 questions we chosen 7 questions to ask to the candidate, we agreed that these questions are not boring and open question to make sure that we will have good communication with the candidate. From this I learned that which questions could in an interview and what type of questions there will be.

I was writing the questions that my group gave and I also give some ideas to write as well. After we wrote all the questions we took it to the teacher so we would see if it was good however, we amended a lot in the questions because it didn’t relate to our person specification and job description. My contribution to this was write the amendments and change the types of some questions, this was important because without the amendments we wouldn’t be able to ask good questions to out interviewee. I think that this was good because we communicated with each other good and amended it to make sure that it was professional questions.

Before the candidate came to the interview, we checked that we had questionnaires and pen however one of our team members forgot her job specification which made us share 1 paper with 2 people, this was quite bad because it showed to the interviewee that we weren’t organised. From this I learned to check my sheets 15mins before the interview.

When we were in role-play, I think that we did well in body language. I was the interviewer with 2 others person from my group and there was a candidate to interview. I think, I done my part good because when the candidate came in we shook hands with the candidate. I also had a good eye contact with the candidate and often smiles. Just before we were asking the questions we walked through health and safety rules because it is by law that we need to do that. When I was asking the questions, I added bit more so the candidate could understand the questions and answer more clearly so we could have longer conversation going on. However, I did do some mistakes like I did change the way I asked each questions and this could have been not fair if there was more than 1 candidate. Overall the role-play went smooth. From this I learned that I shouldn’t change the way I ask questions because it wasn’t fair.

Some of the questions were challenging like question 7 which was ‘if the candidate had any questions’. I know it was challenging because the candidate struggled to answer the basic question and by the body language I could see the candidate find it difficult. This has impact to our decision because there might be some other person that answers every question without struggling.

I think that I could have done my role more professionally. There were still some areas that needed improving. I did laugh at a point this could be because of I didn’t really take the role-play really serious because it was people that I know. If it was with some other people that I didn’t know, I think that I would be more serious and more professional. From this I learned that interview is one of the important part to employ staff and for this reason I should be more serious.

Furthermore, the environment we were in wasn’t that good because there were people shouting around us and sometimes we couldn’t even hear each other so for this reason we talked louder. If we had chosen a better place then it would be better to hear each other and the interview would have been more professional. From this I have learned that the environment around the interview must be quite to make sure that the interviewer and the interviewee hears each other clearly. My listening skills were good; I was always listening to the interviewee and tried to understand to write my notes down.

I dressed smartly in the interview because we had to be professional and the other reason was to show to the candidate that the business in professional. From this I have learned that dressing is important in a business to show the business better to the interviewee.

When I was asking questions I could have used some closed questions where interviewee could only answer yes or no. This would help the interviewee to make sure that they won’t be nervous and they would answer better in the other questions.

Also we all switched our phones off because it won’t be appropriate if the phone went off. Also I came 20 minutes earlier to prepare for the interview and to make sure it was professional. From this I have learned that by coming 20 minutes early to interview I could check my papers and make sure that I don’t miss any.

In the end of the interview we informed the candidate that if she gets the job then she could have a maternity leave as it is part of the employment act of 2002 and also informed that the weeks were increased from 18 to 26. From this I have learned an act that I never know before.

Evaluate the usefulness of the documents in the interview pack for a given organisation, in facilitating the interview process.

The documents contribute to the organisation of the interview by clearly organising the interviewee’s information and the interviewer’s assessment of the candidates.

I think that the most useful documents are the job description and the person specification because before the interview when we were creating the questions we have used these two documents a lot then because candidates will come to the job by looking at these two documents if fits them.

Strength of person specification is that it tells the candidates what they need in order to get the job and if they all meet the requirements we look at what we would prefer for them to have. I would rate this as 5 because as an interviewer I used this lot in the interview to see whether to see the candidate is best for the job and also it does meet the purpose because there was lots of detail about the person that have to be. When we were writing this document I was the one who was writing the document and also I added some of my ideas as well. The weakness of my contribution would be that some of the things I said wasn’t really relating to the job. In the future I would have given more ideas that would be relating to the job which would help everyone in the group.

A letter of application should highlight all the positive aspects of the applicant and the skills that they have. Letters are used by the applicant to outline why they are suitable for the job. Applicant should use the job description and person specification when highlighting their particular strengths so that employer can match them to the job. In CV applicants write all their detail including education history and referees. In this way interviewer can see everything in one go about an applicant. In the CVs it maybe complicated to compare the candidates because it only shows the applicants strengths. In the interview as the interviewer we had CV of the candidate because CV would be much better because I would of be able to see everything about the candidate easy and wouldn’t have to work for long to get the applicants personality and give judgement if he/she can get the job. I would rate this document as 4/5 because it gives all the detail of the candidate and references from other job that he/she went to this gives the interviewee first impression about the person. However from this we can’t just think how the person is because we haven’t seen him/her yet and also we don’t know how his/hers personality is just from CV.

In the interview we didn’t use the job advert because all the information about the job was in job description like how the job is going to be however in job description it’s more detailed. So in the interview this wasn’t really important. Job advert was only to get more candidates to apply. However the job description would have helped the candidates to see where the location of the job and give detail of how they will contact us. The other strength would be that it gets lots of candidates to apply by catching their attention if the job advert is eye catching and if the person is interested to find the job. I would rank this as 4/5 because without this not many people would know about the job which would lead to less people and therefore the person for the job wouldn’t be the best one to apply. When we were creating this document I gave some ideas about the design of it which made it look more professional however we have put lots of writing which made it look boring. If we do this again we wouldn’t write too much so then it would look more professional and not boring. From this I have learned that the job advert shouldn’t have too much writing because that’s only to catch attentions.

Job specification is another useful document in the interview pack because job specification would help the candidates to get prepared for the interview. The strengths of this document would be that it would help candidates by telling it is a teaching job. Job specification also helped me in the interview because it tells me if the candidate can do the job. This helps more in the selecting candidates because we looked at the main requirements and see which candidates had these requirements. The weakness of it would be that it doesn’t have everything that states how the person should be. I would rate this document as 5/5 because it assists me what the outline of the job and by simply looking at it, gives me a hint of what I should expect from a candidate. I created this document for our team and it helped other people. The weakness could be that I didn’t write much on this document like disability. If I had another chance I would of write more detail specification which would be much better for my group. From this I have learned that job specification is one of the most important document in the interview and also this could be very detailed and specific to make sure that the interviewers chooses the right candidate.

Also in the interview each of the interviewers had evaluating documents, this document helps us to evaluate the skills of the candidate, basically in another word what we need and what we want. The weakness of this document was that we didn’t have much space on the notes part. This helps us to see if the candidate was good enough for the job. We used this although the interview because after when we get all the candidates evaluating documents together we can choose the best one easy. I would rate this as 5/5 because without this document we wouldn’t be able to tell all the detail how the candidate replied to all questions. The strength of my contribution for this document was that I created the table however the weakness is that I didn’t make the table professionally. If I could do this again I would change the notes section to give more for the interviewer to write about the candidate and could of made a overall box as well.

In this evaluation table we used this table to rate the candidate if they were excellent, good, satisfactory or weak. By doing this it helps us in the selecting candidate because we would check all of the rating and choose the best candidate for the job. Another thing we put in is ‘notes’ this part help us to put additional comment that we have. In the interview I tried to understand the candidate and put comments on all of the questions because it would help us when we have more candidates to choose from.

Evaluate your experience of planning and participating in the recruitment and selection process

I think my experience in planning and recruitment and selection progress was really good because I haven’t been in an interview before and it gave me great idea what it would be like and how would I prepare, If I have one in the future. Also it helped me to get more organised because we had to prepare a lot in order to be perfect and in order to be organised.

This also helped me to know more about laws that are out there to protect employees. I learned Discrimination acts like sex discrimination, age discrimination and so on. I also learned Data protection act 2010 that all the data that business have should protect them from people that have not access to it. By knowing these acts it allowed me to ensure that I didn’t use things which were inappropriate in each of the documents.

I think that I did well in preparing for the interview because we had to communicate with each other all to time and ask each other questions if we don’t understand something. When we were in the interview I had good answers from interviewee which would help me in the future if I come up with any questions like that. Also it improved my communication skills which other people.

Next time in the planning of the recruitment I would use more questions that would help me and the candidate. I would use closed questions first to get them talking and after ask open questions so they won’t be nervous and to make the conversation going so I could get more answers from them.

I think when I was using the evaluation table I have been fair on the interviewee because I checked my answers with the other 2 interviewers, our results are similar and there is barely difference which shows that we all been fair on the candidate.

Overall my strengths are:

Organisation skills
Communication skills between other interviewers
Listening skills

My weaknesses are:
Repeating questions
Channing the way I asked questions
In the future I need to make sure that I won’t have any weaknesses. To do this I need to do more role-plays like this because if I do more then I will be more confidents so I won’t repeat any questions. Also to make sure that I won’t change the way I ask questions to the candidates, I can practice answering questions to some other people and make sure that I ask same way.